Many vested interests and a section of media have started to defend the present Bollywood set up by putting emphasizes on the fact that Sushant Singh Rajput was not out of work. Some low rung & out of job actors have also rhyming the same lines in the hope of landing a role in the Nepo infested production houses.
Question here is not whether Sushant was getting work or
not. I am sure he would surely be getting it. Rather the question is as to why he
was not provided with a level playing field? He had been an achiever all his
life. He was ready to fight to reach pinnacle. He was brilliant in all that he
did.
Were
equal opportunities being provided to him?
Outsiders like Manoj, Nawaz or Irfan could never reach the
stardom of the khans/kapoors or Roshans. They were/are much brilliant then them
but still were always relegated to VERY IMPORTANT character roles. All their
solo releases would generally be small budget films and would rarely be commercially
very successful. Sushant wasn’t satisfied with the stamp of just being a good actor.
He also wanted to have a shot at the super stardom as he was confident of his
own craft and knew that he had it in him. In addition, he was much more
intelligent than his contemporaries. He had the best chance to replace/join the
existing flag bearers of super stardom. And that is where the issue lies.
A big production house shelved an ambitious project of his, knowing
very well that he had let go of many good films to be part of the same. They
knew very well that he had been preparing day and night for the said role with
utmost sincerity for almost a year. And worst is that even after shelving the film they did not offer
another big film to him to compensate. After all it was their MORAL duty to
do so. Another big Production house did offer him a film but
then released the same on an OTT platform with pathetic VFX. Which top commercial
actor had his film released directly to OTT till date? There was no corona
virus threat then and still he had to face the humiliation of seeing a shoddily
edited and half baked film released on OTT.
Where
was the level playing field? He needed big budget movies and the might of
bigger production houses to increase his reach. With backing of big production
houses comes the media backing as well. And the combination can catapult any
actor to the pinnacle.
No doubt that even without support of some of the big production houses and bought out section of the
Media, his graph was still in the ascendancy. It would have taken time but he
would definitely hit the pinnacle that he longed for. But then these flag bearers of Nepotism cannot run away from their wrong doings. They had been the biggest source of frustration & humiliation to an intellect like him and added to his stress. Some level of blame has to lie with them and every effort should be made to held them accountable for their set of wrongdoings.
