Time to instrospect: What have we become?

Radhika Bhirani

rbhirani@gmail.com

"Just because everyone is behaving like a clown, it doesn't mean you have to join the circus".

Someone hit the nail on the head. And here I am, trying to push it further into the wall, with a mind fatigued of an overdrive of chitter-chatter on conjectured reasons and more behind 34-year-old actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death.

"Sushant is no more and yet, he is talked less about on Twitter, but Karan Johar starts trending. Its laughable and sad," a young and upcoming actor, who has faced his set of rejections and overnight replacements in the industry, tells me.

It's a valid comment on the irony that exists. And also on the predatory nature of people, who "want to see this circus and this perversion of it", panning out as it is on the big bad world we call social media.

"We have more negative things to say about other people than say nice things about a person who has departed," says the actor, choosing not to be named, to keep his voice away from the cacophony that has ensued after Sushant chose to take his life, for reasons we may never know.

"What have we become? Not this industry, not any industry, but us as people," adds the actor, leaving me with some thoughts that continue to linger on.

Thoughts about what people have been drawing all sorts of lessons from what has happened; some sermonising the keys to survival in the cut-throat industry; some urging people to seek professional help for mental health; some asking others to be more compassionate, patient listeners; some asking, unusually, to #TalkToMe; some highlighting the pitfalls of fame; some cursing the gossip culture and blind items; and some just adding fuel to the fire of 'blame game', which has engulfed the 'nepotism and the insider-outsider debate' in the Bollywood jungle.

The lesson to learn, from my standpoint, is simply of self-introspection.

Introspecting how we deal with our own success and failure; how we react to others' success stories and failures; how we respond to hearsay; how we motivate or demotivate new talent; how we mock or bully; how we treat people people fighting depression; how we behave with people of different socio-economic strata; how we maintain personal and professional relationships; how we distance ourselves from people; how we communicate; how connected we are despite our multitude 'connections'; and why?

Let's ask ourselves some of these questions, and in that pursuit, try answering why it takes a Sushant Singh Rajput -- a handsome, charming, intelligent and talented actor who chased his dreams and struggled his way through from Patna to Mumbai -- to take his life, and be a rude reminder of the realities, grey and dark, that exist.

In a candid conversation last year, in a rather angered state, a fairly known actor had told me how sometimes it becomes important for people like himself to tell the aspirants the reality that "hard work and being good is not good enough because of the sh*t that happens".

And no, that reality does not just exist in Bollywood. It is all-pervasive.

Think about it. You and I have gone through it. We have perpetuated it. Nepotism. Favouritism. Groupism... and many more -isms that have become a part of our everyday professional DNA.

Can that change? Well, that's another question to ask ourselves. But change, there must be.

As humans, let's admit that we feed on emotional voyeur. It's a sad, but an honest truth.

Sample this: "Chhodna mat logon ko... Everyone should talk about the atrocities (in Bollywood)," someone reached out to me, egging me on to join the social media circus where a set of people are naming and shaming producers and superstars and claiming an angle of "professional rivalry" as an instigator for Sushant to take the step he did, and another set is defending them.

I didn't.

It's a choice. There's always one.

And who am I, after all?