When actors Konkona Sen and Ranvir Shorey took to their respective Twitter accounts to announce that they had dissolved their five-year-old marriage, it was yet another instance of how celebrities use social media to make important statements to the public. Gone are the days when a film star had to hold a press conference or give an interview to a magazine to convey a message to his or her fans. Those gateways between a public figure and the audience have vanished as direct communication has become a reality.

Konkona's tweet was also a sharp departure from the way her own mother Aparna Sen had handled her divorce from first husband Sanjay Sen. Those days, news was leaked leisurely and it took months for a celebrity to confirm a story since only a handful of magazines would carry their statements. In an interview to a fortnightly that I worked for, Aparna had told me, "People don't realise how painful a divorce is. It's like amputating a limb from your body."

One isn't saying that it is any less painful for Konkona to admit to a failed marriage but today the "amputation" is condensed and conveyed in 140 characters which is a major difference. And the tweets are like a joint statement that's read out at a press conference with both talking of "co-parenting" their son Haroon and remaining friends.

Signs of their continued friendship were evident in Konkona's Twitter account where she relentlessly tweeted about Ranvir's next film Titli . But Ranvir's account (where his name is spelt in a combination of Devnagri and English alphabets) has mainly been a compilation of the many tweets, retweets and comments on their separation and about his new film Titli. There's little about Koko's new release Talvar . She, of course, does not require a barrage of tweets in her favour since she makes every role such a compelling watch. Whether it's Talvar in Hindi or Kadambari in Bengali (where she plays the controversial sister-in-law and muse to Rabindranath Tagore), Konkona lights up the screen. Ranvir is no match as a performer.

Even if Ranvir is making the right noises like gallantly saying he was responsible for the breakup, he's lucky that Koko and he are maintaining their friendship, at least in public. Which is unlike the other major breakup Ranvir had two decades ago. The otherwise easygoing Pooja Bhatt shut him out after their romance had ended in high drama. For that matter, the entire Mahesh Bhatt clan, which is known to move on without bitterness after a relationship breaks up, closed ranks when it came to Ranvir.

Mahesh Bhatt is one filmland dad who always gave Pooja her space in any relationship. When she was seeing Bobby Deol (before his marriage to Tanya Ahuja in 1996), the recorder on Pooja's phone had a message taped in her boyfriend's voice. There was nothing clandestine about it; she didn't have to hide any of her men from the world or from her dad.

But one remembers how troubled Mahesh was when Pooja ended her relationship with Ranvir because of alleged physical abuse. The filmmaker had gone to the cops to file a complaint against Ranvir and had spoken out about his violent nature. Half-sister Alia Bhatt was a toddler when Pooja went through that traumatic experience. But last year when Alia went to promote one of her films on the sets of a reality show that Ranvir was anchoring, she pointedly ignored him. It was her way of sticking up for Pooja and it also showed that this was one man the Bhatts were not going to forgive despite the passage of time.

Interestingly, when last year Pooja split with Munish Makhija, her husband of 11 years, she too had announced the separation on Twitter. And she had also talked of remaining friends with Munish, irrespective of the status of their marriage.

So even if Pooja has nothing to do with Ranvir, they still have something in common - both of them used Twitter to pronounce the end of their respective marriages.

After closing that chapter of her life, 43-year-old Pooja has opened another. This time it is a rarely seen relationship between an actress (turned director) and a younger male journalist. Thirty-something Mayank Shekhar, the man she's seeing, is popular for his film reviews. He is single and a film buff. One topic that the couple must have discussed threadbare is Pooja's long-in-the-making film Cabaret .

Finally, a very happy birthday to TV's best-paid actor, Ronit Roy. He turns 50 today (a birthday he shares with Amitabh Bachchan). He began celebrations yesterday with a Mata Ki Chowki followed by dinner, for which he and wife Neelam sent out invites nearly two weeks ago. The incorrigible Ronit, who once ran away with Dilip Kumar's niece, seems to have sobered up and settled down as a family man.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author