I have often heard people ask other people (who post their opinions on, say, the ostentatious Ambani wedding and its aftermath, or Sudha’s ‘simple’ lifestyle, or Deepinder’s stint as a delivery driver with his wife as pillion, or Ashneer’s claims about Salman, or Abhishek’s love life, or Vivek’s car, or some such thing that would have been, had it been about most people, a private and personal matter) why they are indulging in gossip or even sharing of such news and commenting on it. I mean, they claim that such a person is being the crazy Abdullah in a stranger’s wedding (pardon the humorous translation) and has no lodus standi to comment or have their say about any of this obviously personal issue pertaining to someone else’s life and choices, especially if the celebrity in question seems upset at the publicity and seeks privacy (even going so far as to write a post about how they would be much obliged if their ‘fans’ left them alone).
My answer to that is two-fold:
- These people have huge PR teams, and budgets. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets out without not just their knowledge but indeed their complicity and deliberate abetment to such ‘leaks’. If they didn’t want you to know, and therefore share and comment on, anything, you wouldn’t hear of it. Trust me. This is not the age of an aggressively free and intrusive media that questions, investigates, and reports everything without fear or favour. This is 2024. Media is pliable. And public opinion, whether by a news outlet or an online influencer, is available for sale, and quite openly at that. So, if you’ve heard of it, they want you to. Period.
- If you, a celebrity (of any kind, whether an entertainer or an entrepreneur), put yourself out there and treat your life like a reality show, can you blame us, the eager (made so by your own media blitz) audience, for treating you and your family as contestants on one?
Coming back to this news: NRN would have bought multiple properties, invested in multiple assets across all classes, and invested his money in a wide range of instruments across the past 3 decades that he has been in the limelight. Have you heard of all of these investments? So, surely he is not just comfortable with this particular news coming out, he probably aided its publicity, for reasons best known to him. And if the public gives him, and his new acquisition, the attention he so obviously craves, who are we to tell others not to offer it to him?
Here’s the thing: you want to read such news? Do so. You want to share it? By all means. You want to comment and opine? Why not? You don’t? Then, don’t. No one is forcing you to. My only request is you don’t fool yourself into thinking that:
- people sharing and commenting on such news are somehow in need of a reprimand from the high horse you have positioned yourself on; or
you are somehow more morally righteous than those who indulge in such news. - So, chill out, everyone. It’s all good.
