The Knockout Fiasco

28th of january 2015: I came back home from office at around 9pm. I had been out for more than 12 hours. There was one thing to look forward to, the AIB knockout. After following AIB for sometime I had a lot of expectation from what seemed to me a great venture. It was a particularly sad day. Hellish day at the office. I saw the video. Liked it. Went to sleep with a smile on my face.

 I thought it was very big step in evolutionary process of the Indian entertainment industry. After watching all those American roast with American humour here was a desi piece( basically I understood all the jokes). I wondered how powerful internet has become. I mean it's the internet right, nobody can say shit about the content. There is no censor board to take all the good stuff away. Just two days after our  66th republic day, I was beaming with patriotism. Here were some Indian artists willing to take Indian stand up to the next level. It was particularly interesting to see some bollywood bigies not only supporting it but being a part of it. It was such  a happy time.

Everyone I met was talking about it. Some even went on to convince me that it was the only good thing that Karan Johar/Arjun Kapoor/Ranvir Singh had ever been a part of. There were knockout jokes flying about. All the conversations had some reference to the show.

Bling!!

You have one notification- TOI app- FIR lodged against the AIB team........

I showed my friend the same. And we started lambasting the Indian government for being such hypocrites. All kinds of knockout abuses and jokes were made on the government, on the MNS, censor board.

I started to think about why they were offended. I mean the people who should have been offended were present at the show(except Anil Kapoor of course) and they seemed to have a good time. 

I did not see children in the audience. I think Youtube also has a strict 18 above policy. So the children were safe. 

Misguiding the youth. Huh!!

Somehow being tolerant about things by seeing the funny in racism, religion is misleading for the youth. Instead stopping films from bring screened, vandalising theatres, beating up people, issuing threats, being selfish is the way to be.

The video got more than a million views isn’t that proof enough that a number of people liked it. Why should the choices of people who did not like it get a precedence over the choices of people who liked it. That is kind of unfair. We live in free country where ideally nobody dictates us what to watch, who to follow, what to say.

"Freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty... but essential to the quest for truth"

If you do not like it don’t watch it. The fact that over a million people watched it without your telling them is proof enough that people want to do things without caring about the your consent. It is a personal choice. Nobody else is affected by me watching the video on my own. I mean Maharashra farmers face a drought situation I don’t see the MNS raising a hue and cry about that.

AIB had to take the video off Youtube. Its only a matter of time someone else puts it up. People will still watch it. The youth is already aware of sex. We make sex jokes. We make horribly fucked up jokes. All of us. We have learned to see the funny side of things. And we have learned to be tolerant of things around us which we don’t quite understand. We have learned all this from such videos, from such artists and people. Let people idolize the real Ranvir Singh not some cleaned version of him that you have created. Don’t sell them lies that you are so fond of. 

If I know something about the real Hindu religion. It never asked anyone to do anything. It left everything to peoples choices. Hence the concept of Karma. Here is an advice Indian culture will survive for a longer time if you don’t make the youth hateful of it. Everytime you pull something like that you make us hate our own uptight culture.

Is it just me or does anybody else see a similarity between this and the Charlie Hebdo situation?