Celebs can't be too touchy

It is strange that filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma is losing his cool when asked about why he has made a film on the 26/11 attacks. On Saturday, this paper printed an interview with the director, more commonly known by the acronym RGV about his film, The Attacks of 26/11, which has just been released across the country.

At the question, RGV lost his cool stating that he has answered that question 4,000 times (keeping count, RGV?) already and would not answer it again. He was also irked when he was asked about making a commercial product on such a sensitive issue.

The filmmaker should have expected these obvious questions, given the outrage that his visit to the Taj elicited, post the attacks. At that time he had made a statement that he would not make a movie on the attacks. In the biggest fallout of that visit, Chief Minister late Vilasrao Deshmukh lost his chair.

It is important that celebrities and people in the public eye realise that as public figures, things are not going to be hunky dory all the time. Fame and adulation comes with a cross to bear. It comes with a loss of privacy and again, you may be asked questions that you do not like or are irked with.

Sometimes these questions may seem too familiar or cross a certain invisible line, and people do have the option to resort to the common ‘no comments' on that.

In a world where hype and hoopla are all part of the celebrity package, the flipside of fame, in the form of these unwelcome, is bound to increase. The famous need to know that they have to deal with it - with dignity and sincerity. After all, fame comes with a price. And very often, that price is the public's right to know and a professional journalist's job to ask. u00a0