The year 2020, after taking away legends like Rishi Kapoor and Irfan Khan, has taken away another gem of Bollywood, Sushant Singh Rajput. I have seen many news pieces and posts on social media about Sushant Singh Rajput and how he was in his personal life. Some are saying he was quite reserved and a classic loner while others believe that he was the life of the party and a great performer. Some believe he was a typical introvert, while others think he was a classic example of how an extrovert behaves.
I don’t want to get into the debate of which of these statements are true and which of them are purely fictional. I’ll let you be the judge of that. What I want to do is add something new to the discussion, that might help explain what drove Sushant Singh Rajput to the most difficult decision of his life.
It is quite apparent that Sushant Singh Rajput, a rising star of the Indian Film Industry who is no longer among us, was a complex personality. Infact he was the very definition of a complex personality. From getting an All Indian Rank of 7 in AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination) and then moving on to Indian Television Industry and ultimately Bollywood to prove his penchant in a vastly different field than what he started in, Sushant was a person who in technical terms would be called a polymath. Before describing his lifestyle and how he behaved in other people’s company, let me reiterate what a complex personality is.
Common indicators that you can utilize to identify a complex personality are:
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Heavily introverted nature mixed with selective extroverted bouts
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Tendency to overthink and delve deep into a topic especially abstract ideas
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Excelling in their chosen fields unveiling unprecedented ways to success
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Extreme Curiosity which contributes in their expertise in many fields
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Moody to the extent that you would think they have multiple personalities
To learn in detail what a complex personality is, you can visit this link.
Some people who had a complex personality are Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Stephen Hawking etc. Though these are extreme examples, that’s only because they are extremely successful examples of what a complex personality can be. Perhaps given enough time Sushant would have reached to their level.
Anyway, if you observe carefully, Sushant Singh Rajput fits almost all of these indicators. Sushant was known to be a classic loner on a movie set, taking time to rehearse his dialogues in a corner. If you go through his Instagram, you’ll find that he was heavily engrossed in topics such as Quantum Mechanics, Fractal Geometry, Yoga, Tantra, and many more. This interest, unlike many people, wasn’t restricted to superficial knowledge but went quite deep. On top of this, everybody knows how successful Sushant Singh Rajput had become after acting in many big banner films and giving blockbuster hits like M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, Chhichhore, and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy. Finally, if you notice, many of Sushant’s interviews show him getting agitated at small things and then becoming calm all over again to talk about a topic or incident he likes.
Okay, so Sushant was a complex personality. Does that mean every complex personality is bound to have Clinical Depression and ultimately commit suicide? Well, to be honest, yes, and no.
Being a complex personality means a person is not satisfied with the repetitive and monotonous routine of life and hence endeavors to find the next challenge that can satisfy him. This more often than not culminates into a desire to understand the unknown and trying to answer the existential questions of the universe like how was the universe formed, where did humans come from, etc. These questions take some people to deeply spiritualistic routes and others to the brink of their mental health. These same questions took Sushant Singh Rajput to topics like Mandelbrot theorem and Quantum wave phenomena, all of which are postulates aimed at explaining the unknown.
This is how complex personalities work. While other personality types find joy in the smallest achievements and events of life, people with a complex personality continue trying to find the next big moment that can fill the hole of curiosity brewing inside them. That is why Sushant, even after achieving so much success both in college and show business, was not satisfied with where his life was going and was constantly battling with his mental health.
Let me break the bad news to you. A huge proportion of complex personalities like Sushant Singh Rajput deal with mental health issues, the most common of them being Depression and Anxiety Disorder. This happens because a person with a complex personality sees right through people, their narcissistic motives, and their vindictive nature. Hence, they end up concluding that they are alone in this world, and there is no one else like them.
So does that mean all complex personalities have their fate sealed, and their destiny shall take them to either the door of death or a corner room in an asylum? No, not at all.
Spider-Man -or Stan Lee if you know what I’m talking about- says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In the same way, with great complexity comes a great need to maintain your mental balance. Trying to find the answers to questions which nobody has been able to find until now is not a bad or unhealthy thing. Infact there is a need for many more people like Sushant Singh Rajput in our society who dare to walk outside the dotted line and rage against the norms of this world.
However, this jest with the unknown needs to be paired with a practice of positive mental health, especially by complex people like Sushant, whose brain works in extremes only. Overextending your mind and brain beyond its limitations and capabilities is efficient, but then you must also keep its health in check. You can’t overwork it. This is why meditation and yoga have been advised in a plethora of Hindu sacred texts and the Vedas as ideal recovery methods for deep intellectual quests. I know many possible reasons are being thrown into the hat for Sushant’s suicide, and I will discuss them in a separate article.
Until then, I just want to say that I am very sorry to hear that Sushant Singh Rajput, a man of such immense potential and diverse talent, has left this world. Now that he has gone, I wish only two things. Firstly I hope he wakes up in a world where he gets the peace and tranquility that this material world couldn’t give him. Secondly, I hope our over competitive world stops a second after witnessing this great human tragedy and changes its ways to nurture and celebrate great personalities like him.
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Suburban Wordsmith 
As I still find it difficult to process the grief that the humble person’s demise gave me, this article is indeed a fresh perspective. I am yet to verify the correctness of your arguments, but it did calm my aching heart! Thanks for writing this Abhishek. 🙂
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Thankyou Hima 😊
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How can I contact you? Can you get In touch with me via my email address. I really need your help.
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What’s your email address
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One thing continuosly hitting my mind that it is his curiosity of knowing the unknown make him do such step as he just couldn’t control the many questions running in mind and didn’t find any answer for that ?
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Not necesaarilly. But when it was paired with the mental pressure that was put on him by hia career situation he certainly broke down and thought perhaps he will never be able to achieve his dreams.
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You must check out INTP personailty type. Your ‘complex personailty’ type is the very description of an intp, and i can confirm as being one.
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Hi Devansh, I have studied MBTI Personality test that you are referring to in college. It has been disproved long back as it gives inconsistent answers and the 16 personality types are quite overlapping in their description. Also it assumes that a person is either feeling or sensing, or introverted or extroverted, whereas in real personality types these type of black or white distinctions don’t exist. 🙂 🙂 Thankyou for the suggestion though. I am constantly trying to evolve my theory. I will be posting another article on complex personality shortly. 🙂
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Whosoever you are , you are such an idiot persona who declared someone with multiple personality shits without knowing anything about anything.
You wrote this post just 3 days later of his death without knowing the actual fact.
People like you are those who just want to get popular by writing any shit about anyone without trying to know the fact.
Who are you …a god?
Go and get yourself shity brain checked by some professional doctor.
Unfortunate to come across your post .
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Well to begin I actually know what I’m talking about unlike you. Also I know English so not sure what you are trying to teach me. About Sushant I know about mental issues and mental health problems much better than you because you clearly are a bully who doesn’t know any better. Bullies like you are the reason introverts like Sushant deal with mental health issues. So show off your pathetic language skills somewhere else.
About my shitty brain -not shity you second grade fail- don’t worry about it. I have been working with more professionals that you’ll ever see in your bully infested lifetime. Get out of your bubble you frog and try to understand different perspectives. A person like you who can give personal hateful comments after reading one line of someone’s article and not understanding the perspective are the actual reasons people deal with depression and anxiety. So chill, try to buy ice for your oversized head.
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I feel Sushant Singh Rajput is an INFP or INFJ. I feel more like he is an INFJ who feels misunderstood , has difficulty in expressing as he feels that’s unacceptable and increase more his wounds of being misunderstood. The quest of seeking the next unknown abstract , high sensitivity is good but the hunger comes partly come from deep wounds emotional neglect , unprocessed grief from childhood and growing up years that prevent someone like him or me from feeling validated internally even if we try to do so. He is an intuitive.
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True. Sushant was an extraordinary individual who could have achieved a lot in his life but sadly couldn’t.
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Interesting article about the complex personality type. I believe I’m a complex personality, just not for the same reasons as Sushant. I’d be happy to have a fraction of his brilliance! I’m, however, not in agreement with using Sushant as the basis of this article. Sushant may well have been a complex personality. I will accept your expert opinion on it. But your article assumes the depression & suicide theory to be true beyond any doubt. As we have seen over the past several months, the depression and suicide theories don’t hold water and there are many pieces of the puzzle that just don’t fit. There’s been an immense amount of evidence-tampering that defies explanations, except that in India, money and power speak. There is plenty of proof that there was a concerted effort to ruin his reputation when he was a rising star. Given the possible involvement of some very powerful people in his (and most likely, several others’) death, the truth may never come to light. So while shedding light and raising awareness on complex personality types and the risks of mental health issues is truly appreciated, I request that this article, in order to remain credible, be edited to state that there is an assumption being made here. There are many articles out there on Sushant that have lost their credibility, and if the purpose of this article is indeed to bring awareness and not to use the sensation of Sushant’s death to increase its reach, then I suggest editing it. This is unsolicited advice, but I hope you consider it with some gravity.
Thanks.
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Thankyou for the advice roshini. I will surely think it through.
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