Jaya Bachchan is not entirely wrong in reprimanding the paparazzi!

No one in his right mind would defend Jaya Bachchan for telling a photographer that she  hopes he trips and falls, not even Jaya herself. It was a momentary lapse of reason. We all have that moment when reasonable behaviour blurs itself out.

I am sure since that, after this incident, the photographer’s mother has stopped being a fan of the Bachchans. Yup, Mr Bachchan can’t escape the heat of his wife’s glare.

Jaya Bachchan was completely out of league in venting on the poor photographer who was probably told by his boss to go get something spicy and saleable, or look for another job. But try looking at the embarrassing incident from the other side. It often gets very difficult for prominent members of the entertainment business to safeguard their private space with their children.

Whether it is Virat -Anushka or Saif –Kareena, they all pay a price for the indiscretions of a certain section of starlets and their opposite numbers (what does one call the male starlets?) who inform the paps whenever they visit the restaurant or airport. Some of them, I am told, get off at the airport pretending they have a flight to catch, take a stroll at the entry gates and return home after having made sure their ‘airport looks’ were clicked.

It is this section of the ghetto-starlets who bring down the wrath of Jaya Bachchan and Taapsee Pannu on the paparazzi. I even know of one starlet who has been tailing a cricketer  informing the photographers off all her schedules for her stalking plans.

It is really very simple. No means no. If an actor, say Jaya Bachchan, says she doesn’t want to be clicked, then aim the camera elsewhere. There are so many who do. Shoot them.

I can, with confidence, say many of the top actors don’t like to be clicked. Ranbir Kapoor abhors it. A few years back, when a photographer insisted on clicking him in spite of  repeatedly being told not to, he snatched the camera and sped away.

Photographers must necessarily respect the celebrity’s space. The celebrity, in turn, must respect the photographer’s right to click him or her in public. The friction between the two parties on the two  sides of the camera is nothing new. For fifteen years, Amitabh Bachchan had banned the press. He said he did this in retaliation to the press banning him during the Emergency for his proximity to the Gandhi family.

Mr Bachchan had explained, “Whenever anyone enters the public life, the media and the press are after him, which is ok. In 1975, when Emergency was declared in the country, film journalists wrongly thought that the press censorship that came with the Emergency was my doing. They said, ‘This man is close to Indira Gandhi and he is involved in the press censorship and that is why we need to ban Amitabh Bachchan’. They stopped writing about me and printing my pictures. In fact, if I was in a film and they were to mention the star cast, they would put a comma instead of my name. I felt that if the press has the freedom to ban me, I should have the freedom to ban them too. That is the reason that whenever I was shooting or reporters wanted to meet me, I refused. This continued for some 15 years.”

Eventually Mr Bachchan relented. He needed the press. Jaya Bachchan doesn’t.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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