Mumbai: Gorgeous beauty Alia Bhatt has shared an appreciation post, on the occasion of crossing 50 million followers on Instagram. Alia had been on the receiving end of sustained online attacks after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, whose fans believed her to be a representative of Bollywood’s alleged ‘insider’ culture.
Sharing the picture on Instagram, Alia wrote in her caption, “Today is appreciation day.. thank you my family.. my people.. you have today given me 50M love.. I love you ALL to the stars and beyond. I’d like to take this moment to share something I’ve learned over the last couple of months.. social media connects us.. it excites us and yes it also entertains us.. but IT IS NOT US.”
She continued, “Even when I was at 5, I5 or 50K love I was as happy and as grateful as I am today. I truly truly truly believe that our lives are made up of the relationships we cultivate with people and most importantly OURSELVES…no one has the right to make you feel any lesser or greater by the touch of a button.”
Alia concluded, “So as I said, today is appreciation day. I would like you all to take a moment and appreciate yourselves.. appreciate your mind,your body,your heart and your soul!! Because no like or dislike.. no follow or unfollow..no troll or poll can take who YOU are away from yourself. Ok bye.”
The actor’s post has been ‘liked’ nearly 1.5 million times. Her friend, actor Akansha Ranjan Kapoor wrote in the comments section, “I appreciate you.” Several others dropped heart emojis.
Alia had made a similar reference to online hate in another post recently. She’d shared a picture of herself wearing a facepack, and had written, “Throwback to when masks were skincare & people were kind.”
After Sushant’s death, Alia’s latest film, Sadak 2, was also 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. Their mother, Soni Razdan, blocked comments on her Instagram profile to protect herself from the abuse.