How Sushant Singh Rajput died twice

In an interview director Abhishek Kapoor who worked with Sushant Singh Rajput on his first role in a film Kai Po Che in 2013 says he found Rajput to be someone still seeking validation From whom He didnt specify and wasnt askedIts just that as a filmmaker Kapoor found himself in no position to score magazine covers for him duringpostKedarnath 2018 their second film together And that was his personal failing Rajputs expublicist Rohini Iyer also selfadmittedly his bestfriend rightly said he couldnt care two hoots about validation That he was way above seeking out fake friends among film folk in the first placeI distinctly recall Rajputs publicist before Iyer in 2016 spending a while discussing with me how the actor had been unfairly shafted despite the success of the biopic MS Dhoni The Untold Story Its commercial success was being wholly credited to Dhoni the truelife subjectcharacterstory rather than the lead actorWhat did Rajput think of the idea of success himself Citing the term impact bias he told me There was an experiment done with two groups of people mdash an extremely bright set of CEOs in their early 20s30s And people below the poverty line The first group for some reason had become disabled mdash paraplegics The second group had just won a milliondollar lottery There was a downward mentalspike ebb recorded in the first group And an equally upward spike in the secondOnly 10 to 12 weeks later when the same two groups were tested their mental spikes had stabilised to exactly the same levels already This tells you successes or failures actually dont affect us in the same way we imagine they do If you enjoy a process itself though you get so good at the skill that it automatically places you in the top percentile of people on the satisfactionhappiness indexAs lifes lessons go this one by a 31yearold when I interviewed him is as sorted as it gets By all accounts Rajput was diagnosed with clinical depression at 34 Young star rich talented famous with millions of followers online mobs surrounding the person offlinehellip Depressed Why for whatThats precisely the question you wouldve noticed people ask when Deepika Padukone first publicly revealed the same mental condition she had battled with Whats Deepika gotta do with depression Tells you much about how we as a society estimate the Himalayan strength and happiness derived from professional success alone or popularity thereof Its bollocks before darkness withinBut people knew Rajput only for his work on screen Which in a strange way allows viewersfans a level of familiarity to feel anywhere between foe and family on a scale of zero to 10 mdash about a person they have never met and probably would have never knownAnd therefore some of the same folk who wouldnt have thought for a second before trolling Rajput himself went after certain actors and producers Karan Johar Aditya Chopra Alia Bhatt etc Totally unmindful of what impact guilttripping someone for a death could have on the mental health of those aliveThey assumed professional problems mustve driven Rajput to death What was the issue being raised Nepotism in Bollywood For a Patnaborn who owes his career to showbiz titans mdash a top TV producer Ekta Kapoor a heavyweight film producer UTV Ronnie Screwvala None of whom were related to him And who saw his worthtalent and gave him a job Thats all we need to float anywayThe word nepotism is derived from reference to the Popes nephew Except unlike popular belief showbizBollywood isnt a churchpapacy Let alone a city state or a government department mdash its not even an industry compared to the best although thats what its ironically referred to in short Its a terribly loose federation of freelance artistes and entrepreneurs driven by selfinterest owing nothing to the taxpayer or the random handle on TwitterOh you can choose not to watch a Karan Johar film starring Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan if you like If its a good film the loss is yours In any case the three arent related He has no direct niecesnephews to the best of my knowledge Even if there were Johar or anybody else is free to cast who he likes given his own reasons commercialotherwise for a film that he wants to makeBesides the masala to distract from real issues whats the masla issue here really Rajputs suicide Most saw in it the image of Rohith Vemula Yet others a shoulder to target their own starproducer from a decade ago Or settle some other ongoing personal score elsewhere Legit insider grouses from every end as well mdash no doubt Some found the opportunity to reveal his relationship woes in the press and on YouTube videos bell icon par button dabayeinHe said not a word Before leaving Could have If he wanted you to know People on the other hand selfcentred enough even made his death about themselves Who wants validation from such a world anyway Convinced that Rajput didnt None of us should And this is liberating to know actuallyMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He 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