As soon as the news about Sushant Singh Rajput passing away broke out, depression, mental health became the hot topic. Nepotism, his relationships, his financial condition, him losing movies, him feeling left out or him being treated as an “outsider” are being speculated as some of the potential reasons.
Holding these reasons accountable for his demise make him not only look weak but also a coward. A large number of people fail in their relationships, many don’t even have relationships, many have terrible financial conditions, many face discrimination on a regular basis but they don’t kill themselves. Do they?
It is like calling out rats, lizards and cockroaches and saying “they swallowed the man” when there is a freaking dinosaur sitting right there in the very same room. No body is even looking towards the dinosaur, may be if they point a finger, the mighty creature might very well eat them.
If you go through his filmography, you would right away see that nepotism could not be the reason. I will come up with a separate article proving why these reasons are flawed. The reasons highlighted by media be it social or mainstream are mere instruments to divert the attention from that dinosaur.
What is being concealed?
Before I tell you the answer to this question, let me share with you my blogging experience for the last three years. Trust me it is relevant to this Dinosaur.
Almost three years ago I started writing. Since I was new to blogging, I looked up different content publishing sites catering to Indian audience. I observed something weird, the content on these platforms was highly biased, left leaning and I did not agree with them. Quite surprising to me was that those articles were submitted by individuals who had nothing to do with any major media house or political party. I wondered why there is little or no reliable content on these sites, narrating a version that I can agree with and believe in. I went through the editorial guidelines of each of these platforms and they all claimed that they were neutral or supported the centrist, rational view of things. I thought since I don’t agree to a lot of things there, I should express my views on the same things and see how it goes. I can’t possible be wrong on everything that I believe in.
And here it all began. Here I will be quoting instances from the portals who say they are neutral.
I started writing on a content publishing site Youth Ki Awaaz. What ever I submitted, they did not publish it, citing a reason that the article does not meet the community guidelines or it did not make sense, but never specified which guideline. I used to receive emails like these:
You could look at the article Lynching Whatsapp; In the name of Holy Cow. See for yourself, if the article is worthy of being read and compare it with the other articles published on their website. In short the editor liked the blog loved reading it but was not able to publish it. This is one of many such emails. It took me quite some time to understand what was actually happening.
I did something clever and got two of my articles published on the their home page. The ones that were published are Blue is the new Orange; Assembly Election Results Dec 2018 and Bollywood & its Feminists (you don’t see edit/delete option in published articles)
But wait. They were removed within a couple of hours and I received the same reason as always:
Can you guess why these two got published in the beginning and got removed in a couple of hours?
The titles are misleading and the content was too subtle, it gave an impression that it was a leftist article, but it was not. When they realized it or somebody pointed that out, they removed it. Although, they say in their guidelines that they are neutral but in reality they are pro-left. I have absolutely no problems with anyone supporting any thing, it is their prerogative to choose, shortlist the content, but I would really hope that they mention it in their editorial guidelines what they support and what they don’t, like Myvoice.Opindia does. It would have saved me a lot of frustration. It gave me an impression that I was not good enough and the articles were poorly written. Myvoice.Opindia clearly says what they would entertain and what not, no scope for frustration.
Eventually, I stopped submitting the content on YKA and moved on to another platform called as Quora; its a question and answer platform, it also added the concept of spaces that are like facebook groups. Here, there aren’t editors, but moderators. As soon as the content added by me started reaching people, Quora moderation started collapsing them. The below screenshot is for this year:
And that’s when I realized what was happening. If you have a mob of say 500-1000 people you can literally get any content removed by reporting it/downvoting it on Quora. You could google it. In fact, some of the content I added had comments that said “this should be removed” and it was removed. You can call it article lynching or intellectual lynching. As of today other than one or two, all my answers have been collapsed. And of course the spaces that say neutral, don’t accept the submissions.
Then I tried the last option that I had in mind to get some audience to my blog i.e. Facebook. I started promoting the content, by creating ads. And then this happened:
Rejected and Rejected. You see 0 people reached in the small boosted on window. Me being me, I tried the exact same thing that I did with Youth Ki Awaaz, edited the ad in such a way that it looked as if I agree with their version of the story i.e. the leftist view. And then:
Here you see people reached as 5.2k, i.e. the advertisement ran for a couple of hours and then was pulled off. Why? The ad description was subtle, I comfortably hid the fact that article will talk about what Delhi Government has done in healthcare in the last 6 years. You can have a look at the article here: Reasons why Delhi is failing the coronavirus exam and tell me what is “excessively violent, shocking or sensational” in the content which is the reason given to me. Be the judge yourself.
Before I move further, let me reiterate that I have absolutely no issues with any of the platforms I have mentioned above, I brought this up only because I want my readers to trust me and not think that I am cooking up stories.
Just imagine how last three years have been for me. I put a minimum of one week for researching every piece that I write. I do it with the same enthusiasm and energy every time. Every day I wake up with a hope and every night I go to bed with the same suffocation and frustration of being denied the audience. I have a 40 hours work week i.e. my day job and I put around at least 25-30 hours every week for blogging. I started writing to communicate which I am being refrained from, by banning my content every single time on every other platform. If I want the audience, I should be writing what they believe in or agree to and not what I want to express.
Now,
Just extend this, from a week of research to months and even a year of hard work, and from a ten minutes article to a two and a half hour movie. What do you get?
You get a person like Sushant Singh Rajput.
He was an introvert, didn’t have friends and wanted to use movies as a way to express himself, communicate with his audience. He wanted to express some thing like this:
He had a scientific bent of mind, was enthusiastic about particle collider, CERN, Moon, Mars, Universe, Vedas, Yoga, Swami Vivekanada, Shiva, but he was not allowed to express that. He was thrown out of the movies that made sense to him like Paani and Chanda Mama. He would have wanted to create science fiction. What was he forced to do? Anti-Hindu propaganda. A Pandit killed Ali’s family, orchestrated 2002 Gujarat riots, Kai Po Che, a propaganda film based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel mixing facts with fiction. Kedarnath, another propaganda film portraying a Pandit behind Mansoor’s troubles. His #reality was diametrically opposite to what he was being made to express.
People get frustrated after watching one propaganda film, you see people protesting against these movies. Just imagine what he would have gone through when he was literally made to live the propaganda. He was an ardent follower of Shiva and he was forced to be a part of something mocking Shiva in PK. For the first time in my life, I am happy that I am a nobody. I am only denied by the audience but at least I can express what I really feel. It does not matter to me if someone likes it or not, upvotes it or not, I can at least say to myself, I made an effort to fix something that bothers me. His condition was even worse.
He couldn’t have said it any clearer than this. By the way what is that thing in his neck? Tiny details! What a person does, says or wears in his personal time tells more about him/her than when he is on screen explicitly showing, doing, or telling. On screen is probably pre-decided by someone else on his behalf.
Having an Identity is not good; Having an ability to dream is not good; Having a vision is not good; Having the ability to think is not good; Having the ability to read between the lines is not good; Having the ability to understand what we see around us is not good; Having the ability to question and search for answers is not good; Having a spine to stand up for what we believe in is not good;
Why?
Because when you possess these characteristics, you develop a perspective. And two contradictory perspectives cause confrontation. Every body is happy till the time a slave behaves like a slave and agrees to the perspective of his master. As soon as the slave starts asserting his perspective, all hell breaks lose. One of the two things happen, either the slavery ceases to exist or the slave himself ceases to exist.
Media is saying something happened in last six months. What changed in last few months? It was Corona-time, it was lock-down, no films were being made; but there was a lot of time to think and look back. They had made him drop his last name to just prove a point. Remember Padmavat? not even his movie to promote.
A sharp intellect is like a two edged sword, it cuts both ways.
All the examples I gave from my tiny experience in the beginning were to prove that there is an ecosystem that stops people from being heard, if that ecosystem is so active at this low level where I operate, just imagine how fierce it would be at the level where he operated. Films need teams, people and huge investments. He was forced to do these propaganda movies. If he would not have done those, he would not have been a star in the first place, because he would have been banned right from the beginning. He had no choice. He was a talented person, a majority of the Bollywood superstars we have today will not even understand his tweets and the sanskrit sholkas that he tweeted. I can’t possibly imagine how he survived this long with expressing a perspective that was contradictory to his own perspective. But he taught an important lesson, it is worth quitting sometimes. He should have quit Bollywood and movies if he was losing hope. I will quit writing as soon as I get tired or start losing hope.
His reality was in contradiction to what he was made to express. If at all it was a suicide “It can only be this confrontation within him that killed him“.
May his soul rest in peace!
But it does not mean that he committed suicide, it only means that he was frustrated, and was feeling suffocated. It also means that this could very well be used to make something else look like suicide. People should ask for CBI Enquiry, as his family is asking for.
Thank you for taking out time and reading this. It is still not complete, it was getting big so I split it up in two parts, the other part will be coming up in a couple of days. Please follow my blog and stay tuned for the next one. If you like the article please do share the article, you sharing the article is the only way I can reach more people.
Thanks again!
