The Michael Jackson in all of us

Like A Comet
Blazing 'Cross The Evening Sky
Gone Too Soon
Like A Rainbow
Fading In The Twinkling Of An Eye
Gone Too Soon
Shiny And Sparkly
And Splendidly Bright
Here One Day
Gone One Night
Like The Loss Of Sunlight
On A Cloudy Afternoon
Gone Too Soon
Like A Castle
Built Upon A Sandy Beach
Gone Too Soon
Like A Perfect Flower
That Is Just Beyond Your Reach
Gone Too Soon
Born To Amuse, To Inspire, To Delight
Here One Day
Gone One Night
Like A Sunset
Dying With The Rising Of The Moon
Gone Too Soon

This song written by Larry Grossman and Buz Kohan is perhaps among the lesser-known performances by Michael Jackson. MJ dedicated this song to the memory of Ryan White, a student who contracted AIDS after he received infected blood for his haemophilia. The song also sums up the emotions that ran through my head when my wife informed me on Friday morning that Michael Jackson was dead. I would be lying if I said my eyes did not get a tad moist.
Most people of my generation grew up on a staple diet of Michael Jackson on LPs, cassettes and, later, on MTV. We gathered in school gyms trying to perfect the moonwalk and break dance. The first question kids my age would ask whenever someone told them that MTV was going to be launched in India was – “Will they play Michael Jackson songs as well?”
MJ became HIStory many years back. But whenever his songs play on the radio, I still get the goosebumps and I turn up the volume.
MJ will forever remain with us – us Indians, that is. How is it, you ask? Look around you. There is a TV ad in which a girl wins a tennis match only after she applies a skin-whitening body lotion. Our body colour often does not match with our face, we are told. So, the girl applies the lotion for a few weeks and voila! She is confident enough to lose her jacket and win the match.
And we curse MJ for trying to change the colour of his skin.
And then there was MJ’s childhood, rather the lack of it. He started singing when he was barely four. By the time he was eight, he was already touring the Midwest, “extensively”. His father was a stickler for perfection and MJ once said that he would sit in a chair – belt in hand – and “if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you". Very Indian, don’t you think? Recall that scene from Dev D when he gets on a bus, completely wasted. The woman next to him scolds him and says that if her son had done the same thing, she would whack the daylights out of him. Why, even Pramod Mutalik justified the attack on “wayward girls” in pubs saying that most parents wanted to beat up their kids for going to pubs but could not.
It was the allegation of child sex abuse that really brought MJ down. I don’t know if they were all true, but the fact that most of them were settled out of court (read “on payment of huge sums”) does suggest a sinister motive.
MJ will forever be remembered. When we try our hands – and legs -- at break dance (it’s so out of fashion but still very difficult to perfect), or when we try out that body lotion or when we beat the living daylights out of our children or students in order to discipline them.

ravijoshi@epmltd.com