Times of Jiah with me, but Jiah’s times gone

Jun 16, 2013 - Ram Gopal Varma |

Age Correspondent

I went to Jiah Khan’s house to visit her family. What I couldn’t take was the photograph of Jiah from Nishabd in the living room, garlanded, with a few smoking agarbattis in front. It rudely reminded me that she is no more.
I remembered her expression when I had shown her that very photograph and told her that it would be the most beautiful one that was ever taken of her. The youth, the beauty, the innocence, the cuteness in it, all of it had made that photo of her one of my all-time favourites — and to see it in that context, frankly, shook me up.
I saw the room where she hanged herself… I’d never thought a ceiling fan could have looked so monstrous. Whatever the reasons were that made her do it, on seeing her photos, video clips and saturation coverage by all media outlets made me feel the irony of the fame that had always eluded her finally coming after her death.
It felt surreal that my DoP from Nishabd and I were talking about all the lovely times we shared with her even as we were watching the coverage of her tragedy on the various TV channels. On TV, to us, she still looked like the angel who came down to be a part of our lives in Nishabd. But she flew away beyond our reach before we had a chance to capture her on camera once again. All said and done, it is with a very heavy heart now that I realise and am trying to come to terms with the fact that the times of Jiah are here with me, but the Jiah times have gone forever.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/237000" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-c71d4f0cd0c5c2b3bc1d422aa72a2c6b" value="form-c71d4f0cd0c5c2b3bc1d422aa72a2c6b" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86609189" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>