With Great Fame come Great Responsibility

Fame is unstable. Who else can agree with this statement as clearly as celebrities? They know that if they mess up, their fans may lose respect for them in a heartbeat. The celebrities often make the mistake of believing that their fame is the result of some unique quality they possess. Little do they know that they are always replaceable.  While some manage to remain in spotlight due to their work, there are others who attract the eyes of public with their antics. But there is a third category where some celebrities find themselves on the wrong side of the public when a particular statement made by these celebrities doesn’t go down really well with them.

A recent case of the similar kind comes to our attention. Here I’m talking about none other than Salman Khan, often called as ‘Bhai’. The actor recently made headlines for all the wrong reasons. During a press conference for his upcoming movie, he compared his agonizing pain and weariness because of hectic shoots and training sessions to “a raped woman”. It was easily perceived that the comment was not acceptable by the people who know what rape means. It is sad to witness how some people trivialize rape not realizing the trauma through which rape victims go through. Even if the actor used the term rape as a metaphor to describe his taxing wrestling shoots to mark how difficult for him was to go through that training sessions, the comment was still indefensible...

While the country is clearly outraged by the actors remarks, there is a group of people comprising mostly of his die hard fans that are defending him by saying that there's an another side to his remarks which requires the understanding of human psyche. They are defending him by saying that he did not insult any rape survivor nor did he by any means regard rape as a petty issue, he merely compared his gruelling situation with that of raped woman. He was only making an analogy.

Since each and every person is entitled to his/her opinion I will not be arguing whether their statement is correct or not. But I will state my personal views. I personally feel that what the actor said was totally unacceptable and that he shouldn’t have made the comparison to a rape victim. I feel rape is an irreplaceable loss to life not just physically, but emotionally and verbally too and the comment made by the actor just made us acquainted with his incautious attitude towards making the right choice of words. What adds cherry to the pie is the fact that when asked to apologize he swiftly dodged the topic. In the end his father, Mr.Salim Khan resorted to Twitter to apologize on his son's behalf. Now this is what makes me angry yet sad. Salman khan should take responsibility of his words and come forward with an apology. If he doesn't, he is joining to lose quite a large number of fans.