So many movies has a central premise of death, death of someone close to you, whether with intent or accident, the plot starts with investigation, with grieving families and friends and usually with a grieving protagonist. Many multi-series movies, the whole John Wick Franchise, Godfather, Kill Bill, and the latest Tom Clancey without remorse, all with the central premise of transformation of protagonist as they go from a stage of freeze and ignore to the point of murder and bloodshed while seeking revenge for the death of their loved ones. Many a classic sad songs, my favorite Tum Bin discography, where the accidental death of Amar ravishes the life of his lover Pia.

A permanent physical end to life, no breath tomorrow, no dreams, no smile, even the idea of death or even a remotest harm to family, friends, even people you have never met and merely follow on Instagram or even writers you read, actors you watch, musicians you hear, or the boy you once saw and admired or the old man who once gave you a deep advise; even the idea of death ravishes you, shakes you, freezes you. And all we have got today all around us is death. 

Every day, one message, that person’s dad passed away, his mother died, their neighbour died, her grandfather died. In my 30 years of life, I only knew of three deaths - my great grandparents and my grandmother. All three had long beautiful life. My grandmother, albeit, went a little early, she had a good 15-20 years more, she could have seen my marriage, my children, but certain gross ignorance and medical negligence, on her part and on the part of my parents who were the next in turn, responsible caretakers, yielded her small toe-nail injury into a cancer in the course of two years and eventually to her death. She wasn’t even 70. Her own mother had died only some 8 years before her. That for me was 2018. 

Cut to 2021, there is death everywhere all around us. No longer like the famous franchise thriller revenge structure of movies, there is one central death, revenge or investigation or even prolonged grieving; there is a million deaths. 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000 deaths. I wonder what will be the central premise of this reality. Revenge ? Revenge from whom ? Revenge for whom ? Investigation ? What investigation do we need for our own criminal negligence for the small toe wound that turned unto cancer right in front of our eyes with our own persistent ignorance. Grief, emotional freeze ? Like Pia from Tum Bin, will we self destruct, stop any act of love, confine to loneliness, wait for some hero to come save us ? Like Tom Clancy, will we uncover some deep dark not so secret of our soul, walk on the path of revenge and annihilate everyone responsible ? 

And all those protagonists, larger than life figures of cinema, the big screen, the figment of fascinating imagination of the writers, all those protagonists had the burden of one death, or two, or four. Where would a common India, a smaller than death figure of an impoverished reality, the big country, the hanging by the nails skinny soul of the Indian subcontinent, the brown atlas with a million corpses stacked on sickly shoulders; where can he/ she go ? 

Someone said, what can we do, if we process everything logically, we can be alright. We couldn’t have done anything to stop it, minimize it, halt it, we couldn’t have done anything, we can’t do anything today, we can just sit and watch and hope we survive. What can we do ? There wasn’t much our protagonists in any of our movies could have done. Tom Clancy sitting in his room listening to music eating nuts, there was almost much much less that his character could have done to avoid the murder of his wife and their unborn child. To that comparison, we could have done a lot, not allowed Kumbh to happen, not allowed massive rallies, not elected BJP government in 2019, put high pressure for vaccine procurement, have an active engagement with our governance, criticize the draconian lockdown when we had less than 10,000 cases a day that rendered millions of people walking home for miles across states, not allowed for an absolute fake/ toxic/ poisonous blatantly lying manipulative media to grow from the tiny toe wound of one media house to the deadly bone cancer of the entire fraternity, not allowed for blatant concentration of power in the hands of two fat man and their two fat friends, to that comparison to any overdramatized cinema character, we could have done a lot, we could have saved a lot, in fact it wasn’t a case of criminal negligence than a million people died but a case of an active poisoning, a case of active allowance of life in lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium, hell radioactive uranium in our waters, and an active case of not just drinking that water and not making an effort to refine it or to find a better source, but an active case of packaging that water in shiny golden plastic bottles and marking it up by 1000% of selling it to our own people who died after drinking it. Unlike any of our revenge or grief movies, our real life wasn’t a case of ignorance or negligence or accidental death; but a case of slow steady cold-hearted brutal calculated well-planned murder, sorry massacre, of our own families, and friends, and communities, and people, and country. 

So many movies have a central premise of death. The protagonists transforms. The protagonists seeks redemption, seeks pain, punishes themselves, beats themselves about their inaction, self inflicts pain, self destructs lives and careers, fights for justice, fights for revenge. And that’s usually one or two or few deaths. What would be the story of Indian reality show starring a billion people. How many years of self flagellation, how many decades of Maatam, how many Taziya processions, would Indians have to embark on to mark this year of Corona ? 

I cried for days, actually weeks after he left me. No, it’s been months, and I shed a tear as soon as a I see the “trek” word. Just a reminder, of all the possibilities and all the dreams, all the beautiful exciting ideas, all the memories, all the breaths down my neck, and the tears come rolling down. He is alive. I am alive. Both breathing, walking, talking, existing. But a Million people are dead. Who were waking, talking, dreaming, breathing just a few days ago. Who were all the possibilities and dreams and breaths down someone’s neck, now all ceased, deceased. How many days will they cry for, they should cry for, they could cry for. A million in a billion people, one in every one thousand of us. 

So was would be the central premise of our lives? How would the story of our future unfold? Will we go down the path of self destruction and self pity and drugs and denial like many a movie characters have done in their grief. Will we turn violent, lose any fear of death for now we are so experienced and fight for revenge. Will we go down the route of The Great Debator, based on 1935 real life events in the Jim Crow south where extrajudicial lynching of black Americans was not uncommon and more than 4440 racial terror lynchings were recorded between 1877 and 1950, will we go the peaceful persistent consistent route of non-violent systematic transformation ? Will we channel these tears to energy and focus and determination ? Or will we seek revenge, will we punish the traitors, the murders, the architects of a million pyres, will we hold our own Nuremberg trials ? Will we bring the Godi Media for hearings in front of the Ghosts of those they didn’t even report ? Will we bring to trial the elected leaders who converted people and humans souls into numbers and votes to be manipulated in life and death ? Or unlike a movie, unlike a thriller or a drama or a plot, slow or fast, painful or dark, but more like reality, will we just ignore ? Will we put cover all graves with marble floors and put fancy furniture and fountains ? Will we drive over all the pyres with heavy machinery rollers on our route to building the roads, wide and fast, shining with tar ? Or will we cover each and every death, a wound in our soul, deep and fresh with golden bandaids. Will we ignore and do nothing ? Or even better, will we forget ? Continue life as usual. Life. Not a movie. Because movie has a plot, a story, a setup, a confrontation, a climax. And this is life; rather boring, rather simple and usual, rather uneventful. Will we continue our day jobs and our night parties ? Will we continue to catch-up over coffee and get together for a few drinks ? Will we continue with the shopping and business and calls and meetings and our “jobs” ? For we are alive, they are dead, but why should it disturb business-as-usual ? 

But it’s a billion of us and we have a million ghosts who are here to stay for many a years to come. It’s a billion of us, and maybe some of us will follow one story, and some other, and some other; and maybe even today’s great Debator will be tomorrow’s Tom Clancy, and today’s John Wick tomorrow’s spectator. Maybe today’s Pia wetting sheets and pillow cases and T-shirts’ and napkins will be tomorrow’s blonde drenching the fat boys in blood. 

So many movies have a central premise of death. Never before 2021, we knew our entire lives were just a few unmasked breaths away from death. So many protagonists have their entire stories centered around a death. Never before 2021, did we think, the life and times of our entire generation will be circled around death.