14 June, 2020. I write and underline this date in red.

It’s been a week and a day since we lost the great actor to suicide. While we flood social media with tributes to him and awareness about mental health, Sushant is probably flailing around and looking down at us through the smoky clouds. 

In this post, I’m not going to dove on about mental health, nor I am going lay flowers for him. This post isn’t a rant; this is serious and needs to be more talked about.

On the morning of 14th, the whole nation was left in a state of shock. It was the third death in Bollywood in the past two months, all of which were sudden and unexpected.

Since his death, a lot has been unraveled about the Bollywood, its dark side and the nepotism in the industry.

This is post is not to blame anyone, nor to praise anyone. It is about what we as an audience can do, with a slight concoction about the aforementioned topics.

1. We need to be a vigilant and responsible audience, we need to watch and like the content, rather than the actors.

We have pedestalizedthe film workers so much that we forgot that they, too, like us are just at a job. A job which is as ordinary as ours, just that everyone and anyone under the sky can have access to it, acknowledge it or reject it.

• We choose and make someone’s career, we need to watch their work and assess it and not just absorb anything that they show us.

• While we blame the hierarchical paradigm of Bollywood and lash out the ones who are where they are because of blood, we must not start targeting everyone. Those at fault must be gripped but those who have done nothing wrong, shall not be targeted.

• Bollywood is the nation’s industry just like BHEL or BSNL. Everyone shall have the opportunity to work in it, and this should not be regulated by the already established workers.

A government regulated systemic processes shall be incorporated that check the industry and recruit the workers.

Bollywood does not belong to star kids; it belongs to us, our nation and its common people.

Raise your voice before it’s too late and we are robbed of our own industry.

Reach out to me @ekanika_shah on instagram.