There’s more to actor Alia Bhatt’s latest Instagram post than meets the eye. On the face of it, it’s simply a picture of Alia wearing a face mask, but her caption makes a reference to a lot of what has transpired over the last few months.
She wrote, “Throwback to when masks were skincare & people were kind.” The post has been ‘liked’ close to half-a-million times in an hour, and has attracted comments from several people, including Ishaan Khatter, who dropped a laughing face emoji.
Veteran actor Neetu Kapoor, the mother of Alia’s boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor, dropped a compliment in the comments section. “Fabbbb,” she wrote, along with a thumbs up emoji.
Alia was massively trolled in the aftermath of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, with many of his fans blaming the ‘insider’ culture of Bollywood, of which they believe Alia is a part, of ostracising ‘outsiders’ such as Sushant. Alia’s latest film, Sadak 2, was attacked online, with viewers ganging up and downvoting its trailer to make it the most ‘disliked’ movie trailer on YouTube.
Alia’s sister, Shaheen, took to Instagram in July and shared screengrabs of the hateful messages being sent their way. Threatening wrongdoers with legal action, she called out both the men who target women on social media, and the platforms that allow such hatred to be spread without taking firm action. Shaheen’s post came a day after a Vadodara man was arrested for recording a rape threat on video, targeted at a female comedian. She also shared statistics about rape in India, and reproduced a quote by comedian Hannah Gadsby.
Their mother, Soni Razdan, blocked comments on her Instagram profile to protect herself from the abuse. She shared a picture of two identical Earths and captioned it, “ A picture of earth before and after your opinion”. She went on to write, “Love it. Used to also love all your feedback and comments on my Instagram posts. Sadly I had to turn that off as I was getting the filthiest abusive muck on it for absolutely no good reason. Other than some vested interests’ attempts to sully the name of those they are either jealous of, or have been recruited to attack. There are many battles going on behind the scenes which most of us are unaware of but are going on nonetheless. No matter. I shall soon be able to have you all back to comment when these morons find someone else to target with their sponsored hate. Remember just one thing meanwhile. I love you guys and miss you big time.”
