The death of Pratyusha Bannerjee underscores the distance between Indian television’s most popular narratives and reality where women do not always have monochromatic inner lives and a monumental forbearance that is almost as fake as the jewels worn by the Simars, the Gopis and the Anandis.
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The irony could not be more cruel. Pratyusha was India’s favourite ‘vadhu’ and when she walked out of the starched confines of her most popular role into real life, she perhaps learnt how unforgiving unscripted reality was. The actor who was just 24 is not here to tell us what went wrong but we can only guess that she, not unlike Jiah Khan, Nafisa Joseph and many other young women in the glamour industry, tried to make sense of fame and its inherent little cruelties. And the way it exposes one’s deepest vulnerabilities to the scrutiny of the world and turns love, heartbreak, humiliation, career lows into click baits for public consumption.
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The television industry is an unsparingly demanding place where legions of fans move on from one character to another with their fixations and grow apathetic towards the actors they once adored, the moment they are out of the TRP circus. Every actor is replaceable in Indian television because fans more often than not are in love with a Mihir Virani. A Gopi Bahu and yes, Anandi. And not Amar Upadhayay or Giaa Manek or Pratyusha Bannerjee. That Pratyusha found it tough to deal with the absence of the trappings of her early success was visible when with childish innocence, she once called herself the most successful achiever in the Bigg Boss house during a task and was picked upon by Salman Khan till she burst into tears.
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Balika Vadhu in the end was her most successful career decision because nothing she did after that matched its sweep, its staying power. Many actors find that when they move out of the skin of their most popular television character, they can no longer succeed on their own terms elsewhere. Ekta Kaul, who is now playing a key role in Mere Angne Mein, a long-running evening show on Star Plus was dissed repeatedly by judges on Jhalak Dikhla Ja a few years back because she was not “loosening up” and because her face was not reflecting emotions. On every reality show, contestants (famous or otherwise) are encouraged to shed their inhibitions, be as raw and vulnerable as they can be for higher TRPs and for the prizes at stake.
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And almost in every season of Bigg Boss, you have atleast one woman celebrity who is humiliated to the core by fellow contestants or the host for being too difficult, too opinionated or too self-serving. Whether such episodes are scripted is open to discussion but the fact that a woman’s past , her sexuality, her weight, her height and more are repeatedly targetted will show you just how loaded the odds are for anyone who has a thin skin and a shaky self-esteem in this industry.
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Mahek Chahal, Shweta Tiwari, Tanisha Mukherjee and yes, Pratyusha were just some of the women who were attacked on the show. Even in a quasi-reality show like Comedy Nights With Kapil, female co-actors were treated like live baits to evoke laughter and only a great deal of obvious success protected the guests from the host’s misogyny. Kapil never cracked the kind of ageist jokes reserved for his “bua”, against a Madhuri Dixit or a Rekha.
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In the eyes of this industry and the media, Pratyusha was perhaps already a has been and was treated as such. This should not surprise us because we live in times when even media portals that proclaim to be gender sensitive, define a woman’s success and failure in warped terms. So they will attack a Parineeti Chopra for losing weight “for the wrong reasons” because she may encourage women to judge their worth by their bodies but will publish an article with a headline like “Watch Priyanka Chopra down Tequila Shots on the Oscars Red Carpet, and Cry Because You’re Not Her” to not so gently convey that when you are attending an international awards show in a designer dress, you are a role model that every lesser woman MUST envy.
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We were also supposed to celebrate Priyanka for winning the chicken wings contest on Jimmy Fallon’s show and what a thrill it was to see repetitive shots of her laughing at a Chris Trucker joke about Rihanna’s undergarments during the Oscars. These are our yardsticks of achievement and obviously those who have not reached that level of success are judged minutely or forgotten.
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The fact that Pratyusha Bannerjee, once the sweetheart of the nation and the face of a much loved character was written about in recent times only when something unpleasant happened to her and then forgotten till the news of her death hit search engines like a tornado, should tell us just how exploitative and forgetful the entertainment industry is. The fact that her own family and friends did not see the warning signs also says a lot about the disconnect and distance that has crept into our lives today. Young achievers like Pratyusha who grow up too fast need guidance and comfort from a support system that is constant and unwavering but tragedy creeps in when conversations with loved ones become sporadic, when you shut out friends or they drop out of your life, leaving the space open for opportunists who are drawn to a vulnerable woman for all the wrong reasons.
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But again, we can say what we want in retrospect. I remember reading and writing the same things when Nafisa Joseph killed herself in a lonely apartment a few years ago. This was a girl who had in her teens won the Miss India contest, was extremely articulate and had told me in an interview, “I will never change.” I remember feeling the same amount of shock and disbelief when Jiah Khan ended her life.
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So yes, the entertainment industry is a tough place for a woman to negotiate and Pratyusha Bannerjee should have known that neither success, nor love define any of us. We do. And that if we love ourselves enough, we will always be enough. Unpaid bills and dead end relationships notwithstanding. She should have been more than a click bait and a TRP trigger in life and in death. She was worth much more.