On social media, should you unfollow the deceased?

Recently, I was looking at the list of people I follow on Twitter and suddenly I came across the name of Rituparno Ghosh, the Bengali master filmmaker who passed away in 2013, at the age of 49.

I did not know Rituparno very well. I had met him only once – in 2010, at the Berlin Film Festival when I interviewed him for his film Aarekti Premer Golpo (2020). But I was a big fan of his remarkable films, examining the human condition. Rituparno was one of the celebrities who followed me on Twitter from about the time I joined the platform and we had a few interesting conversations over the years. Those conversations are saved on Twitter. I can search for them and read them whenever I think of him.

Touch the stars

One of the advantages of a social media platform like Twitter is how much access we have to celebrities. We can follow anyone from the Dalai Lama to Bill Gates and Shah Rukh Khan. This connection can also take an ugly turn. We recently witnessed a lot of hate being spewed against some celebrities on Twitter following the tragic death of Sushant Singh Rajput.

The two words, “Follows you” placed in small print next to the person’s Twitter handle provide such comfort

I am a star-struck journalist. I get excited if a celebrity writes to me on Twitter. I briefly imagine that we are “friends.” It has happened a few times for me with Amitabh Bachchan (he follows me), for instance when I tweeted something about the French classic film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and he wrote back that it reminded him of his college days.

Shah Rukh Khan (he does not follow me) once reacted to my posting of a sign outside a Bangladeshi barbershop in Jackson Heights, New York City. The sign had an image of Shah Rukh from Main Hoon Na (2004), along with a few white kids’ faces with sharp haircuts. When I tweeted, “You can get a haircut that will make you look like one of these white kids, or else just the regular @iamsrk,” he responded, “I would go for the regular @iamsrk. Think that will suit me the best…”

Always here

But it is a strange, comforting feeling to find celebrities who have passed away still following you on Twitter. Two words “Follows you” placed in small print, next to the person’s Twitter handle. I know they have died, and will never respond even if I tag them in a tweet, but in the Twitterverse they still follow me. That time, those conversations we had, are saved unless someone deletes the celebrity’s account.

After I found Rituparno Ghosh on Twitter, I went searching for similar accounts of celebrities who had died, but we still followed each other. There is one of my friend and filmmaker Manish Acharya. Manish directed the hilarious comedy Loins of Punjab Presents (2007), and he and I did voiceovers for an animation film called Sita Sings the Blues (2008). Manish died in December 2010, after a horse riding accident in Matheran.

In this virtual reality world, one does not want to lose the connection with people who have passed away

And there is Mona Kapoor – Arjun Kapoor’s mother, who died from cancer in March 2012. I had never met her, but we followed one another on Twitter. Every time I would tweet about a snowstorm in New York City she would express concern, since her daughter was a student at Columbia University. She had a lovely presence on Twitter and an endearing way of ending her tweets by writing “Rab Rakha.”

In February 2012, she sent me a direct message about her cancer condition and asked if I knew any doctor at New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. I told her I would get back to her. But a month later, I woke up to find out that she had died in Mumbai.

Her Twitter account is still open. And there is a lovely photograph taken in a garden, her long hair and a blue shawl covering her right shoulder.

Instagram has memorialised late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s account by adding the word “Remembering” in front of his name

And then there is Irrfan Khan. I am not sure when we started following each other on Twitter. It was a few years before I set out to write his biography in 2018. Irrfan was very active on Twitter. In fact, he even announced on Twitter that he was suffering from a neuroendocrine tumour.

I had quite a few exchanges with him on Twitter, including when I reviewed Paan Singh Tomar (2012) and praised his performance in the film. He tweeted back saying, “Thank U. it took more then a decade to get a part like pst. He s my inner voice. (sic)”

It was a brief tweet. The typos indicated that Irrfan had typed it himself. Even if he was rushed, at that moment he did think of me.

Good spirits

Last week, I posted a tweet with images of Irrfan’s, Rituparno’s, Manish’s and Mona’s accounts. I wrote: “What does it mean to follow accounts of people who are gone? What does it mean when their handles still follow you?”

And, I realised, I was not alone. A few people got back to me, saying they had also not been able to unfollow accounts of people who had died. One person wrote saying she had not deleted her mother’s number from her phone. “It’s a very special feeling,” she added. I do not know this person but I was sad to learn she had lost her mother.

I never thought about this before I suddenly chanced upon Rituparno Ghosh’s account. But I know that in this virtual reality world I live in, I do not want to lose this connection, the association with people who have passed away.

It is a reminder that once I was a part of these people’s lives, even if in a small way. Once they thought of me. I still follow them and I think of them.

Also see: Digital Life and Death- A social media expert explains

The writer is a New York-based film journalist who contributes to international publications. He is also the festival director of the New York Indian Film Festival.

From HT Brunch, August 16, 2020