A short list

The list isn’t long but still I’m happy. 


Especially in the context of what’s been reported in the last few days with cricketer Prithvi Shaw, singer Sonu Nigam and his Guru’s son.


Last Saturday I had shared on Facebook that while one may respect the space and privacy of revered celebrities, one does get affected while being around in their space.


Having said so, I can say that there are only four celebrities that I requested for a selfie with and that too after making sure that they were not bombarded by other people; after initiating a conversation with them; making sure that they were happy to have a conversation and were fine with my request for a selfie.


I also assured three of them that it’s for my personal collection and that I will never share them on social media even as they didn’t prohibit me from doing so as a precondition to granting the selfie.


Of these four, I shared only one of them with the Magsaysay award winner Mr. Bezwada Wilson on FB years ago and I didn’t share the one with General VP Malik (November 2019); Mr. Prakash Iyer and Mr. Divyanshu Ganatra (13 February 2020).


One other selfie that I have shared is not that of a celebrity in the regular sense but someone I hold in high regard for the towering benchmark he became for me with his dignified conduct - Shri Radhakant Saxena - former IG Prisons, Rajasthan.


However today I feel like sharing the names of people I never bothered for a selfie even though I was quite near to them or as you would see about the last person, I was standing next to him in the bus ride to the plane last Saturday from Mumbai to Delhi:

  • Shri Kapil Dev and Hritik Roshan (November 2010)
  • Late Shri Kader Khan (May 2013)
  • Late comedian Shri Raju Shrivastava (April 2016)
  • The following actors of the Malayalam film industry at actor Dhyan Sreenivasan’s wedding on 7 April 2017: Dhyan himself, his brother Vineeth, their  legendary father, actor, scriptwriter, director Shri Sreenivasan, Shri Mamukoya, late Shri Sasi Kalinga, Shri Narayanan Nair, director-actor Shri Srikant Murali, Shri Prem Prakash and Shri Joy Mathew.
  • And finally Shri Arun Govil who played the role of Ram in Shri Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan.


Over a period of time I have come to teach myself that celebrities are as human as any of us even though we are more in awe of and in love with the characters they play or the roles they discharge. And therefore it’s important that while we are quite naturally tempted to place most of them on an exceptionally high pedestal, we still must respect their needs for privacy and space and have expectations about them that are reasonable.


Interestingly this is exactly what the character played by the legendary Mammooty said in the movie Katha Parayumbol (When story is told) written by Shri Sreenivasan which was then played out by Shah Rukh Khan in its Hindi remake Billu Barber.

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