With or without you? Bollywood stars' relationship with the paparazzi

Earlier this month, hefty bouncers manning an upscale restaurant in a tree-lined lane of Mumbai's Bandra roughed up two photo-journalists who were clicking pictures of Shilpa Shetty and her husband Raj Kundra. One of the journalists was grievously injured; the other's shirt was torn to shreds.
The incident hit the headlines on the websites immediately, and the next day, it featured prominently in the national newspapers. The usually publicity-savvy Shilpa Shetty tweeted an apology to absolve herself of any form of blame. She made it clear that she was "appalled" by the high-handedness of the bouncers. End of just another familiar evening in Cinema Paradiso.
Over time, there have been reports of clashes between the paparazzi and Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Preity Zinta and Katrina Kaif. Except for the quickie-perishable news items, precious little has been done in the law rulebook to remedy the attacks on Bollywood's paparazzi.
Complaints are registered at police stations and the bodyguards or the security personnel hired by stars to keep the crowds and lensmen at bay are reprimanded. And the battered and bruised photographers return to their jagged beat, confronted with a human dilemma: to click or not to click.
Here's a classic Catch-22 situation, which has been prevalent the world over for decades - ever since the fan following of celebrities from every sphere of life assumed manic proportions. The word 'paparazzi' was derived from Italian, suggestive of the buzzing noise made by a hovering mosquito. The 'paps', as they're called in short-form today, were vivified in detail by Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning La Dolce Vita in 1960.
The point is that photojournalists are doing their job, and the protectors of celebrities are doing theirs. However, is rank violence warranted? With the spiralling loss of faith in the media nowadays, the odds seem to be loaded against the swelling numbers of 'paps'. In another context, entirely, the tragic death of Princess Diana 20 years ago, after her car was hotly pursued in a Paris tunnel by photographers, cannot ever be forgotten the world over.
Back to the here and now, the ubiquitous presence of the Bollywood paparazzi cannot be unequivocally justified, especially in relation to a celebrity's right of privacy. Yet, the compulsions inherent in their vocation can't be summarily ignored either. Working unearthly hours, flogging 'scoop' photos to publications that pay peanuts for candid pictures, the 'paps' are scorned by the glitterati tribe - whom they trail from five-star hotel lobbies to beach bungalow parties.
Most celebrities pretend to be indifferent and even harassed, but if a thousand flashbulbs don't pop, they would be boggled by the paranoid thought that their popularity is on a downcurve.
With the post-2010 boom in Bollywood websites and the coverage of film personalities in the entertainment supplements of newspapers, candid shots as well as video clips of stars sighted at airport terminals, movie previews, gymnasium sessions, en route to parties in their sedans, and images of their children - infants or adolescents - have become commonplace. The price of stardom, as in every filmmaking centre, entails saying goodbye to privacy. A few stars appear to have adapted themselves to their occupational hazard.
Shah Rukh Khan, for instance, often identifies a paparazzo by name among the crowd and gamely permits the clicks to all. At the same time, he has pleaded that candid shots of his children, particularly those of his daughter Suhana, shouldn't be used indiscriminately, except the ones posted officially on his social media accounts.
The late Jagdish Aurangabadkar, who was in the flashbiz for nearly 40 years, had once told me that his profession has been overcrowded by the print and electronic media boom. His brothers, Ram and Shyam, were film photographers, too, and were respected by the film industry at large. "But today," Aurangabadkar had complained, "many newcomers are spoiling the name of the photojournalist community. They even take pictures of stars picking their nose or surprise them in the washrooms."
Aurangabadkar's health and his family life had suffered because of the stress and the round-the-clock vigil, which he had to maintain for exclusive clicks. During his last years, Aurangabadkar lived alone in a one-room suburban flat, and committed suicide at the age of 65 following bouts of depression.
Quite a few freelance photographers say they are cautious of clicking Salman Khan. Ever since some photos of him with Aishwarya Rai had appeared in a film magazine, he had become rude. Of late, he has been more friendly. Sanjay Dutt can be moody, it is said, "either very friendly or very irritated". The actors who are "patient and cooperative" include Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff and Sushmita Sen.
Yogen Shah, who has been on the beat for the last two decades, doesn't approve of the word 'paparazzi', saying he always asks for a star's permission before clicking a shot. Rakesh Dave, a relatively recent entrant to the paparazzi brigade, believes, "You need a lion's heart to survive in this trade. The hours are long and uncertain, the pay is lousy and the photographers with their own studios and glamour lighting are mollycoddled while we are considered downmarket."
Dave points out that most freelance photo-journalists are bachelors ("After all, which wife would wait for them to return home after a 16-hour working day?"). Although there have been three or four women who have tried their hand in the business, it's virtually a male domain.
As many as 10,000 publications and websites in various languages use their pictures, "most of them without giving us a single rupee or even a credit line," Yogen Shah laments. "Papers and tabloids, particularly in north India, just reproduce the pictures that have been printed by glossy magazines and supplements in Mumbai. And we can do nothing but just grin and bear it."
wknd@khaleejtimes.com