It's 21st January 2021.
I did not anticipate feeling this way today. It's the birth date of the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Late. This word still gives me chills.
A person like him, that was born, existed, walked on the flat surface of Earth and did what he did, dreamt what he dreamt, inspired whomever he inspired, touched millions of lives with his generosity, compassion, talent and grit and left billions of hearts broken when he went away like he did: a person like him can never be truly gone or forgotten or just dead. A person like him isn't held by reigns of mortality, or so I'd like to believe.
And why does it matter what I believe? One can even ask why do I even care? After all, I didn't know him as a person. I was not close to him. Heck, I didn't even follow him on social media. I just knew his name, the fact that he is an engineering dropout, watched some of his movies and felt that maybe it's just a rumor that he got AIR 7 in AIEEE.
But then one miserable day in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of all the social isolation and bouts of existential crisis, I was hit by this gigantic wave of shock, grief, paranoia and heart wrenching tragedy.
I didn't know that it was possible for someone to grieve the loss of a stranger like this. The pain, the tears and the hysteria was very much real for many like me and yes, it's true that mainstream and social media, both excruciatingly focused on this single event for months and yes the scandalous threads of conspiracy spew up an ever consuming web of misery; but my heart fails to give in to the idea that all this despondency was just a successful construct of social distraction.
I believe when an innocent soul grieves, the ripples of its pain are felt even in the farthest corners of this universe. After all, we're all just a web of souls and stardust, isn't it? And if at all the grand scheme of things is otherwise, then what's the point in believing in anything all?
I'd rather choose the delusion of this narrative than believe I'm a speckle of meaningless cog in the perpetual machinery of this world.
You see something changed in me with these long months of grieving and obsessing over a loss so distant, yet so personal, so familiar, so close. Perhaps, this person lived a life larger than himself; perhaps, it is his words, left behind to be heard like the roars of an ocean trapped in seashells to echo its secrets through eons of existence; perhaps it was his dreams, ones he left as sticky notes in every continent, in every domain of knowledge, on the vessel of every shape that human intelligence could take. All of this, and maybe just a burning trail of curiosity that now guides souls who've been labelled "lost".
He lived a life that wasn't limited to his own body or mind and so "lived" makes absolutely no sense. Because he lives on, fragments of his soul living with each one of us, those who care to carry it on.
You were a bright blue star, that burst into flames of its own divine origin; a star so massive that if his own gravity didn't engulf him, he would rather break into a million other stars and spread his cosmic energy across the sky.
You live on, my inspiration. I will not write you an eulogy of grief, or document the silly worldly affairs of your passing away. You always will be a star for me, a distant guiding light. And I will carry your dreams as my own and live through as many of them as I can in my own lifetime.
Thank you for making me believe in the concept of dreaming again. Thank you for making me believe that it's possible to want to and also be a verb and not a noun, to be defined by what I do and not who I am. Thank you for living in a way I could only hope to live like in ages to come.
Happy Birthday genius.
Hope Vienna is home enough for you!
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