Valson Thampu

Everybody is full of one Sushant Singh Rajput these days. While in Rome, one should behave like Romans. We are in India. So, let’s do as Indians are doing now. Let us talk about this one, all-absorbing issue that everybody is talking about.
It is not the corona. It is not the economy in crisis. It is not the desperation mounting in the working class. No, not even about life being paralyzed, children stuck at home, rising domestic violence, or the world turning upside-down. Only one issue remains to be solved. What, in the world, happened to Sushant Singh Rajput?
Emile Durkheim argued convincingly that soulless materialism is a dangerous thing. It hollows you out. In its wake suicide spreads like an epidemic. The most affluent society in Europe was the worst hit. Psychologists have been telling us that meaninglessness in life is unbearable. That money and minions can’t fix this fracture. Social scientists have been warning us that boredom and depression are the twin-trophies of soulless development. A long time ago, Lord Buddha warned humankind that the chase of pleasure plunges human beings into the bottomless pit, where emptiness stares at you through eyeless sockets.
There was a time when meting out justice to the aggrieved was the business of courts. Now, it’s different. Goswami decides who should get justice. This time, it is Justice F or SSR! There is a difference, however, between a judge’s approach and Goswami’s. For the former, a trial leads to justice. For Goswami, it is a hunt! As of now, it is difficult to say, what would emerge next from the cavernous throat of this crystal-ball-gazing TV anchor. Will it be about justice for SSR? Or, about hunting Rhea Chakraborty down? You could ask me, ‘What’s the difference?’ Yes, you are right. No difference. A trial in a court of law becomes a chase in the media jungle.
It is a heady thing, you know? This publicly organized, hysterically pursued, hunt. It affords the sharpest delight. Not even the hardest of drugs come anywhere near the kick this sport affords, day after day, weeks after week. One would have thought you’d get bored of the same spectacle, stretched till thy kingdom come. The same victim being chased by the same people, in the same milieu, the same scenes reported by the same mouths. No, no! Think again! There is a way to spin the story and keep you hooked. So, first it was a suicide. Next, the suicide was aided and abetted by the darling of the departed. Then Bollywood nepotism became the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Then, it was the money angle: the enigmatic Rs. 15 crore that nobody knows where it came from, or where it went. Now it’s the drug angle. This is the most exciting thing! Its trail could lead the sleuths right to the doorsteps of a few cool cats, including a budding politician, who now happens to be inconvenient.
No matter how far civilization progresses, one thing will stay unchanged. Man will remain a hunter. Most of us are not feudal lords and barons. So, we can’t hunt animals or birds. The only safe entertainment we can afford is hunting fellow human beings. This is legitimate, if it is done in the modern jungle called the media. At long last, Arnab Goswami has sighted the game! There stands Rhea Chakraborty. She is a tricky customer, but he is up to the task. And more! Never mind what she did, or didn’t do. She is the game for Republic. The modern hunter, dressed up as a media anchor, launches himself into the exhilarating hunt. Just to entertain you. You just sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fun, while the TRP rating shoots up in Mumbai. The victim will be pricked and prodded. Chased from one end to the other of the media jungle. In place of the old hunting dogs, we have a pack of feral reporters ever on the scent. Every shade of the victim’s movement will be caught. Every grimace on her face, snapped up. Every one of her squeals, caught on camera and poured like an elixir of bliss into your ears. Prick your ears! The chase is on!
We under-estimate the national service this anchor provides! God in heaven knows how many SSRs would have rushed headlong into their pits of peril, if this daily high-voltage, blood-dripping entertainment weren’t so expertly dished out to them! As the old saying goes, it is good that one person suffers for the sake of many. It’s Rhea’s turn now. Let’s enjoy the heady fare while it lasts.
But thank your stars that you haven’t gone through it. If you have, your spine will melt, as mine does. I was there ahead of Rhea. I was chased for all of nine years. You should have seen the media hysteria to believe it! It began small. Picked up momentum slowly. Became frenetic. The country was fed on a compendium of crimes I committed, each one of them taking me wholly by surprise. I used to call it the cottage industry of conspiracies. I do not know if Rhea is innocent or not. That is for the court to decide. But I do know, having gone through it all, that this public spectacle harks back to primeval impulses. The counterpart of this in Elizabethan England was bear-baiting, which afforded matchless pleasure to the spectators. A bear was tied to a stake. Blood hounds were unleashed on it. The defenceless animal was torn to bits and pieces, to the unfailing, infinite delight of the bystanders.
Because we are now civilised, and are required to be kind to animals, we cannot afford bear-baiting any more. So, we have settled down to the second-best: human-baiting. It doesn’t matter who it is, or what she has done. A victim is needed to cook the hell-broth of media excitement for you. It is all for your good. What will you do, in these dark and dismal says, without these daily rations of super sensations?