After Sushant Singh Rajput

Sushant Singh Rajput and Shweta Singh Kiri

Losing a loved one actually feels like you have lost a part of yourself. It feels like somebody has put a spear in your heart and is twisting and turning it. I knew that pain, I was going through that pain," Shweta Singh Kirti, a NIFT-trained fashion designer with an MBA degree, tells us over a video call from her home in California. Kirti's new book, Pain: A Portal to Enlightenment (Ebury), which begins by outlining significant moments from her early life and the loss of several family members including older siblings, her beloved mother and then younger brother and Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput, traces a spiritual journey from a place of profound suffering. She writes about going for solitary retreats after Sushant's death, to a Buddhist institution called Land of Calm Abiding (LOCA) in the mountains of California, near a town called Ragged Point. "I went there with two things in mind, one being that I was in a lot of pain, and the second being that I had this immense faith in spirituality. I knew that if something could help me, it would be the practices, the meditation," says Kirti, sharing that family values had her believe from a young age that a higher power overlooked all creation. "My mom did a very good job [inculcating the idea] early on. I remember she would ask us to pray to the deities and ask for what we wanted. She already knew what we'd ask for and keep the objects ready so that we'd believe that God had granted them. A strong faith developed early on."

Beginning the interview with a prayer because "it's always good to start with a prayer," Kirti talks about chancing during her retreats upon the Buddhist philosophical concept known as ‘emptiness' according to which, she writes in the book, "everything we perceive is not a fixed, permanent entity in and of itself, but rather a collection of parts or aggregates that come together temporarily to form what we perceive as an object or phenomenon." "I was learning that with identification as a person - as the sister of Sushant - there is so much pain. But when I'm in deep meditation, when I'm immersed in the self, all that pain vanishes. How does that happen? And is this the way forward?" She realised that this could be a way out of debilitating grief for many others in similar situations. "I'm actually an introvert, and if given a chance I would just be sitting and meditating," she tells us. But she knew that there had been many who had been affected by Sushant's sudden passing, with people experiencing a range of emotions from sadness and frustration to thoughts of anger and revenge. "I thought, I need to step up, and maybe tell people about what I am doing to heal myself."

Shweta Singh Kirti

She spent the next four months at solitary retreats to work on her inner self. The four yogas classified from the vast variety of practices found in the darsanas by Swami Vivekananda - Karma (action), Bhakti (devotion), Raja (meditation) and Jnana (knowledge) - she suggests, is a good place to start. "The problem is that we all deeply identify with the body-mind, with this identity. The solution is to get rid of the identity and understand that you are the awareness behind the body-mind syndrome." Kirti explains in the book that while Karma yoga teaches us to be bigger, selfless, in Bhakti our desires are given up in one great love for God, Raja yoga gives us the power of focus, and finally self-knowledge, as cultivated in Jnana yoga, shows us the deepest dimension of our being, which is untouched by sorrow.

"Once you know that you are the awareness, you hold on to that and let go of whatever is not you," Kirti instructs. We are given name, form and function. "Everything has a function," she explains. "For instance, I'm an author right now and I'm talking about my book. This name, form and function are ‘maya' or a veil that is put on top of the awareness. We are getting caught in this web. What we have to do is let go of name, form and function and be one with the awareness. That is when we feel completely at ease, we feel complete unity with everything and everyone, because we are not separate."

Shweta Singh Kirti writes in the book about how, as children, she and Sushant, who was a year younger, were inseparable. "We played and danced, studied and got into mischief, ate and slept, and did everything in unison, to the point where people forgot we were two separate individuals; they even called us ‘Gudia-Gulshan' as if we were a single entity [Bhai's nickname was Gulshan and mine Gudia]."

This is the way for us to become whole, she says. "So then, your grief will be my grief. Your joy will be my joy. Imagine a world like that. Imagine how beautiful it will be. I want to just carry each one of us to that place."

In 2016, Kirti also started Damara Kids, an online mindfulness programme for children where she imparts meditation techniques to little ones. "The first seven years are formational. The child's mind is in a theta state, so they're just taking in everything, not judging. So, if you can give them grounding, they can centre themselves in reality and won't be thrown off kilter by problems that come with excessive media exposure and distractions."