Do We Enjoy Vicariously Travelling Through Celebrity Vacation Photos?

Admit it, you have scrolled at least one celebrity's Instagram feed to see where they went, what they did, what they wore and what they ate on vacation. I have done it too. We all do it. Stalking celebrity vacation photos has emerged as a favourite pastime of many plugged into the internet during the pandemic.

In the absence of our own travels, we turn to those of celebrities that form a part of that privileged (or irresponsible) crowd still willing to fly to scenic locations, which appear to be devoid of the COVID-19 curse. The Maldives, of course, is a star attraction atop the pile of Bollywood celebrity holiday haunts in Paris or London or Florida.

From Katrina Kaif to Alia Bhatt to Kareena Kapoor Khan, the top brass of the Hindi film industry made it to the sunny beaches in the middle of a raving infection spread between 2020 and 2021.

Some reportedly managed to get sand between their toes more than once. And shared photos about it too.

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Newspaper headlines to news app notifications all through the pandemic and its consequent lockdown rubbed in our faces the lavish escapades of Tinseltown. So even if you voluntarily skipped the Instagram 'wanderlust', the travels of Bollywood celebrities were bound to catch up with you one way or another.

Many argued it was tone-deaf of these actors to make a show of their privilege at a time the majority of the country was going through a health crisis. At a time, especially, that our frontline workers trapped in PPE kits round the clock were witnessing disease, sickness, death up close everyday.

In that period of darkness, these vacation photos did sail in with an air of smug indifference. In moments, they also induced flashes of fury. These celebrities, only just a few posts ago, were sanctimoniously giving gyaan about staying home and masking up.

And here they were, letting their hair down and maskless faces up towards a holiday sun as bright as their blinding wealth.

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Actor-producer Nikhil Dwivedi was a rare voice that dared to go against his industry's tide and tweet in November 2020, "We r so self-absorbed & so oblivious to what's around us that we appear unempathetic. Let me also assure it's not like they r heartless, none are... just plain stupid."

Celebrity manager Rohini Iyer delivered a second blow in April 2021, during the peak of the brutal second wave. "For all of you vacationing in Maldives and Goa and exotic locales, remember, it's a holiday for you. It's a bloody pandemic all over. So don't be an insensitive idiot and post pictures of your privileged life."

Thankfully, no one from the Hindi film industry blundered as bad as Kim Kardashian did at her opulent birthday celebrations in October 2020. The media personality had jetted off to a private island with a bunch of close people to "pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time." Read here.

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It would be hard to ignore, however, the crowd on the other side of the discussion. So many people, stuck within the four walls of home with nowhere to go and burning out, found some vicarious respite, even if just a smidge, from their robotic pandemic routines by looking at and dropping a like on their favourite celebrity's holiday photos.

This argument doesn't appear to hold much water when put against the bigger context of a deadly pandemic but it gives weight to the kind of minutiae that makes up the lighter moments on our difficult days.

In a country that near-worships its film stars, their celebrity holds immense aspirational value for the common public.

A peek into Bhatt's latest picturesque holiday will momentarily enrapture the ">average fan of celebrity entertainment. Maybe even give them some ambition to take a similar trip sometime at least once in life. It can be an ultimately insubstantial but fleetingly fun diversion from the banalities of a dull day. Can the worth of that be wholly discounted?

People are happy being given such free access to the real lives - what they eat, what they do, where they go, how they look - of actors they watch with wonder on the silver screen. And with actors themselves offering these details up on a platter, there is some semblance of ethical control over the kind of voyeurism that comes with being in the public eye.

But then again, if it's all for social media, what do you really choose to believe is authentic?

Views expressed are the author's own.