When Death Comes Knocking

34-year-old actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead in his apartment.

Suicide.

He was hanging from the ceiling of his home in Mumbai.

The news glared at me from my phone while I tried to wake myself up. My mind was wide awake as it registered, I read the news article in detail. A sense of loss and sorrow settled in me.

I was not a fan. He had talent and potential, and I liked his movies. But I knew nothing about him. And yet, I felt the loss of a stranger like millions of others. The entire nation was shocked at his untimely demise.

Over the next few days, stories about him as a person came up everywhere on social media. A regular small-town boy who dreamed of making it big in the film industry. An intelligent, charming young man who was at the peak of his career.

His life was an inspiration to many. He quit college to chase his dream, struggling for years to find his place in the industry. He proved to everyone that their dreams were reachable. At the height of his achievements, he decided to end it all.

One day, he was gone.

While the media speculated about what drove such a fine actor to his death, I scrolled through his Instagram page. Unlike other celebrities, he didn’t post numerous pictures of himself taken at all the right angles.

Instead, he used his feed to talk about physics, enlightenment, energy, space, and time. His bio read, “Photon in a double-slit.” His last post was a short poem to his late mother.

Each time I saw his interviews or movies, my heart ached. He was a stranger. But his death touched millions.

What happens when we die?

When my grandmother passed away three years ago, I remember walking to her room expecting to see her. Only her clothes and a box full of things she considered precious remained.

She lived her entire life in that house. Now, that house is empty. Without her belongings and pictures, it felt like she never existed. A person who was a part of my life, gone in a second.

We know that life is transient. From the minute we are born, we are one breath, one step, one day closer to our death. Life is a journey toward death. We know it is inevitable. And yet, we live oblivious to this impending future.

We go to sleep, planning our next day with precision. But what if we never woke up? What if today was your last day and you had no clue? Is there any way to tell that you would cease to exist in a split second, gone from this planet like millions of others before you?

We know everyone dies. But it's something that happens to others and not us.

Would anyone miss me if I died today?

In an interview, Stephen Colbert asked Keanu Reeves, “What do you think happens when we die?”

He replied, “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.”

Yes, my family and close ones would. And with time, they would miss me a little less as they move on with their lives.

Does that mean I will cease to exist?

Of course not.

We live on in the memories of our loved ones. We live on in the minds of everyone we met. In the end, we live on not in the wealth we gathered, but in the hearts, we touched.

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.

-Terry Pratchett.