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Cover Story: Sushant Singh Rajput - The Man Who Could Have Ruled Bollywood
Sushant Singh Rajput
- The Man Who Could Have Ruled Bollywood!
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Gone Too Soon... Indeed, the man who won billions of hearts with his honest performances could have been the king of Bollywood. Sumita Chakraborty remembers the fabulously talented Sushant Singh Rajput and traces his journey into the acting world.
He had it all – good looks, charisma and loads of talent. Said to be one of the most intelligent actors in the film industry, Sushant Singh Rajput was not just an actor, he was also a philosopher, an astronomy enthusiasts and a science buff, besides so many other things. Perhaps that’s why it’s more shocking today that this superstar who could have ruled Bollywood is no more and it’s been exactly a year that we are left with nothing but his memories.
Born Performer
He was born to be a performer and despite the fact that his family like every other middle-class one, insisted on education being the first priority, Sushant always took the unconventional route to follow his dreams of acting. In a throwback interview to Stardust, Sushant averred, “As a teenager, I was told that there is no other way and I had to become an engineer. So, I knew where I was heading, although I used to love dancing. Be it at anybody’s wedding, I was the one dancing even when I didn’t know the person. Imagine, me, an introverted guy, who couldn’t even talk to strangers, was dancing in front of them and I never used to care what people were thinking! The second thing was that I was very good at studies because that’s how I thought I could get recognition in my class, since I never used to talk.” He was born to be a performer and despite the fact that his family like every other middle-class family, insisted on education being the first priority, Sushant always took the unconventional route to follow his dreams of acting.
And he was a brilliant student… “I topped both the 10th and 12th standards. I gave the All India Engineering Entrance Exam and cleared all of them and then went to the Delhi College of Engineering, which was one of the good colleges. But that was something that I never enjoyed doing for some odd reason. I was very good at maths, physics and chemistry but I never enjoyed them. I didn’t know that something else could be my driving force,” he said. …Indeed, Sushant was born to be a performer and had a calling that the celluloid world would be his stage. Sushant, however, jokingly insists, “The first reason was because I had slogged for so many years and then I went to this fabulous college and found out that there were no girls! So I felt cheated (laughs), like… really?! For four years I was subjected to this place where there were no girls. Somebody advised me to join a dance school since there were hot girls coming there. And also that was something I could connect to. So I joined Shiamak Davar. For the first time when I
performed on stage, I was standing in the front and dancing. It was happening at an auditorium in Delhi. I could feel this power, I was not saying anything, but at the same time I was communicating with all the strangers who were sitting in the audience. The second and third time remained the same. Then I thought of trying this out with words and see if it was the same feeling.” So Sushant joined Barry John’s Acting Academy and started doing theatre. He agreed, “It was a similar feeling and I was confident on stage. I said things that I wanted to and at the same time, I was making it obvious: Don’t judge me because I am in the character. So I could hide behind all those interesting characters and by the end of my first year, I realised that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It took me another two years to get the hang of it and in the third year, I dropped out.”
A Man So Confident, He Took Risks
Dropped out of college? …Pretty adventurous of him? Sushant said instead, “I am the most boring person on earth. The only thing (adventurous) I can think of is that I was in a premier Delhi college and I slogged to get into it, gave an all-India exam, went there and studied for three years. I was just one year away from graduating and I dropped out to become an actor. That is something I can call ‘adventurous’. And also when I came here, I did theatre for five years. After that I got into television serials and when I was just heading to the peak, which I had not seen in my life, I again decided to quit because I was getting bored. After that I enrolled for a filmmaking course in New Zealand, but I got Kai Po Che. These two things I would consider as the most adventurous things I have done.”
Glittery World Of Films
Though TV and his serial Pavitra Rishta made him a household name, films were indeed the most natural transition and so this adventurous lad who believed in his dreams headed to Tinsel Town – he had no contacts but was confident. His immense talent was his armour. But in an industry which believed in nepotism and had an indelible rule segregating outsiders and insiders, would an actor coming from a TV background be able to fit? Sushant however, did not enter Bollywood to blend in. His philosophy was different. “At the end of the day even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat. So, I am not in that rat race,” Sushant had said in one of the Stardust interviews. True, this man walked alone and forged a path of his own rather than blend in with a crowd. His brilliant innings in films started with the eclectic Kai Po Che and it continued to his last film - Mukesh Chhabra’s debut film Dil Bechara. Effortless and seamless,
his performance in every film told a tale of a thinking actor who believed in getting into the skin of the character. Perhaps that’s why it seemed a little unfair of Yashraj Production to have allegedly kept him shackled to a watertight contract which supposedly did not allow him to explore himself fully as an actor in more films.
Pretty unfair, we thought! So was the film industry a cut-throat business- an industry that made it mandatory for all to fit in? Sushant had said then, “Is it..? I don’t think that our film industry is a bad world. Yes, it’s cut-throat competitive. I knew that, but I always harboured acting dreams. I wanted to learn and grow.” …And so he did, and he coped with the intangible rules of Tinsel Town which were at times unreasonable too, but that didn’t bother Sushant, for all he wanted to do was to act. I had met Sushant at a press conference for a brand he was endorsing and I could see how charismatic he was. Girls of all ages were drooling over him and he was charming the media with his quick witty answers. There were people who dubbed him as a man with attitude. But I didn’t see any signs of it. Instead, I saw a charming young man, very downto-earth and focused – this, mind you, was after the phenomenal success of his film MS Dhoni – The Untold Story that made him the most desirable actor at that point. The heady feel of super success could have gone to his head, but he wore the mantle of success very well and seemed very focused, cool headed and charming.
Who Was The Real SSR?
In a throwback interview with Stardust, when asked who the real Sushant Singh Rajput was, away from the arc lights,
Sushant had laughed and said, “I don’t know, I’m still figuring that out. One thing I am very sure of is that I don’t have many opinions. It’s very easy to borrow opinions, be confident and come across as somebody who knows his shit. That is something I can do, but there is no fun in that. Also I cannot articulate my thoughts very easily. …Most of the time I fail because every time there is some inherent loss of meaning. I think it’s probably because I was the youngest in my family and was pampered a lot, so I don’t know how to deal with people. When I stepped out of my house, I was very quiet for the first 19 years of my life. I didn’t know how to talk. I didn’t know how to make my existence felt, so I decided to be good at studies. I was always one of the top three students in my school. This is precisely the reason why I became an actor… because I love acting and can express myself very easily.” And express himself very well, he did! In fact, director and casting director Mukesh Chhabra shared a video of Sushant - the caption of the clip read, ‘Sushant Singh Rajput A boy who never failed in any auditions, touched millions of hearts with his talent on screen and decided to stay forever in our hearts...’ …Indeed, his every film left an indelible mark of SSR as a performer. Sushant Singh Rajput could have seriously been a contender to be the number 1 hero in Bollywood but like he said, he didn’t believe in the rat race… so he followed his heart and instincts and left an indelible mark in billions of hearts. …Sushant Singh Rajput – Gone to soon… but he will always be remembered through his performances and his films.
