My Tribute to MJ

On the bus to Dhulikhel, as I watched a lady lost in deep sleep next to me, the FM station that the bus driver had on crackled to life. The newsreader repeated the headlines: The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, dies at age 50. 

By the evening, every channel has news of Jackson's death: NDTV, BBC, CNN, Channel V, and Vh1.. NDTV had an interesting feature on Jackson's influence in India, how so much of Indian commercial cinema had been inspired by Michael’s bold dance moves: from Mithun Chakraborty’s ‘I am a disco dancer’ to Prabhu Deva in Pukar. Even Amitabh Bachhan when he was at a low point in his career had tried to ‘moonwalk’ in strange attire. 

BBC had a more comprehensive report. They featured a radio reporter who had interviewed Jackson twice. The reporter had been invited to a party hosted by Michael and said that Jackson had been sociable and soft spoken. BBC continued to show clips of Michael’s first stage show, his erratic behavior (dangling his infant child out of a balcony window), his love for animals, Neverland, his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, numerous plastic surgeries and of course, the moonwalk. Then, I started feeling sad.

The next morning I felt sadder. 

Every newspaper was covered with news about his death. I never knew Dhiraj Rai was called the 'Michael Jackson of Nepal'. He must know he doesn’t deserve the title. Still, his reaction to the news was interesting. Rai had always been a huge fan of Jackson and he said that when he was a child, he would watch Michael’s videos by paying a rupee in Bhrikutimandap but he and his friends often jumped the walls for a free show. Abhaya and Yanik all expressed sadness. The sale of Michael's albums were already increasing at ‘Tik n Tok’. I detested Sanjay Shrestha’s reaction: “I think we are similar because both of us sing in high scale.” Do take the time to listen to your voice and then compare yourself to Michael.

I had never been a die-hard Michael Jackson fan. More than his music, dance, composition and lyrics, I knew him from all the things that had gone wrong in his life. After watching Lisa Marie’s interview on Oprah, he seemed like a manipulator to me. He married the daughter of the King of Rock n Roll, Elvis Presley, because he thought of himself as the King of Pop and wanted a special offspring. But Lisa Marie insisted the marriage was real and they loved each other like any normal husband and wife.The molestation charges against him were first settled outside of court but then he was acquitted of all charges later.  I also watched a program on Vh1 that said Michael practiced voodoo. He wanted the role of Peter Pan in a film and since Steven Spielberg didn’t give him the role, he had apparently taken help from a tantric which made him ill. The program also included a list of people he wanted dead. I also remember reading news from a tabloid about Michael Jackson going for a sex change. All of this just makes me sad, thinking about the price you have to pay for being a great entertainer.

Michael Jackson was never really real to me. He was a ghost. I couldn’t imagine him as a normal human being. There was always a media frenzy surrounding him. The confusion about whether he bleached his skin to appear white, the curly hair, the colorful suits, the black glasses, what his sexual orientation was, the plastic nose, the plastic surgeries, Neverland, everything. But he was real and he was a legend. There will never be another Michael Jackson. His was a life that started and ended with the media. From his first stage show to his last practice session, the media replayed the images like never before. He had a turbulent life—the first lie he told about his age was recorded on camera, he was harassed by his father, all the media attention, the identity issues, the surgeries, his failed marriages, all led to his eccentric behavior.

Life isn’t fair but death is more unfair. MJ’s dead and so is the possibility of correcting the mistakes he made. No one is perfect and Jackson was far from perfect. I would like to forget all the bad, evil and ugly things that surrounded his life. I would like to remember him for the legacy that he left: every popular dance step, including the robot, the moonwalk, the anti-gravity lean, the hat, the black suit, the white armband, the white gloves, the dancing shoes, his epic songs. Who could have thought of moonwalking except MJ? I don’t know if Michael Jackson ever realized what a huge influence he was to the world. 

R.I.P. Michael.

(p.s. MJ had beautiful eyes and he was diagnosed with Vitiligo.)

This story originally appeared on Expressez-vous  on June 30, 2009.