Filmmaker Anand Gandhi wrote a moving eulogy for his friend, actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who died on Sunday. In his nine-part eulogy shared on his Instagram stories, he said that the late actor ‘packed in more lives in an hour than most people have hours in a lifetime’.
“’Last seen Sun at 9:15 AM.’ His unchanging Whatsapp status still declares on my phone -an epitaph etched onto a binary stone - more tenacious than granite, as fragile as memory,” he wrote, reminiscing about their deep conversations. “Sushant was made of flesh, blood and ideas. He played with ideas just like a child plays with toys, and for the same reasons - to discover, to invent and to learn,” he added.
According to Anand, Sushant was not too bothered about success and failure ‘because both lead to the same outcomes - discovery, invention and learning’. “If it did, it was only to the extent of arriving at places nobody else before did, so roads can be paved for the next in line,” he wrote.
But ‘arriving first’ meant ‘being lonely’. “He stayed graceful in highs, he survived the lows, it’s the in-betweens where he froze. It’s the slings and arrows of the ordinary that he opposed the most. When he showed me his list of fifty things he wanted to achieve in a year, I asked him what was that one thing that he wants his co-seekers to learn from his experiment. ‘I want them to know that it’s possible.’ He packed in more lives in an hour than most people have hours in a lifetime. He performed, he wondered, he flew. He strived to bridge the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what can be’,” the director wrote.
{{/usCountry}}But ‘arriving first’ meant ‘being lonely’. “He stayed graceful in highs, he survived the lows, it’s the in-betweens where he froze. It’s the slings and arrows of the ordinary that he opposed the most. When he showed me his list of fifty things he wanted to achieve in a year, I asked him what was that one thing that he wants his co-seekers to learn from his experiment. ‘I want them to know that it’s possible.’ He packed in more lives in an hour than most people have hours in a lifetime. He performed, he wondered, he flew. He strived to bridge the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what can be’,” the director wrote.
{{/usCountry}}“The man who danced to a crowd of millions was shy, the man who raged against the system was tender and the man who inspired so many to thrive was suffering. So let me not perpetuate the error of generations. Allow me to celebrate my peer, but let me not romanticise his suffering. Sushant killed himself. What he concealed as duality was perhaps a polarity pulling him apart. The radiance all of us witnessed, perhaps came from all the burning inside,” he added.
Anand said that he was not fully equipped to understand ‘what switch in us triggers a desire to bow out gently into the night’ but emphasised that ‘a call for help is not intrusive and vulnerability is not vulgar’. He went on to say that in their many conversations, he never sensed that something was amiss and wished he dug deeper.
“Sushant and I would talk about inclusive fitness for hours, but I failed to ask him if he felt sufficiently included. We’d spend evenings talking about zero gravity, but I never gathered that the ground below his feet may be slipping away. We would talk endlessly about what we thought because meaning mattered so much to us, but I wish I had asked him how he felt every once in a while, recognising that no matter how much meaning we invent, life may still feel empty sometimes,” he wrote.
“What survives him is the pursuit he inspired in millions - the pursuit of, to quote him, ‘of unknown knowns and of known unknowns.’ Here’s to his pursuit, here’s to the man I knew and here’s to the man I wish I knew,” he concluded.
Sushant died by suicide on Sunday. The news of his death shocked and saddened the film fraternity, with many stars paying tributes to him on social media. Reports suggest that he was depressed and the Mumbai Police will probe the ‘professional rivalry’ angle while investigating his death.
If you need support or know someone who does, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist. Helplines: Aasra: 022 2754 6669; Sneha India Foundation: +914424640050 and Sanjivini: 011-24311918
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