Mental Health..a stigma brushed under the carpet!
In the last 3 months, we have got enough saddening news of death, violence, crime, utter hatred, insanity, and what not! These happenings were always present (look around for some TV shows going on for ages about these), but now most of these have a new primary cause — that we have been given a lot of me-time or family-time, which we always complained about not getting enough of because of our busy lives and the hustle and bustle of the city.
Yesterday, Bollywood saw the demise of one of it’s handsome, a multi-talented young actor with the sweetest smile, Sushant Singh Rajput. He was just 34, there was no apparent physical or monetary reason for him to hang himself, but it is said that he was suffering from depression and anxiety from the last 6 months. And so, in most of the news channels pan-india, there are psychologists, mental health advocates, doctors, actors, singers talking about it now(in a socially distant environment, of-course!)
But how cool will it be if anything and everything could be solved by these passive-aggressive live debates! Although in reality, nothing does change much!
Have we ever talked about mental health to our parents or any family member in that case? Have they talked to us about it ever? It is as taboo a subject as sex education in most of the families, especially in India!
But that doesn’t mean we don’t suffer from it during some time or the other. It doesn’t mean that our parents or somebody else in our family hadn’t suffered from it or is not suffering from it at the moment!
He was an engineer-turned-dancer and actor. He left his engineering in the 3rd year to follow his passion. In a country where the society judges the drop-outs cruelly and look-down on them, he was an inspiration who proved all of them wrong. As an engineer myself, I know how hard it is to drop out of a college or a career that the society has chosen for you, to follow your dreams.
Also, in a society where engineering colleges and coaching are mushrooming day by day, even if u do it with very low grades and/or work in a call center after completing your prestigious graduation, your parents will still feel proud about the engineer in their family, but if somehow, you drop-out of your college or your career because it was not your calling and you don’t want to pursue it anymore, you are left on your own. Even if you are doing great in whatever else you chose, your parents/friends/family will still have a pang which they will not at all feel hesitant to air in front of you whenever they can. And god forbid, if you ever fail in it, you are all on your own. Your family will help you, yes, but not before they have told you repeatedly that what you chose was wrong and they always tried to stop you from doing it!
In a world where people fear to take the path less walked on, he was an inspiration through and through. As an Industry-outsider with only a handful of films in his name, he had achieved what many others could not even after being in the game for so many more years than he has!
But that’s the thing with dreams, once you fulfill one of them, your heart elevates and you want to do more. And he had so many of them! Even if he dropped out, it didn’t mean that he did not like science, it just meant that he didn’t want to make a career out of it. In fact, so many of the points in his to-do were related to astrophysics and science and philanthropy. But now, we will not see him smiling and dancing and acting and fulfilling his dreams, because his internal pain ate him from the inside and eventually killed him!
