A Eulogy on the Death of a Rising Star……

Before 14th June, I only liked Sushant Singh Rajput as a great actor, given my penchant for cinema and the avid movie buff that I am.

And then 14th happened.

I was taking my weekend power nap, when I was jolted awake by my daughter who just uttered that SSR had committed suicide. I jumped out of the bed and rushed to the television, in utter disbelief, only to hear the corroborative narration that an entire shocked nation was hearing.

It catapulted me to my sophomore years when I was gallivanting away from my college in my mofussil town and my close confidante … my friend in all deeds & misdeeds came chasing in search of me, the chain of his dilapidated cycle having failed as usual and he jumped down as blurred out… Divya Bharti is dead. Those were the days when news wasn’t a 24/7 gory business and I had to await the next days newspaper to get the details of the unbelievable painful tale of the death of someone whom I simply adored … along with millions of other admirers.

It was the first time that I had realised that these screen deities were also human beings… flesh and blood… and it hit really hard… this couldn’t be happening … it was just not possible… should I still chase my dreams of becoming an actor.. or is my dad right and engineering is the real thing… crazy random thoughts… it took an investment of some stolen money on a leading film glossy that carried the painful details… conspiracy theories … the picture of the place where the deity had fallen… intact… shattered… window without a grill… drunken parties till late nights… mother and father… separate accusations … the entire month was a nightmare..

And now this. As I .. glued to myriad channels.. where the merchants of pain spread their investigative paraphernalia and sold their sordid tales of grisly details… it is here that I discovered the extraordinary human soul behind the actor’s mask. And hitherto unknown facts came to my notice. The melancholic pain has consistently been increasing by the passing day. Inspite of the fact that other than the bond of humanity I had nothing binding me to this great soul. I tried searching for reasons on why I was suffering from so much distress on SSR giving up on life. Why did my eyes water at watching Dhoni the movie.. that I had already consumed a dozen times before… Why did the lines… Bin pooche mera naam aur pataa…. Rasmon ko rakh ke pare… Chaar kadam bas chaar kadam…. Chaldona saath mere… suddenly acquire a new lugubrious context…

Was it because of him being a fellow Bihari? Was it because that we tend to relate more to the success of the underdog stories? Was it because he left without according the basic etiquette of explaining his reasons to the masses who worshipped him and thus became enigmatic and the conundrum was killing us…

All the research that I set upon only disclosed a far superior quality of intellect behind that disarmingly enchanting endearing smile… a thinking brain… an intellectually advanced lifeform with an enviably fine balance of emotion between the heart and the mind… a positive persona with indefatigable zest for life and a passion par excellence to chase and achieve the extraordinary in the mediocre maze of this existence… It is here that I connected. It is here that the spark of pain became unbearable. A relationship between a thinking intellectual soul and another is one of the finest bonds that unites the known with the unknown … converting stranger souls into bonds of familiarity… based on mutual respect and admiration. This explained the lump in throat and the wetness of the eyes of my mind at every mention of the excellence that rid itself of a lifeform.

The pain now is more severe. For now, all the claims of depressive state of affairs or the compulsions imposed by the heinous conspiracies of the invisible omertà or the struggle cum failure stories, or the myriad relationships souring… nothing really justified the exit of a reasonably intelligent soul. As one who related to the same and may have borne the brunt of similar or far more devastating colourful blows of fate, I couldn’t for the respect of existence, in any order condone or corroborate any cause as worthy of depriving the already intellectually bankrupt existence of the times that we suffer.
I tried to look for the reasons in the immediate postings of SSR on his various social platforms and found these relevant random thoughts that perhaps joined the dots…..

April: What if consciousness is not something special that the brain does but is instead a quality inherent to all matter in the universe?
May: The Avatamsaka Sutra describes enlightenment as an awareness of the “interpenetration of space and time.” One can’t help but wonder if Einstein’s theory of relativity that unifies space and time was just a stroke of genius or also a glimpse of the divine. June: Blurred past evaporating from teardrops. Unending dreams carving an arc of smile. And a fleeting life, negotiating between the two…

All the above point to an extraordinarily advanced computation of the unseen aspects of existence or its meaning. The negotiation between thé blurred past evaporating from the teardrops and the unending dreams attempting to carve an arc of smile seem to have failed. The fleeting moment when the negotiations failed, SSR decided perhaps to merge the consciousness with the matter. Perhaps in such a random moment of some advanced realisation of the meaning of life… he merged with the divine. As SSR prophesied in one of his several musings…somewhere between the neurons of his passion and the narratives of his circumstances… he was born… lived… dreamt… and died…

And he converted his dream of being eternal into an immediate reality. May not be a right way to do so.. but who are we to judge the brightness of an exalted soul that might have sought and achieved enlightenment. History is abound with hundreds of stories of enlightened souls who never lived thereafter with the masses post enlightenment of the kind where the mysteries of life seem to have disclosed itself to them. Life is simply complicated. It’s the most misunderstood concept and the reality of death has only compounded the conundrum. We keep chasing death in the garb of living life. We surrender the genetically intelligent neurons to the narratives of mediocrity.

A dear friend if mine passionately attempted to mull about as to who we were to say that this lifetime is our entire book. That perhaps this may be a chapter… biding by its allocated time within the limited confines of the words and pages allocated to it. There may have been many chapters before or many ahead… Perhaps..

I fell for this concept.. And it is here … that with so much pain at the departing of such an inspiring soul as SSR.. it is but with respect we must accord his right to have refused to grant right to the limitations of the pages and words and spaces et al by ending the chapter consciously… perhaps he intuitively knew about the excitement and comparative superiority of the quality of the upcoming chapter… or perhaps the powerful omertà of the universe had authored the chapter to end thus.

Whatever be the case… the heart rules over the mind here and no explanation lessens the pain of reaching the last period of this chapter. The reader, who falls in love with the tale .. shall always have to bear the pangs of pain at the ending of such a tale. Many more tales may come… yet the nostalgia of the tale so loved shall continue to stab the memory… especially, when the author chose to end it at a sharp heartthrobbingly & mysteriously incomplete abrupt juncture… with no climax in sight… well the pain of suffering such a story that never ended and yet ended is only known to such unfortunate readers like us.

Hoping that SSR moved on to a happier chapter as he wanted. This ununderstood ending.. for sure will join the list of many such burning .. soul stirring … intellect confusing unanswered list of enigmatic queries that I have been collecting since my chapter began… to be asked and answer sought only from the supreme author.

In the lines of Kaifi Azmi Saab:
रहने को सदा दहर में आता नहीं कोई.
तुम जैसे गए ऐसे भी जाता नहीं कोई…

डरता हूँ कहीं ख़ुश्क न हो जाए समुंदर
राख अपनी कभी आप बहाता नहीं कोई

इक बार तो ख़ुद मौत भी घबरा गई होगी 
यूँ मौत को सीने से लगाता नहीं कोई 

माना कि उजालों ने तुम्हें दाग़ दिए थे 
बे-रात ढले शम्अ बुझाता नहीं कोई 

साक़ी से गिला था तुम्हें मय-ख़ाने से शिकवा 
अब ज़हर से भी प्यास बुझाता नहीं कोई 

हर सुब्ह हिला देता था ज़ंजीर ज़माना 
क्यूँ आज दिवाने को जगाता नहीं कोई 

अर्थी तो उठा लेते हैं सब अश्क बहा के
नाज़-ए-दिल-ए-बेताब उठाता नहीं कोई

RIP SSR