MY ENCOUNTERS WITH SUSHANT SINGH RAJPUT

Steve Jobs once mentioned in a commencement speech about 'Connecting the Dots'. Now, when I look back at my various near and far encounters with Sushant Singh Rajput, I see those dots.

All who follow Indian cinema know that Sushant Singh died on 14th June 2020 and we are now discovering so many new facets and dimensions of him and his intelligence.

Let me share my four encounters with him:

2013: Met him for the first time a few years back at an actor friend's party. He was preparing for the movie Dhoni back then.

2015: Nestle India signed him for Munch just a few months after I moved from Munch to Kitkat. For days, the new Munch ad with Sushant used to keep playing on computer screens near me and the jingle got etched in my memory

2019: I was in a bus when I saw him on the streets of Switzerland. I tweeted to him to check if it was him and he confirmed by liking the tweet.

Two days later, I saw a post of Sushant on his Instagram feed where he posted a picture of him feeding birds and the place was right below my apartment.

I missed him by a whisker in the last three encounters and thought I will meet him again someday. Alas, that was not to happen.

My biggest lesson from this:

When alive, celebrate the man. When dead, celebrate his life.

THE LAST MILE

#Volkswagen Beetle is an icon in the world of automobiles. Also known as The Bug, it has been winning the love of fans across the world for decades. Every time a Beetle hits the road, it turns heads and people want to check out the person behind the wheel.

Not only is it famous for its car model, but also popular for its campaigns like Think Small and Lemon.

Now, after 70 years, the #Beetle is finally retiring and the car is signing off with a nostalgic ad film 'The Last Mile' built on the soundtrack of The Beatles - Let It Be, an acknowledgement of the fact that the Beetle appeared on the album cover of Abbey Road.

The ad also shows artist Andy Warhol to thank him for the painting that he created of the car.

All of these incidents and events played a great role in making the Beetle brand as iconic and as loved as it is today and an integral part of the culture in many countries.

A huge investment like this for a brand that will not be sold anymore is yet another example of how special this car and this brand was to all the people behind it.

Enjoy this beautiful tribute. 

Let’s talk about him. He is gone now!

The need to put this blog triggered after watching the mass hysteria that prevailed across mediums and forums after the deaths of two famous and great men – Dara Singh and Rajesh Khanna.

Reams of paper were printed giving the minutest of details of their individual lives, things we did not know about them, stories that talked about their personalities, incidents giving glimpses into them as individuals.

Even the social media – whether it was Facebook or Twitter was abuzz with people remembering them and showing reverence.

While there is nothing wrong in remembering someone who has left, what I am not able to fathom is why all these good things were not mentioned about that person while he was alive. Why do we feel that we cannot tell the world all these things when the person is alive? Why do we feel that we need to wait for the person to go away to bring out these stories?

I do not remember any article or news story on Dara Singh or Rajesh Khanna in recent times other than the times when they were admitted to the hospital or when Rajesh Khanna appeared in the Havell’s advertisement, which gave people an opportunity to just thrash the commercial but not talk about any of the good things of Rajesh Khanna that suddenly appeared after his death.

Won’t it be amazing to know about the great things about a person when he is alive so that one can appreciate him for those things and he can also get to know about it/read/hear about it? If someone has achieved so much in life, it should be celebrated during his lifetime rather than writing paeans about him after he has gone.

This analogy can be extended further. People will not appreciate the great work/virtues of a colleague till the time he is around in an organization, but will talk and remember him only after he has left the organization and the said person will never know what people thought about him.

The attempt of this blog is not to question or criticize the tribute that comes in from people after the person has left but rather say that one really does not need to wait for the person to have gone to talk the good things about him.