Kai Po Che completed 4 years today said our Gattu
(Abhishek Kapoor) and how surreal really that I found this piece that I had
written on the 6th of April 2016 as I was looking for something else just this
morning on my laptop. Sharing it unedited and raw as I had written it. Kindly
forgive any inconsistencies and slips.
The voice of reason is
permanently silenced. That is the stark-naked truth of life, and it could not
have been represented any better than in the illustrious charisma of Ishaan
Bhatt brought to life by the multifaceted Sushant Singh Rajput in Kai Po
Che. Ishaan Bhatt lives life the way we should all live – unapologetic and unprecedented,
and by playing Ishaan, Sushant has engraved himself as a man of great substance
not only in Kai Po Che but in every motion picture he has done since.
Sushant’s instinctive aptitude
in picking scripts that emit originality and substance is commendable. The
public, who is on a staple diet of rubbish, normally writes away such movies, and
yet Sushant’s choices, despite being more abstract than unconventional, have been commercial and
critical triumphs. To have chosen a role of somebody who stands his grounds
regardless of the world’s estimation of it simply because he knows he is not
wrong is not easy for a newcomer to embrace. He did it because he knows that you
have to do what is right for yourself and not to please the world. He takes up
roles with ‘essence’ simply because he understands the devastation of grief. He
understands that life changes in a flick and if you do not do something
worthwhile today, then you will never get a chance to do it again. Is he
worried of a backfire? The Sushant I know cares little for the opinion of the
absurd. He sees through the façade of human faces and knows that he has to
follow his heart and not a mirage. Loss has acquainted him with erosion of
feeling. It has robbed him of a bit of the essence of life and because of that
he will not find himself swayed by the sheep. He is like the sea, measures the
depth to make sure he protects than drowns. He is like wind, that dances on
your skin rather than knocking you off the ground. He is like fire, that warms
you to the bone, not destroying what comes in its path.
My next
Sushant outing was Detective Byomkesh Bakshy made by my friend Uday Chopra’s
Yash Raj Films. I once again was impressed how he shed his ‘hot and happening’
look to embrace one with unshaved eyebrows and grungy attires. The only other
mainstream actor who has explored such territories at the peak of her
commercial success has been Vidya Balan.
His dynamism further concretises
the notion that we ought not to actively seek glory; we are made for it. That providence,
in time, provides it to us by virtue of our integrity. And it is for this
simple reason that I hold him in high esteem.
Yes, one thing I cannot see, and I don’t
want to ever see, is Sushant dying on the screen. I don’t have the emotional or
the mental ability to handle his death in any form. Any form! And I will be long dead before him, so...
Leaving you with a
dialogue from his film Kai Po Che that most pithily sums up humanity at large –
“Abe, kya hogaya hai tum logon ko, yaar?
Ek insaan ek insaan ke kaam nahi aayega kya!”
