TW: Mentions of suicide
On the afternoon of 14 June 2020, I was in the city of Purnea in Bihar where Sushant Singh Rajput also had his ancestral roots. That day, I perceived many of my Whatsapp contacts posting his picture in their statuses and that is when I found out about his death. It struck me a little differently because I have had always rejoiced excitedly at the fact that I share the same roots as the Bollywood sensation, however, on a personal note I had developed a little indifference to my fondness of him post his breakup with Ankita Lokhande but everything came to rest with his death.
Sushant Singh Rajput’s death shocked the country but people soon started exploiting other’s vulnerability for political and personal gain.
The following days were all marked by a musical tribute to him by echoing high the songs from his movies but no one could interpret that the death the country is mourning will take such an ugly turn, vilifying a row of people including Sushant, and scoring personal goals.
A Death Reduced To A Political Pawn
This wasn’t the only suicide in Bollywood and Sushant wasn’t the only outsider to have a fantastic toss in the industry but irrespective of all that, masses were made to mourn his death in a very patriarchal fashion, setting a bigger ground for political attack. One can even say that Sushant’s death became a manifested objective in the Bihar elections and the side taking credit for it did have a whopping play.
However, after the elections not even a fraction of the sympathy and courtesy was directed to him and the trial of his death. In fact, now we don’t even see the influential big names visiting Sushant’s father, who I believe should be honored on the very day of oath-taking in the Bihar assembly because his son’s death was made a pawn there.
Unfortunately reducing Sushant’s character to some selfish ambition didn’t just end with a political turn. Prime-time media made this subject a darling, Stooping lower every day in attacking the character of Rhea Chakraborty who till date hasn’t been proved guilty by law but journalists in the country had announced their verdict last year. Today I believe Rhea to be neither guilty nor innocent but I see her as a forced custodian of allegations of witchcraft. Her arrest by the NCB (Narcotics Control Bureau) probing drug angle in Sushant’s death also culminates that how desperate we are to put the onus on a woman and the inquiry involving only her ridiculously but yet relevantly concludes the inherent patriarchy in our society.
Unknowingly we didn’t realize or just didn’t bother enough to, that in all of this Sushant is attached as inseparable, and be it drugs or anything his name is naturally being peddled and it just didn’t make us realize how contemptuous we are getting in mourning him. Every attack on the aftermath of Sushant’s death did ensure his participation in it and considering the cultural notion after death I find it horrendous to question, “Would this lead to peace for Sushant’s soul’?“
Kangana Ranaut has benefitted from exploiting Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.
Who Benefited From All This?
Identifying the real culprit of Sushant’s death is as dicey and dirty as the anecdotes of whom to blame. Be it Kangana Ranaut who launched a personal objective of attacking her favorite subject of nepotism and the Maharashtra Government and sexually mocking and slurring her seniors in the industry – Jaya Bachchan and Urmila Matondkar in the context of Sushant’s death. Kangana Ranaut has now emerged as a star campaigner for the BJP and her comments were all directed to benefit the party.
Shazia Ilmi who without a career in films was an invited panelist on the subject of debating cum launching a political motive; Navika Kumar who didn’t only love sipping the gossip well by reading out someone’s private chats but even passed a sly smile when Kangana called Urmila a soft pornstar and the list seems to be traditionally long. Fundamentally I feel somewhere even his fans and admirers are accountable.
We gleefully accepted this dirty gaming as a tribute to Sushant and yet I am left to think to myself that “would this legacy at any point please Sushant while he was alive because he had a history of critiquing the social ills” but unfortunately the aftermath of his own demise turned into a good arena for what he stood against.
Today after a year of Sushant’s death all the parties who jeopardized Sushant’s death are victorious in some way – some bagged political victory, some Y-level security, some had an ENBA Award for Best Anchor and some served in the jury but why does the status of Sushant’s probe lie still unanswerable with great intensity?
Ironically last year the BJP’s Art and Culture Cell in Bihar had reportedly plastered around 25,000 posters/stickers all over the state with the slogan “Na bhoole hain, na bhulne denge (We have not forgotten, nor will we let anyone forget)” and even distributed 20,000 masks of Rajput. On an honest note, we forgot Sushant very soon and were mainly on our marks to target some – Rhea, Deepika, Sara, Rakul Preet, Aditya, Uddhav, and Sonia because some took the opportunity to change the narrative.
Now that we mourn Sushant we need to mourn the other lives too who were reduced as humans because of their association with him. Now that we recall him with his ginormous movies and melodious songs we also need to recall how dirty his aftermath was. Now that we rejoice in the victories of the ones who voiced out for Sushant, we equally need to honor the silence of his old father. Now that we feel like to tribute a death exceptionally, we should just go by tributing it ordinarily because after death nobody will claim your innocence.
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