Outpouring of social media empathy for Sidharth Shukla’s mother

By IANS

MUMBAI: The nation has lost a TV heartthrob and a mother, her favourite son. Those who remember ‘Bigg Boss 13’ would recall the episode where Rita Shukla appeared on the show and won people’s hearts by being the doting mother to her son Sidharth.

On Friday, she appeared at the Oshiwara crematorium a shadow of her ‘Big Boss 13’ self, shattered by her son’s death. Sidharth’s fans, however, seem to have adopted the grieving mother Rita Shukla on social media. For some time, in fact, the hashtag #RitaMaa was trending on Twitter. There was an outpouring of empathy for her.

Fans remembered the ‘Bigg Boss 13’ episode where Rita Shukla appeared in a ‘family special’ in 2019, advising her son to dress well, comb his hair and spread happiness — like any concerned mother would.

For the past two days, though, she has been receiving and accepting the condolences of a slew of Bollywood personalities, such as Varun Dhawan, Rajkummar Rao, Rakhi Sawant, Asim Riaz, Divyanka Tripathi Dahiya, Rashami Desai, Arti Singh, Prince Narula, Aly Goni and Rahul Vaidya, among many others, at her home in Mumbai.