“That’s my masked vigilante thing!”A habit that sounds more of a bedtime ritual rather than a celebrity headline, Kunal Nayyar said.
This actor is well known as one who has played the role of Raj Koothrappali in all 12 seasons of “The Big Bang Theory,” he said that at the end of the day, he opens up GoFundMe, and pays medical bills of families he has never seen. That was revealed in a December interview with The i Paper that has been circulating extensively online, in part by reinventing wealth as something silent and pragmatic: some way to take a burden off the kitchen table of another person.
According to that interview, Nayyar said that “Money has given me greater freedom and the greatest gift is the ability to give back, to change people’s lives”. He was also reported as giving donations to animal charities with his wife, Neha Kapur, and then going back to his most shocking statement: “But what I really love to do is go on GoFundMe at night and just pay random families’ medical bills.” To Nayyar, it is not the help as such, but its anonymity, directness, no gala, no campaign, no credit. “So, no, money doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like a grace from the universe,” he said.
It is a resonating confession during a cultural time when “GoFundMe” is used as a shortcut to mean medical uncertainty.
Nayyar has a well-documented financial success. At the peak of the fame of the Big Bang Theory, the cast members were reportedly making 1 million dollars per episode, and Nayyar was seen all through the 2007-2019 lifetime of the show. His net worth has also been estimated by fortune at $45 million and Forbes has put him in various years on its list of the highest paid T.V. actors in the world with annual earnings reported to fall as high as the 20-million mark.
But the most echoing part of the comments made by Nayyar is not about the numbers and the numbers, but rather his perception of everyday kindness. It is in the same interview that he made the argument that people tend to wait until a distant authority like leaders, institutions, another person sets the tone of compassion. People are not happy just now, he said, because we are all waiting that someone will be nice, and then you give an instance based on common life: “But there is no world peace if your neighbour comes to your door wanting some sugar for their tea, and you lock it against them and say ‘get away.’”
His comments added an additional momentum since online fundraising of medical expenses and family sustenance was still a very high profile in the entertainment circles. In one case that went viral, a GoFundMe established to support the family of an actor following a long time illness brought in over 2.6 million dollars, which not only gained support but also sparked the debate once again on how the cost of treatment can run a family quickly.
Nayyar also wrote that when he feels like he is on shaky ground, he keeps himself straight with a one word exercise: “surrender.” A small, intimate instrument a kind of follow up of his late-night gifts this again leads back to the same theme he returned to during the interview, namely relief could be made one person at a time, one moment at a time, without seeking permission or approval.
