*Trigger Warning: Mention Of Suicide*
Dear Sushant,
I know you don’t know me and you have no reason to. Actually, it’s not important either, for names are just symbolic representations of the frameworks that we carry around. In the end, all of us unite by emotions that we selectively decide to be affected or unaffected by.
And today, when you are not amongst us, the scars of millions of those who suffer silently have resurfaced. I must admit that like any other person, I too never valued your existence and frankly, none of us does it until one embarks on heavenly abode, especially the way you did, tragically.
I remember the last show I watched at the theatre was your film Chicchore and I must say it was wholesome entertainment. A story about failures and friends that all of us resonated with. No, don’t get me wrong please and don’t you take anything to what people say to the heart. After all, all of them remember you as the Anni who vouched to confront problems in life than run away from them.
But I apologise that they had forgotten the fact that you were an actor and didn’t realise that in the end, you were amongst us who sought love, understanding and encouragement. But you know what, it’s all the perspective and you should be so happy to know that your performance as Anni in the movie still creates ripples and that is why perhaps it makes it difficult to digest the fact that you are no more.
I know it was always difficult. Difficult to ignore when they belittled you. Difficult to breathe when the unaccomplished dreams of life came incessantly haunting you. Difficult to be understood when you want people to understand you. Powerless, helpless and uncontrollable, yet controlled by one demon that took the most confusing forms.
Sometimes a smile that betrayed your plight or the laugh that made you appear a normal man enjoying the joke or sometimes the numbness that appeared from nowhere and handicapped you for days making people around you wonder, “Tum theek toh the ab kya hua?” The arms that choked you when you tried hard to take hold of the reins of the asset that belonged to you. It was never easy.
We all are in the same boat. Our reasons for anxiety and depression may be different, but in the end, we are all bowled with the fire that renders us absolutely helpless and, hence, resorting to our own coping mechanisms, sometimes a fantasy, sometimes a burst of uncontrollable laughter and other times ending our own existence.
Mocked for being vocal or asking for help, being a subject of petty jokes and ignored. Belittling our own pain as insufficiency, you know it all. Don’t worry; there are many others like you and me out there who understand you completely without judgement and embrace the legacy that you left behind without questions, but with a heavy heart.
You were the most hardworking, beautiful and charming soul. Sometimes we forget our own worth and maybe that propels us to take harsher steps. The harshest of those propelled you to take the most beautiful thing that you owned.
I don’t know what might have crossed your mind moments before we lost you, but it definitely brings shudders and sadness that a call, a post, might have saved you. But destiny didn’t want it that way, perhaps.
Your death is a loss for all those who looked up to you. But you see, even in your death, you have taught the country a valuable lesson. A lesson to open up, a lesson to ask and be asked, encouraging others to be their raw self and speak out if they were not okay. To seek help and unmask the pain hidden.
We know you were the bravest soul and that is why the All-Mighty chose you to teach and bring to light an issue so stigmatised in India. The price was too heavy, but maybe society shall normalise and embrace mental health issues to some extent now, or maybe I am being too hopeful.
Your legacy is your gift to humanity. Your death will not be digested so easily, or perhaps never. The young, energetic, dynamic boy who achieved pinnacles of success with sheer hard work, you will always be an inspiration to the youth.
We will miss you, Sushant. Rest in peace.
With love,
Fighting souls in unison