For Rishabh, the rumours aren’t necessarily upsetting because of what strangers think about him. What bothers him more is when those stories reach his parents.

He recalled one incident that left his mother worried. Someone had sent her a photograph showing Rishabh standing beside a woman holding a baby. With no context around the picture, she naturally had questions.

At the time, Rishabh was serving as ADC to the President.

“My mother once got a picture of me standing with a girl who was carrying a baby. Somebody somehow sent it to her,” he recalled.

She then forwarded the image to him while he was with the President, leaving him scrambling to explain what she had seen.

“My facial expression immediately changed. I said, ‘Mom, come on.’ That’s a lighter example, but that’s what disturbs me. I don’t want to give my parents stress,” he said.

The incident, he explained, showed him that online gossip doesn’t always stop with the person being targeted. His parents can end up carrying the worry created by rumours they have no easy way of verifying.