Actor Vishakha Singh is trending on social media right now as is actor Aarthi Agarwal but their stories could not be more different. Vishakha Singh reacted to an obscene comment on her fan page and dared the offender to show his real face in his display picture. She also asked him if he commented on the body parts of his mother, sisters and other women in his family? Sometime back, Kangana Ranaut said in a television chat with Irrfan Khan that she would never use social media because of the negativity unleashed in public spaces of virtual communication. She has made a choice not to be drawn into vitriolic confrontation but Vishakha did what no female actor has done before. Named and shamed a man who was doing what eve-teasers do on streets as they watch a woman go by. Objectify her body and make her aware that she is nothing more than a pair of breasts.
Obscenity is a common sight on social media, as is disrespect but Vishakha reacted even though female actors are routinely objectified. But then, she comes from a background that has given her a sense of worth that goes beyond her identity as an actor. Films do not define her. She works as a part-time venture capitalist and was part of the producers’ workshop at the Festival de Cannes in 2014. Vishakha was also invited to be on the jury of the Rome Independent Film Festival (RIFF) where independent Italian and European filmmakers showcase their work.
Aarthi Agarwal, however, had been an actor since the age of 16. By the time she turned 31, she had run the gamut of early, sporadic success, a foray into regional cinema, heartbreak and desperation. She died of a cardiac arrest, reportedly caused by a botched liposuction procedure. I remember watching her debut in Pagalpan (2001), as a young, wide-eyed girl in pigtails, trying to make sense of a disastrous film. I remember seeing in her a faint glimpse of Divya Bharti. Yes that girl with flaming eyes and a face that was just ablaze with the joy of life. A girl who also died much too soon. Of too much success or just a misstep around a balcony from where she fell one April night in 1993.
Unlike Aarthi who saw ups and downs professionally, Divya tasted instant success. There was no desperation to make it bigger and she was reportedly married to a much older man. Something however was off centre. She was much too young to be such a big star. Much too young to play an adult in a relationship. One co-star remembered how she would dance on the bonnet of a car if she felt like it and lived life like she was in a hurry to experience everything. Her fame didn’t allow her that luxury.
Success afterall is a strange thing. How much is too little? How much is too much? And how do you measure it? By the number of autographs you sign, the size of the crowd outside your house on a Sunday morning or in the leisurely sipping of a cup of coffee and in the peace of knowing that fame cannot trap you in a bubble and that there is a life beyond it? For many though, self-validation is not an internal thing. It comes from money, fame, from a visibly thriving relationship. There is no reason why someone as sorted and articulate as Nafisa Joseph should have ended her life in a lonely Mumbai flat but she did. Maybe because a relationship was going nowhere or because after the high of becoming Miss India, life had not been a series of peaks. I still remember with a wrench, the young, articulate, spunky kid she was when I interviewed her in the 90s.
And Jiah Khan who I saw smiling at a room full of flashing cameras at a brand promotion in Bengaluru and who then possibly went home to an abusive relationship and a career that had not taken off. And top model Viveka Babaji who could not handle the complications of a relationship. So yes, fame does not simplify life. Or give you the life tools to get through dark times. You create your own safety nets, your own safe place within where you retreat when the noise outside gets too much.
We make too much of widely-held standards of success. The biggest sign of success though, if you really think about is, to know that you are enough. That you do not have to chase success or be chased by it. That it is okay to retreat from the baying crowds. To find places, people and options that are nurturing and healing.
But be it a Silk Smitha or Aarthi or scores of young Mumbai models who slit their throats and wrists or overdose on death and failure or stars of the stature of Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson and Robin Williams who go back to black after being under the blinding lights, the crux is that we are all human. And at some point, we must all stop trying to be more. And make peace with our imperfections. Our failures. Because, if we feel empty and deficient, there is no drug and no liposuction procedure yet invented that can lull or suck out our sense of terminal inadequacy.
with The New Indian Express (The piece was pubished in City Express on June 9)Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and just be silent with her cats.