Social media may be the quickest way to gain or regain stardom today, but Bollywood stars fiercely protected their privacy in the bygone era for one reason or the other.
What would Malaika Arora be sans social media? Just think of it. What would have happened to Urfi Javed had her pictures not flooded the Internet? Would scores of yesteryear heroines have come out of retirement to savour their new-found stardom if there was no Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube?
These are rhetorical questions that merely underline the fact that social media has created a whole bunch of new stars out of nowhere. Many of them had tasted success long ago but faded out from the scene with age catching upon them. But some of them are now back with a bang to taste a fresh bout of adulation.
With social media’s proclivity for keeping tabs on almost every moment of celebrities - right from a superstar to a struggling starlet - there is no dearth of faces who were once thought to have been forgotten long ago.
Recently, when Meenakshi Sheshadri returned to the limelight to take part in a reality show after a prolonged absence from the industry, nobody batted an eyelid. One of the top actresses of the 1980s and ‘90s, Meenakshi quit the industry soon after her marriage and left for the US to lead the life of a commoner.
For years, few knew about her whereabouts. However, apparently inspired by her former co-stars such as Madhuri Dixit, she chose to return to the entertainment industry after gradually making her presence felt on social media.
But there was a time when film stars, especially popular actresses, retreated into oblivion either after growing old or getting married. Even those who stayed back in Mumbai refused to give interviews, let alone be seen in public.
Acclaimed actress Suchitra Sen, for one, decided to turn a recluse in 1978, apparently after the failure of one of her films. She was not seen in public until her death in 2014. So obsessed was she about her privacy that she refused the coveted Dada Saheb Phalke Award, the highest honour conferred on a film personality by the Indian government.
She obviously did not want to come to attend the ceremony and be seen by her fans. It earned Sen, known for Hindi films such as 'Devdas' (1955), 'Mamta' (1966) and 'Aandhi' (1975), the moniker of ‘the Greta Garbo of India’.
Garbo, one of the leading actresses of Hollywood of her time, turned into a recluse at the height of her popularity in 1941 and was subsequently never seen in public till she passed away in 1990 at her Manhattan apartment, where she lived her solitary life in her post-superstardom decades. It added to the aura and mystique around the Sweden-born actress.
Like Sen, many Indian actors also did not want to be seen in their advancing years because they wanted their fans to remember exactly the way they looked on screen in their heyday. Nanda and Sadhana, lead actresses of Dev Anand’s 1961 classic, 'Hum Dono' excused themselves to not attend the premiere of the film when it was digitised in colour in 2011.
There were also actors who fiercely protected their image. Maverick star Raj Kumar had instructed his family not to reveal the news of his demise until he was cremated. In keeping with his wish, only filmmaker Chetan Anand, his closest friend in the industry, was informed about his death. He was suffering from cancer but did not want his admirers to see his dead body.
When Dev Anand died in London in 2011, his body was not brought to Mumbai despite the wishes of his long-standing admirers. Like Raj Kumar, Dev also wanted people to remember him as the actor-filmmaker who never slowed down in his life.
The aura around the stars who maintained privacy in their personal lives, however, began to peter out when Bollywood stars, even the biggest of them, started to perform at the weddings of the families of global tycoons. The advent of the Internet followed by social media also kept the stars under the public glare all the time.
Realising that they cannot reverse the trend of social media intrusion into their lives now, they have learnt to make the most of them. Whether it is a reigning superstar or a long-forgotten actor, social media has proved to be a great leveller for artistes of all hues. The ultimate platform for perennial stardom that makes no distinction between the king and the pauper of Bollywood!