By Pooja Bhatt
A buddy of mine died last week…on Good Friday ironically… I was in the
middle of feeding my dogs at my farm in Kalote when I received a
message… 'Rajender Rao expired'… I was stunned…Not him… Not Rao…I
dialled his number… it rang… and rang… ominously… echoing in a
seemingly long, dark tunnel, with no sign of light at the end…
A common friend Nabeel then confirmed the news… He did not have to
say much… the grief in his 'yes' to my 'Nabeel is it true?" said it
all…. we hung on to the phone for a while… silent… shocked… jolted out
of the quagmire of our demanding lives, reminded of our own mortality
and absolutely unable to comprehend HOW…WHY…
When I look back today I realise that it was the suddenness that
jolted us all more than anything… But then death is like that… always
waiting in the wings, suddenly taking over the stage without warning…
It was during my first foray as a producer when I first met him…there
I was intensely explaining to him why 'TAMANNA' was so important to
me… how female infanticide was the most heinous of all crimes with the
exception of rape… blah blah blah…
Through it all he watched me with a twinkle in his eye… and when I
paused for breath, all he said was, 'Arre yaar… yeh ladki to Mahesh
Bhatt ki bhi baap hain…relax madam, I can't take so much intensity at
such a tender age' The room cracked up… and my friendship with Rao was
cemented before we had even taken our first step together down the
walkway of life….
Successive years threw us together in the middle of some insane
situations… in locations as diverse as the Seychelles to Lucknow…He's
seen me rant, rave, stress and party… he's heard me voice my fears and
supported my insane convictions…celebrated my successes and helped me
bury my failures… and through it all he did the best thing that any
human being could do… he kept me LAUGHING… at the situation, at myself
and especially the insane business that we were both struggling to
survive in…
He was 'unique' to put it mildly… in fact there was no-one else like
him on the planet… wise, witty, absurd, hilarious, generous,
disorganised to a fault, yet more dependable than most people in the
business, Rao was an absolute, total 'character'… but he was one
'character' you could always rely on for the truth… something in very
short supply on planet Bollywood… we will all miss him so, so much…
When someone we care about dies, other feelings merge with the
inevitable sorrow that we feel… there is a new found reverence for
each hour, each shiver of wind… the day is different somehow… we feel
a certain disconnection from people, from the ordinary 'busyness' of
our daily life…but also an awareness of the thread that binds us to
one another…fragile humans that we are…
One of life's certainties is that we are all going to die…. it's such
an obvious point but yet we don't linger on it until death casually
wafts in, reminding us that it's always around, patient…waiting…
There a lesson to be learned from every loss…it is essential for us to
search out that lesson, scrape together its message and gain insight
and wisdom into ourselves, human nature and the whole life process…
Rao's death taught me that I must pause more often… I must treat each
day on planet earth as my last… I must 'live' completely and
furiously… not merely 'exist'… and most importantly, that I must
'give'…not only when I'm living… but also after I've gone…. like he
did, even when his body was aflame on the pyre… because if death is
the ultimate farewell party then Rao gave all of us gathered there the
ultimate back present… he sent us home with a bagful of laughter… I do
not know anyone else on the planet that can claim the distinction of
doing that… and till the day I join Rajendra Rao in the great big
discotheque called heaven, I promise to live and Laugh, remember and laugh, fall and laugh, cry and laugh, lose and
laugh, win and laugh…. But always, absolutely always…throw my head
back, and LAUGH!!
