It has been all over the news. Everyone, starting from bollywood celebrities to political parties, is talking about it. On 26th May, Tanmay Bhat, the co-founder of AIB released a snapchat video of Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar battling it out on how good a batsman Virat Kohli is. Expletives-laden, the video sparked an outrage among all the top brass and the general community too. The video was later taken off Snapchat but the Facebook post went viral.
Now, I believe that the video was over hyped and it deserves a passing glance at most. But an issue so insignificant has been blown so out of proportion, that voicing out opinions seems to be the necessary thing to do.
Here’s what happened: After a nice online thrashing by the public came the bollywood stars. Anupam Kher, especially, along with Riteish Deshmukh and Celina Jaitley condemned the video as disgusting and demeaning. Then the parties. MNS wanted to file an FIR and remove it from the online platform. One of their top leaders wanted to catch and beat the accused (Bhat) on the streets. Finally, the NCP’s women’s wing protested on the streets and burnt his effigy, which was the cherry on top.
We take our celebs and icons too seriously. That is a fact. Call Rajnikant a flop and not a single bus conductor will give you a ticket. But do we see Rajnikant fretting about who is calling him what? No. Because he simply does not care. A few people’s opinions is not going to change anything for him. That is what we need to understand. Defending one’s favourite choice is good. Burning an effigy is ridiculous. In all these days, neither Sachin nor Lata ji has made one comment on the matter. Because it does not affect them.
As for all the self righteous people out there, please shift your focus to more important things. We are living in an age where a snapchat story becomes the talk of the nation and a poor girl gang raped by 20 or more men does not even make a headline. Where farmers are commit suicide everyday because something about the Green Revolution was just not right. We are still living that era where the graver problems of the city are ignored and biscuit talk about social media trends is all that is going around.
What Tanmay was doing was simply poking fun at two iconic celebrities. It might have been a spur of the moment with, granted, very bad jokes but that was it. It was just a joke. But we have once again proved that any attempt at fun making of celebrities is not cool. Yes, India is very tolerant except for a few topics, which are taboo. Surprisingly, the list of taboos is ever increasing. So yes, we are very tolerant. But make fun of us and we will twitter slam you.
Featured Image: NDTV
Arindam Goswami
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