What Sridevi’s death teaches us about Life

Life hai…kuch bhi ho sakta hai! – It’s Life…anything can happen!

Like almost everyone else, Vaani and I too are still coming to terms with Sridevi’s sudden, tragic, death. We have been reading up every possible – credible – piece of information that has had a fresh perspective to share on what exactly happened to her.

And then, a couple of days ago, we came across this Blogpost by Bollywood trade analyst Komal Nahta, who is believed to be a close friend of Boney Kapoor and Sridevi. If we go by Nahta’s account of what happened in the final couple of hours of Sridevi’s Life, it appears that even as Boney Kapoor was surfing TV channels in the living room of their suite at the Jumeirah Emirates Tower Hotel, waiting for Sridevi to get ready and join him; so they could go out for dinner, Sridevi was drowning in a bathtub – in the suite’s master bedroom, barely a few feet away from him! And he could do nothing, nothing at all, to save her.

I read and re-read Nahta’s Blogpost. Only to conclude that everything about Sridevi’s death is so unreal, so bizarre. What are the chances someone can drown in a bathtub, in one of the most premium (and therefore considered safe) hotels in the world? What are the chances that a loving, doting, caring husband, can be completely oblivious of his wife drowning, even as the tragedy happened, especially when he was within shouting distance of his wife? What are the chances that you say you will “freshen up and come” and actually die in that time – in under 15 minutes – by drowning in a bathtub?

But such is Life. It is so totally, totally, inscrutable. I am reminded of Indeevar’s deeply contemplative lyrics from that iconic song in Safar (1970) rendered in Kishoreda’s immortal voice (music: Kalyanji Anandji)…“zindagi ka safar…koi samjha nahin, koi jaana nahin…” . Life is indeed totally, totally, inscrutable. And this morning, I read this equally bizarre story of this man, literally, waking up from the dead! It made me conclude, yet again, that anything, absolutely anything, can happen in Life!

The more I go through Life, the more I experience it, the one indisputable truth that strikes me repeatedly is this – no matter who you are, you have to go through what you have to go through. You just cannot negotiate with Life over your Life’s design. As I see it, in Life, it is always what it is. You have to bear your cross. And you have to live through the design that Life has planned for you. In fact, as it appears to me, Life’s Masterplan has no flaws!

Consider the late Sridevi’s Life again – her design took her from obscure Meenampatti in Tamil Nadu and made her a pan-Indian screen diva; then the same design forced her into near oblivion, after she married Boney Kapoor and they had Janhavi and Khushi, for 15 years from 1997~2012; the design then brought her to centerstage again with English Vinglish (2012) and Mom (2017) and, posthumously, the same design ensured she was feted, in memoriam, on the Oscar stage this past Sunday! And yet, despite all her greatness, her fame, her glory, this legendary star drowned, helpless, in a five-star hotel’s bathtub? Well, clearly, that’s how her Life’s design willed her story to end!

I have realized that our material success – particularly our ability to earn an income using our talent and skills – makes us believe that we control our Life. The truth is that we never were, we are not and we will never be in control. Life is always in control. It keeps on happening per its inscrutable, unique, design for each of us. It often takes a crisis, an event that defies all logic and cocks a snoot at our problem-solving abilities, or death, to shake us awake from our stupor and remind us that it is not us, but Life which is in control. When we realize this, we too learn to be accepting of the Life we have and learn to go with the flow.

There are no two ways with Life. It is only what it is. You are always playing only with the cards that Life has dealt you. And then, when your time here is up, when your name is called, you stop your game mid-way, even if it is in the middle of a bath, and leave! So, approaching Life with humility and a sense of amazement are perhaps the best way to live it well. Humility, because Life is the Higher Energy (which is why I always spell Life with a capital ‘L’) that powers everything in the Universe; and amazement, because you never know what hand you are going to be dealt next! After all, Life hai…kuch bhi ho sakta hai!

When a picture teaches you about Life…

As Dr.Nupur Talwar and Dr.Rajesh Talwar walked free from Dasna jail last evening, this image emerged on my timeline, on the Internet and on TV.

Picture Credit: APNLIVE – Sourced from the internet

It told me so many stories about Life…it showcased…

• How inscrutable Life really is
• The unfairness and injustice meted out to this couple, their daughter Aarushi and their help Hemraj
• How to stay strong, find strength in a storm and go through Life with reflection, resilience and resourcefulness
• How to serve selflessly, how to be useful no matter how grave the circumstances are – the dentist couple refused fees for dental care that they had provided to inmates of Dasna
• The unflinching support that Rajesh’s older brother Dinesh Talwar provided the couple – he was the mainstay of the entire defense strategy, the chief-of-staff as the family soldiered on
• The focus and perseverance of defense attorney Tanveer Ahmed Mir – without whose leadership, the Talwars’ case may not have been made in the Allahabad High Court
• The brutally honest story-telling of Avirook Sen in his Book Aarushi and of Vishal Bharadwaj and Meghna Gulzar in their film Talvar
• The stoicism of the Chitnis couple, Nupur’s parents, as the family went through these harrowing 9 years
• That, no matter what, the truth ultimately prevails…and justice is always done
• How small, and petty, our own challenges are when we look beyond ourselves and around us
• Why we must always be grateful for what we have instead of complaining about what we don’t have
• The learning we must all take away: whatever happens, face Life!
• The Gulzar-RD Burman-Kishore-da genius: Musafir Hoon Yaroon…Bas Chalte Jaana Hai…

Our reactions to #Kabali offer us an opportunity to pause and introspect

Learn to be non-judgmental and un-opinionated – especially if you don’t know the full story.

I didn’t quite want to write a post on Kabali. Already there is so much virtual real estate in social media that’s consumed by the pre- and post-release frenzy over the movie. But my friend Bishwanath Ghosh’s (BG) column in today’s Hindu Melange titled “Why Rajnikanth Rocks” got me thinking.

BG points out that the greatness of Rajnikanth lies in the fact that the man separates himself from his work and resultant superstardom. “He is perhaps the only actor in the country who takes his work — and not himself — seriously,” writes BG. And almost anyone who knows anything about Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, the man, will agree that BG is bang on there. I have met Rajnikanth as a journalist when I was working for India Today more than 25 years ago. From what I hear of him from people who know him closely now, he hasn’t changed at all from the impression I have of him – simple, humble, genuinely amazed by how insanely popular he is and never considering himself to be an actor of substance at all. In fact, in a pre-release interview that Kabali’s director Pa.Ranjith gave Vishal Menon of The Hindu, Ranjith says that Rajnikanth often told him this: “I am not at all an actor.”  So, in the wake of who Rajnikanth really is, and how he treats his superstardom, I believe, the frenzied pre- and post-release reactions to Kabali, tell us more about ourselves than serve as a denouement of the movie’s fate at the box office.

The #nerruppuda hashtag changing to #verruppuda, #kaduppuda, #serruppuda, or whatever, tells the story of a virulent audience response after first-day first-show viewings. But that’s the way audiences are worldwide. As Rajesh Khanna would often famously quote from the Kishore Kumar song (Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Anand Bakshi) from his own film Roti (1974): ‘Yeh Jo Public Hai, Yeh Sab Jaanti Hai’. As we all know audiences have little respect or patience for the processes and the emotions behind any creative work. And, in an instant gratification environment, marketers, who want to milk anything and everything, are quick to build hype even over fluffy offering. This past month everyone – from Air Asia to jewelers to Uber to pickle brands – has been milking Rajnikanth’s popularity. Now, there’s nothing wrong with marketing. But to expect a product to live up to marketing hype is always a tall ask. A movie is but a director’s way of telling a story. Some may like it. Some may not like it. To passionately associate with an actor, and make him or her a star or superstar, and unceremoniously disassociate and dump him or her later, is every fan’s birthright. But let’s pause for a moment to ask ourselves this question: What are you and I really doing here? You are saying that if someone is this way or that way then I like that person. And if that person does not live up to my expectation of him or her, I don’t want to have anything to do with him or her. So, essentially, it is what you expect that has begun to matter. Not who this person, that you claim you are a fan of, really is and what he or she wants.

I am not holding a brief for Rajnikanth here. I am not even saying what is the right way or what is the wrong way of being a fan or a superstar. All I am saying is that let’s not rush to judge people without having been in their shoes.

To be sure, none of us knows what it means to be Rajnikanth. Or for that matter what it means to be a Virat Kohli today. We don’t know what it means to carry the burden of having to live up to the expectations of millions of customers or fans – every single time you step up to do something, or simply, go to work! At the end of the day, what a Rajnikanth does is, he works for a living – it is a business like any other. And Kabali is a product like any other movie is. If the product is bad, like some sections of the audience are reporting it is, then we must simply remember the age old wisdom that “no amount of good advertising can sell a bad product.” But the product being bad does not necessarily mean its makers don’t have good intentions or that they have no talent or potential. Besides, we have a right as consumers to reject a product if it does not appeal to us. But let us stop with this. Let us not pass judgment – the unkindest comment I read somewhere is that “Soundarya is intent on making her father (Rajnikanth) bankrupt” – or opinionate on what kind of films Rajnikanth must act in or what characters he must play. The shooting-from-the-hip attitude we are seeing on display on social media over the past 24 hours is an important reminder for all of us to revisit a significant principle of intelligent living: In situations where we know little about a person or the space they work in or the Life they lead, passing judgment or opinionating, is totally avoidable.

Just as you work for joy and profits, so does someone like Rajnikanth or Pa.Ranjith. The most ideal situation is when someone can get both joy and profits out of what they are doing. And sometimes, as in the movies business, even if the audiences reject the product, the people who made it may have enjoyed the process of creation. We will never know. Because we are neither Rajnikanth nor Pa.Ranjith. So, the best we can do is to watch the movie, if we really want to, we can like it or dislike it, and move on. Let’s not pass judgment on people whose lives we have not lived and so whose lives we can never understand.

PS: I am not a fan of Rajnikanth, the Superstar, but I believe he is a great actor and a greater human being!

Monday meditation on lessons from a Superstar’s Life

Everything passes on. Everyone passes on. Live every moment fully, happily, before it too passes on, into eternity.

I woke up realizing it is Rajesh Khanna’s death anniversary today. He passed on this day, in 2012.

His story of superstardom is folklore now. People of my generation grew up watching him mesmerize audiences in film after film! That is, until hubris struck him. With the arrival of Amitabh Bachchan Hindi cinema audiences preferred the Angry Young Man to the romantic hero. Sadly, instead of changing his screen strategy to suit the times, Rajesh grew jealous of Amitabh’s rising popularity. Books by biographers and researchers talk of how he snubbed Amitabh on the sets of Bawarchi (1972, Hrishikesh Mukherjee) – Amitabh did not have an onscreen role in the film (he was only the narrator), but he would hang around the sets courting a young Jaya Bhaduri then. They also talk of Rajesh’s drinking bout one night after coming back from an awards function where the crowds ran past him to mob and seek autographs from Amitabh. It is believed that Rajesh, in drunken stupor, ran up to the terrace of his bungalow Aashirwad, and in pouring rain, kneeled down on the ground, looked up at the menacing skies and cried out, asking: “Why, why me?”

I have loved Rajesh Khanna as anybody else in India has – as an actor who gave us great memories! Memories that have been made even more unputdownable by the songs that R.D.Burman composed for him, and those that Kishore Kumar sang for him! But I will always remember Rajesh Khanna for something else too. I will remember him for this acceptance speech  that he delivered at an IIFA Awards event in 2009. There’s a big lesson, in how Life plays the big leveler, in observing him receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from, who else, Amitabh Bachchan – the man who knocked him out of relevance! There’s also a lesson in acceptance and moving on here, in hearing him recite his famous lines from Daag (1973, Yash Chopra) after he receives the Award. I am not sure if Rajesh ever realized the spiritual depth of what he said that night. But the lessons I gleaned from that speech (a reel dialogue mounted perfectly in a real Life context!) will stay with me forever: nothing is permanent and everything will, over time, pass on!

So, this Monday, I meditate on those learnings. I recognize that everything happens through me, and not because of me. Where I am in Life, I know I only have a right to make my efforts, every single day, while staying detached from the fruits of my actions – the Bhagavad Gita’s most basic tenet is now indelibly ingrained in me. I am grateful to Life for teaching me, through my experiences, to be this way. I know and accept that Life happens in phases, and every phase, like everything and everyone, will pass on…my job really is, as Life flows, to live fully, happily, in each moment!