The pandemic hit every sector including the entertainment industry in the worst possible manner. Not only were there deaths and suicides of names like Irrfan Khan, Rishi Kapoor and Sushant Singh Rajput that shocked the nation, there were several controversies that the industry was caught in and the truth was never told. Not only this, due to the lockdown the industry has also suffered a loss of thousands of crores. With the small time actors and the crew suffering the most. The lockdown impacted theatres affecting the Box Office collection and pushing makers defer releasing movies like Radhe, Sooryavanshi and ‘83. The silver lining however is how the OTT platforms came to fore 

2020 is definitely the year that will go down in contemporary history as the year where our modern way of life changed forever. Yet, this is not a piece about the never-ending woes that the year has brought upon us. Far from that. It is more likely a piece about what this year has helped bring about in all of us.

Never has one person’s misery been another person’s entertainment, like it has been this year. And you know where this is headed, don’t you?

The pandemic came upon us in March and the lockdown soon after. The effects on our country were catastrophic, to say the least. However, my mandate here is to write on the entertainment industry and thus I shall desist from going off about migrant labour, the economy, the death rate, the Tabligi Jammat or any such deeply felt but unfortunately unrelated topics.

It is the job of the entertainment industry to entertain and perhaps that’s what we did, but at a great cost to ourselves .

In early June one of our very own, Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his suburban Mumbai residence. A tragedy of epic proportions. And the beginning of several more tragic events that were to follow soon after.

An actress, we know only too well, claimed that it was the burden of being an outsider in an industry that abhorred outsiders, that took his life. Unsubstantiated in its claim, but dramatic. Names of popular filmmakers came up that were said to be blamed for the tragedy. The filmmakers became the scorn of the media and the social media. They were shunned by one and all, thrown into the abyss of infamy.

More unsubstantiated claims sprang up. The dead actor’s girlfriend surely killed him. She was having an affair with her mentor after all? The guns that were trained on the filmmakers were now trained on these new suspects. The  media trial was the obsession of every household that was going through the grind of the lockdown.

The manager of the dead actor, who had committed suicide a week earlier, was dragged into the conspiracy theory, albeit posthumously. There was a connection between the two deaths insisted a Facebook post that became the basis of major inquiry. I forget to mention, this was part of the more unsubstantiated claims.

Like a circle in a spiral, the theories went berserk with the aid of a news hungry media. Was it just murder or double murder? Was it poison or drugs? Was she a gold-digger?

On and on and on, more claims, more victims, more investigations, more television debates, till I disconnected from the goings on and preferred to spend my time mastering the Monaco circuit on Formula One.

The pandemic still rages in our country unabated. We feared it when it was nascent and don’t give a damn about it now that it is rampant. And as I write this none of the unsubstantiated claims have been proved by any agency. But more than that virus outside that killed so many people, we inadvertently managed to kill something that is usually held in high regard, and that something is called the “Truth”.

If the year-end theme of this publication is death and destruction then nothing has met its death more than Truth has this year. Truth has been replaced by the perception of the Truth and what is more, it’s okay to destroy lives with that perception.

The events of this year have seen the  entertainment industry turn upon itself to provide fodder for never ending drama on prime time television. We accused each other, blamed each other and in the end, sentenced our own in the courts of the evening news.

Who is going to apologise to the filmmakers who had nothing proved against them? To the grieving girlfriend? To the maverick filmmaker of the yesteryears? To the family of the dead manager? No one I guess. If you are not responsible for the Truth why would you be responsible to the lives that you have ruined in the name of conspiracy theories?

2020, to my mind, will be remembered as the year when the need for the Truth died and in its place the entertainment value of the perceived truth was preferred. We will find vaccines for the virus and we will prevail against it, but how will we find a vaccine against the virus in our heart that has taught us to bend the truth to suit our purpose?

Even if we vanquish the virus, the virus will look at the mangled body of the Truth and have the last laugh!