Price Of Privacy, The True Cost Of Being Famous

Fame comes at a price. And more often than not, it's the price of privacy. Most members of the film industry bag the title of celebrities in the public eye. They bear the brunt of gossip columnists, the infatuation of stalkers and the unrelenting passion of paparazzi to get 'scoop' out of their lives.

Ever since the film industry's inception, there has been an inexplicable obsession with personal lives of the faces one sees on screen. Who's dating whom, who is friends with whom and who hates who quintessentially has become everybody's business now. One doesn't seem to give even a moment of privacy to the celebrities - not when they're ill, not when they're dying, not when someone close to them passes away, not when they're home and not even when they intend to use the washroom peacefully.

And this realization struck a few days back when a photograph of a frail Vinod Khanna started doing the rounds of social media. It probably started as a Whatsapp trail - forwarding from one family group to another friends chat but soon caught the eye and public raged it to their full benefit. The picture went viral. A veteran actor, admitted in a hospital, posed with his wife and another family member maybe.

In another such case, Aishwarya Rai's father Krishnaraj Rai recently passed away after a brief illness and the public found its new muse. The pictures from death rituals and the prayer meet were all over the internet. In fact, a few of them had Aishwarya mourning the death of her father, grieving the loss of a parent and that caught the public eye too.

Soon after this, Alia Bhatt's sister Shaheen took to Instagram, and wrote a befitting post to make people realise where they're heading to with acts like these.

Just a year back, Amitabh Bachchan went to Delhi for cremation of his friend and the actor was appalled to see people clicking selfies at the event. He took to social media to express his disappointment and wrote, "My dear friend passed away suddenly... was chatting and suddenly gone! Fragility of life... Went for the cremation to Delhi... at the cremation, people taking mobile pics and 'selfies'... disgusting!"

He added that people are left with no respect not for the dead, and not for the living that’re there to pay respects for the dead. Big B's fan following needs no introduction but in another incident, a fan of his, asked him for a selfie in the washroom.

Some fans even go that extra mile and hack their social media accounts. Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth and many others have all been victims of hacking.

One may still debate how much a celebrity owes his or her personal life to public, but how will one defend the undue and unwavering attention attributed to the star kids now. Many actors have been extra cautious in revealing their newborn's faces. Some have, at times, requested media to not make use of their 16-year-olds' photographs for the sake of numbers and page views.

With these incidents making a large part of fodder for gossip, it seems the time is here to reflect upon where we’re heading as a collective conscious. Just because celebrities’ profession shapes up in public eye – does it give fans a right to scrutinize them and make their most intimate moments public - are questions yet to be answered.