Mourning Jackson


The sadness I feel in my heart is palpable, a living wound, a pain that is not just emotional but physical. Since Friday morning when I overheard that Michael Jackson was dead, I have been shell shocked. At this age I didn't know that the passing of an celebrity could affect me so much. But then Michael Jackson, whose musical talent and showmanship I truly idolized was not your garden variety of celebrity. He was the greatest celebrity the world has known or is likely to know. He was not just the King of the Pops - he was the Emperor. What hurts me so profoundly at a personal level - is how badly we, mankind as a whole, treated him, misunderstood him, and mocked him. Genius have their own idiosyncrasies and Lord knows that MJ had his. But in my heart I could never reconcile the dreadful things that were written about him. True or not, they finally took their toll.

This loss is personal and I mourn his passing. :(

The outpouring of grief all over the world is so overwhelming. I wonder if he was so precious that his passing away has cast such a pall of gloom, why did the world not take better care of him. What is the point in having functions to celebrate him after his death when we allowed him to self-destruct, inflicted damaging blows to his psyche and hounded him till he became a recluse? No we didn't give up even then. Why? Questions whose answers perhaps show a face of humanity that humanity itself is not ready to see.

All I know is that my own thoughts in the past few days have dwelled upon this legend as never before. Memories of his pictures seen in childhood, songs hummed and dances imitated flood the mind whenever it is idle. Perhaps I am grieving the fact that his passing is untimely and so unfair. He had so much more to achieve and to give.

In my mind the what-ifs clamour for attention, - what if after the Pepsi incident he found relief in faith and not pain-killers, what if he really found someone who he could love truly and someone who could love him back in return, what if his abused childhood was overshadowed by a happy family life, what if he had at least some advisers and managers who were not bloodsuckers... this list could go on but can never bring back the biggest phenomenon that we were privileged to share the same timeline with.

I really do wish blessings of Lord Krishna on his soul.