Nothing comes free in life - success comes with a huge cost.
Last night was just another insomnia filled night where like most of the wild animals in the jungle, I was prowling in my room to find something interesting to do. Cigarettes , Whiskey and late night Maggi still holds their own respectable position in my amazingly crazy life but I was looking for something more, something that I don't know or something that I know but I could prove to myself as wrong and unlearn it. As the clock slowly ticked 12, the silence of the vast fields behind my house was slowly getting disturbed by the crackling noise of the crickets and alien light of fireflies. Like always when I don't find anything, I picked my laptop and started listening to Jagjit Singh. The first song and the only song that I heard last night was Jhuki Jhuki si Nazar from the movie Arth. As the song was buffering, I realised that its been long that I had heard about the actor in the song, Raj Kiran.
I immediately started searching about him and was shocked, startled and amazed to read about him and his life. Do you know this good looking actor with intense eyes who had a good screen presence faded into oblivion a decade ago and when he could not be traced for a long time, people thought he was dead. However, with efforts from some of his close friends, his whereabouts were finally known and he was traced in a mental asylum in Atlanata, USA. He was abandoned by his wife and his son which led to his mental breakdown and his eventual landing in the asylum. This is just a grim reminder of the fact that life is not a bed of roses even for the most affluent and successful people.
I searched more about people whom we cherished seeing on the large screen but had a really tough time when life got tougher for them. The old grandfather of Indian cinema, Mr. A.K Hangal had to publicly ask for money in his last years as he had no money to afford his medical expenses. Imagine a man who has worked in more than 125 movies and shared the stage for more than 20 years had to go through this. There are more stories about people like Meena Kumari, Lalita Pawar, Pradeep Kumar, Keshto Mukherjee etc. were all forgotten in their bad times.So its like the day the arch lights fade away from them , they fall prey to the living hell of poverty and misery. The suddenly tend to become one among us. The stardom, the glitz and the glitterati is eventually lost.
It took me couple of hours to finish my search and I realised that I had a song on youtube which would have finished buffering. I heard the song, saw Raj Kiran, the handsome chap singing it with intense feelings. I learned something new that nothing comes free in life - success comes with a huge cost and unlearn the sad fact that success doesn't stick with you forever, you have to continuously strive to keep it close. Its your choice if you want to treat success like your wife who can stick with you forever or your girlfriend who may or may not.... :)
Last night was just another insomnia filled night where like most of the wild animals in the jungle, I was prowling in my room to find something interesting to do. Cigarettes , Whiskey and late night Maggi still holds their own respectable position in my amazingly crazy life but I was looking for something more, something that I don't know or something that I know but I could prove to myself as wrong and unlearn it. As the clock slowly ticked 12, the silence of the vast fields behind my house was slowly getting disturbed by the crackling noise of the crickets and alien light of fireflies. Like always when I don't find anything, I picked my laptop and started listening to Jagjit Singh. The first song and the only song that I heard last night was Jhuki Jhuki si Nazar from the movie Arth. As the song was buffering, I realised that its been long that I had heard about the actor in the song, Raj Kiran.
I immediately started searching about him and was shocked, startled and amazed to read about him and his life. Do you know this good looking actor with intense eyes who had a good screen presence faded into oblivion a decade ago and when he could not be traced for a long time, people thought he was dead. However, with efforts from some of his close friends, his whereabouts were finally known and he was traced in a mental asylum in Atlanata, USA. He was abandoned by his wife and his son which led to his mental breakdown and his eventual landing in the asylum. This is just a grim reminder of the fact that life is not a bed of roses even for the most affluent and successful people.
I searched more about people whom we cherished seeing on the large screen but had a really tough time when life got tougher for them. The old grandfather of Indian cinema, Mr. A.K Hangal had to publicly ask for money in his last years as he had no money to afford his medical expenses. Imagine a man who has worked in more than 125 movies and shared the stage for more than 20 years had to go through this. There are more stories about people like Meena Kumari, Lalita Pawar, Pradeep Kumar, Keshto Mukherjee etc. were all forgotten in their bad times.So its like the day the arch lights fade away from them , they fall prey to the living hell of poverty and misery. The suddenly tend to become one among us. The stardom, the glitz and the glitterati is eventually lost.
It took me couple of hours to finish my search and I realised that I had a song on youtube which would have finished buffering. I heard the song, saw Raj Kiran, the handsome chap singing it with intense feelings. I learned something new that nothing comes free in life - success comes with a huge cost and unlearn the sad fact that success doesn't stick with you forever, you have to continuously strive to keep it close. Its your choice if you want to treat success like your wife who can stick with you forever or your girlfriend who may or may not.... :)
Such is the 'sigh' sign of the glamour & gliterrati world, one day they are up their on the pinnacle of success & the next-there is no track of them. Many stalwarts of filmdom who set benchmarks did not have enough to buy themselves a parting shroud-a death veil.
ReplyDeleteMany a celebrity died pathetically-they didn't wish the world to know the final lie & wished the web of lies around them hover till they died.
Marlyn Munroe, Meena Kumari, Parveen Babi died very tragic deaths-maybe the world better deserves to forget their distasteful ends in due course.