Chahatt Khanna has often been on the receiving end of trolling, be it for her linkups with singer Mika Singh and conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar or for speaking her mind on social media. The 36-year-old calls all this “heartbreaking” and says the negativity gets to her.

“People call me names like buddhi and gold-digger, and it’s heartbreaking,” says Khanna, adding, “They say such mean things without realising how hard I work. Just because I am not seen on camera does not mean I am not working. I am busy with my startup, which is worth crores. I can’t go to people and tell them, ‘Hello, I am an entrepreneur’. But this disturbs me.”

Khanna feels she’s subjected to constant scrutiny for things that are “not even true”. She shares that no matter what she does, it somehow turns against her. “Every time I’m like, ‘Okay, there is another controversy’. Even if I post a picture, people think I am getting married, like when I posted Mika’s pictures. There was nothing between us, but still, it turned into a big deal,” she tells us.

All this has made the actor “wary of what I say or put in public”. She elaborates, “Main apne bhai ke saath bhi photo daalungi toh [log] bolenge ki naya boyfriend hai. I cannot stop living my life [due to this], but I will definitely stop sharing on social media.” 

The Qubool Hai actor despises the fact that, as a public figure, she’s told that she must refrain from certain activities, including sharing her opinion on things, as she did for fashion influencer Uorfi Javed’s clothes. “People say, ‘At least tumhein toh ye sab nahin karna ya kehna chahiye’. And my question to them is: why this pressure and unrealistic expectation from me? Is it because I am a public figure? Aren’t we humans as well?”

Calling it unjust, Khanna points out how, like any other person, public figures also have opinions, “but every time we put them forward, we are trolled”.