Much later Linda Lovelace gave a different reason. She said she was physically threatened and brainwashed by her husband-manager Chuck Traynor, who forced her to do the movie where every sex scene was virtually rape. She later acted in many more pornographic films, this time for money not for fame. She was sick with cancer and flat broke when she died in a car accident in 2002.

What happened to Harry Reems? He became a pitiful alcoholic, destitute and homeless, wallowing in miseries for many years until he embraced Christianity. He now sells real estate in Utah, a pale shadow of his youthful indiscretion when he did not mind dropping his pants in order to become famous. Ultimately the Mafia kept most of the money, because they took over the distribution of the film. By then Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems were reduced to two naked bodies, ogled by lustful millions all over the world, who tended to remember the private parts of the porno stars more than their faces.

Fame can be downright insulting when it backfires. Bollywood actress Parvin Bobby was found dead in her Mumbai flat when her body had already started to decompose. She was lonely and depressed, the once winsome actress, who bloated like a balloon, was shunned by her friends and colleagues for more than a decade. The first Indian actress to appear on the cover page of Time magazine, her funeral was attended by an oddly small group of people.

So what is fame and what does it mean to be famous? Perhaps it is when the quality of a person is widely honoured and acclaimed, when his reputation is recognized to exalt his position. And it varies like everything else, more famous, less famous, more or less famous. Some are locally famous, others are nationally famous and there are those who are internationally famous. Many people stay famous for a year, others for decades, and only a handful of people are famous for centuries. There are even those who are famous for the day. Andy Warhol promised that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes.

Francis Bacon wrote in one of his essays that men in great places are servants to three things, one of which is fame. There are people who are ready to do anything for fame, give up families, give up values, bend over backward, and have no shame. Linda and Harry were desperate for fame, bared their bodies like museum displays, subjecting themselves to intimate humiliations in order to earn public name.

It is also common in other lines of business. People exploit people in the name of success. People suck up to their bosses, the subordinate flatters his superior, beautiful women throw themselves at powerful men, and the ambitious make compromises, because all of them have got one thing in common. All of them want to have success.

Now, fragrance is to flower what fame is to success, one is spread by wind, another spread by words. Fame does not exist unless others talk about it, recognition coming from sound bites, which magnify the profile of a person. An unsung hero becomes a tragic case because nobody likes to talk about his success.

But people can become tragic cases even when others talk about them. Aviator tycoon Howard Hughes died a recluse in his flight from country to country to hide from the US Internal Revenue Service. A popular singer in Hong Kong committed suicide. Marilyn Monroe took her life with an overdose of barbiturates. Ernest Hemingway killed himself with a double-barreled gun. At times even fame fails to tame the aspirations which drive ambitious minds.

Why? Probably, because fame is like intoxication and for some people the influence does not last very long. People are hungry for immortality, which afflicts them like an ailment, as the desire to leave one's mark in life runs counter to the threat of being erased. Fame is the distant image of immortal life, sort of footprints on an elusive road that vanishes into dense forest.

Linda and Harry gave us pleasure, but both of them lived in pain. Mickey Rooney and Gary Coleman were child celebrities, who are all but forgotten, living in distress. An American actress named Frances ended up in a lunatic asylum where guards used to sell her body to those men who were still besotted by her fame. It is a shame to have fame and lose it, because it incredibly shrinks the personality. But it is even worse to seek fame without shame and still not to get it, because one is almost left without any personality.

That is what happened to Linda and Harry. They were used as objects of pleasure, their bodies being treated as tools so that other people could feel aroused. If you really think, porno stars are no more than sexual paraphernalia with human face. People like them, people talk about them, and people even imitate them. But people do not respect them.

In fact, fame is fame when respect is the name of the game. Movie actors, politicians, wise men, reformers, wealthy folks, creative minds, no matter who is prominent and who is powerful, fame is if any of them command respect when people want to remember them. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, the Indian brigand, remained elusive for several decades until he was killed in an encounter last October. He comes right in the middle of the range, commanding respect amongst his own people and villagers, but hated by everybody else.

So, there may be something called limited fame, time-bound, territorial, tantamount only to the exposure it gets. Every country has its beauty queens, teen idols, movie stars, popular leaders, scholars, thinkers, and entrepreneurs. But then there are those at the regional level, and there are those at the global level, the regimen of fame divided like spheres of influence. If you look at India, Telegu or Malayalam film stars are not known in the rest of the country. But Bollywood stars are famous all over India, some of them are even recognized throughout the world.

Fame is, therefore, incremental reputation, varying in degrees and deportment. Socrates called it the perfume of heroic deeds. It is not enough to be known unless one is known for a good reason. If you are powerful today, newspapers quote you, and your face is flashed on TV every day, you will be recognized by people, but that is not fame any more than love is sex.

Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems learned that difference the hard way, their lives shattered in the aftermath of what was their desperate bid for fame. They did lot of sex on the screen, but love remained in short supply for them. The message is clear if you wish to have fame. First learn how to keep your shame.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.