“Why are they saying in public what we say at parties?”
Yesterday, I sat down around 12:30 AM to watch the much talked about and much awaited AIB Knockout of Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh. I had high expectations from the show and was looking for a good laughter, after the day’s hard work. To be honest, I liked a few parts of it, actually. There were sections where I laughed and not to forget that I enjoyed. The sporting nature of Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor deserves a hat-tip. But then, at the end of Part 3, I had mixed emotions about the whole show. If there were a few words which could sum up the whole thing, they would be – hypocrisy, double standards, unnecessary insults, sexist and racist comments and brutal humor, if at all I could call it that. This piece that I am writing is an attempt to justify what I just dared to express, against the crème de la crème of the Indian comedians.
The show started with a warning that it is an adults show and contains explicit content. “OK”, I said to myself and started playing. At one go, I watched all the 3 parts. I kept on watching because I really wanted to know how much more filth is to come.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for your roast master this evening. A pilot, a sailor, an actor, a model, an architect, are all men he would happily fuck. Please welcome to the stage, Karan Johar.” To this, he said, “thank you for the glorious introduction, my mother is in the front row and she will need an ambulance by the the end of the night.” Not that I am trying to speak against his sexuality, but why would you make a joke out of something shocking that would end up your mother being hospitalized?
“It is going to get filthier than Tanmay Bhat’s colon after a buffet.” Haah! A joke on how fat Tanmay Bhat is. As the show progressed, each and every member of the roasting panel cracked jokes about how fat Tanmay Bhat is, or how Black Ashish Shakya is, or how cute and useless Rohan Joshi is. Reading from the cue cards, it seemed like everyone was reciting well rehearsed ‘jokes’ from a joke book, which is a compilation of some unfunny jokes that have been shoved upon us since ages. At a point, they were all acting so desperate to make an insult and sound it funny, that it actually looked framed and fake.
“If I wanted to be shouted at by an angry, unfunny asshole, I’d go watch Khambha’s stand-up”, said Karan for Raghu Ram. He also called him a loud, classless tumor, a human gonad and a bald, angry bastard. Now I have seen a few Roadies auditions and those contestants who dared to say similar the things about the show back stage, were beaten, yelled at and cursed by Raghu. Here, he was seen laughing. But hey, it is Karan Johar who is cracking a joke, so it is understandable, yeah?
Ranveer Singh kissed him as soon as he stepped up on the stage and said, “don’t be shocked. I have been doing more than that since last 4 years but he still won’t cast me in his movie.” At one point, he got on his knees and showed that he was ready to do ‘it’ for a film. Keeping into consideration the kind of impact the industry has on our youth, was it a right thing to portray that ‘this’ is what you have to do, to get a film? It was supposed to be taken on a lighter note, true, but constantly keeping on talking about it (no kidding here, the casting couch joke was overdone. A lot.) and trying to prove that this is the way the industry works, what are we, the lesser known people to understand? I leave the question open to the readers.
Ranveer Singh was openly glorified as being a coke addict, a drama queen, a slut, a pervert and all the other offensive things you could imagine. “I am not saying that Ranveer Singh does all the shit films, but the last good thing he was in was Deepika Padukone.” Whoa! Karan Johar said it. I played this segment twice to look for an angered Deepika. Didn’t we all stand with her during her cleavage controversy and didn’t we all completely bash out Priya Gupta who tried to give an explanation of the whole thing? Let’s be honest here, most of us didn’t care to read the piece written by Priya, but just because everyone else was lashing it down, we too had to do it. Deepika was so brave to take a stand against it and she wrote such a thought provoking open letter to everyone. And now we are here, at the AIB Knockout, where Karan Johar made this statement and instead of being her original self, she was laughing. I was amused. My amusement grew when one of the roasters said that it was Ranveer Singh, who clicked the TOI picture. Gosh. This made her laugh all the more.
“Arjun Kapoor, you dropped those kilos faster than Deepika dropped her dating standards.” Zero points for guessing who is a hypocrite and has double standards here. Then again, #IStandWithDeepika is not something I want to trend on Twitter.
Hope after those jokes on deepika in #AIBKnockout.. You guys will not start trending #IStandWithDeepika Again.
— Bittu Sharma (@Sarcaism) January 29, 2015
“Parineeti Chopra is not here tonight because we told her that she’d be fucked by 10 dudes in front of 4000 people. Karan Johar was told the same thing, hence he’s here.”
I was extremely offended here and I thought that after watching the show, Parineeti, who is known to retaliate against such things will speak up. All I can say is, she is yet to watch the videos, or maybe, she chose not to speak up. This seems to be the only possible explanation, even though it is highly unlikely! This reminded me of the double standards she showed in the Bigg Boss house.
‘हास्य की थाली’ में जब ‘अश्लीलता’ परोसी जा रही है तब शायद आज अगर जसपाल भट्टी जी होते तो उनका कार्यक्रम ‘फ्लॉप शो’ सच में फ्लॉप ही हो जाता। — Bhaiyyaji (@bhaiyyajispeaks) January 30, 2015
Ashish made a joke on Sonakshi saying she did a movie called Lootera which was based on O. Henry’s short story ‘The Last Leaf’, which is because she ate all the leaves. He added, “oh, I forgot. Sonakshi doesn’t eat salads.” Time and again, from bashing KRK to the critics – Sonakshi has been taking it out on the people openly for making fun of her weight and that she’s OK with how she looks. No Sonakshi, you could have stood up and spoken for yourself instead of laughing. Or maybe, you could have laughed back then, during the former incidents. I am not saying that you have double standards, but laughing for a joke once and sulking on the same at the other time is not something that an intellect would do!
“Gallia do, laakho ch***ye dekhenge. Bh*sad**e. I just gave you 50 more views.” This again takes me to an audition where one of the contestants auditioning for Roadies had said the same thing. He was beaten and cursed by Raghu. “The last time I saw so many ch*ts at the same place, I was auditioning them.” Again, when people say that his show is all about losers, he loses his mind and does what he is best at – beating and cursing. So here we are, Raghu accepting the fact that his show is all about losers. Double standards? I am not sure.
So humour basically is making fun of someone’s physical appearance, someone’s sexual orientation, someone’s failure & using filth language
— King_Drunkard_IV (@KingDrunkard) January 29, 2015
Khambha to Rajeev Masand – “Seriously Rajeev, stop calling yourself a journalist. Every time you do that, ISIS beheads a real one.” Seriously, Khambha? A joke on ISIS beheading people? That’s not how I want humor to be, after being witnessed to so many terrorist attacks throughout the world.
Here is a series of mundane, unfunny, racist, offensive, sexist and repetitive jokes made on the people present there:
“Ashish Shakya is so Black, his mother screened him for Ebola when he was born.”
“Ashish Shakya is so Black, it is impossible to roast him; he is already burnt.”
“Ashish is so Black, his girlfriend gives him a blowjob every time she craves kaala khatta.”
“Ashish is so Black, he should be sitting in a Swiss Bank account.”
“Daamar. Amaavas. Trikaal.” 
“Abish is so unattractive that he was an altar boy for 7 years and not a single priest molested him.”
“Abish Mathew is so unattractive, after he’s done masturbating, it takes 3 days for his dick to resurrect.”
“Abish is such a virginal kid, in 5 days, he’s going to give birth to Jesus.” 
“Rohan Joshi is famous because he dated Alia Bhatt’s sister.” And that he is cute. And that he is the Robert Vadra/Rahul Gandhi of the team. I am seriously not going to write these lines 5 more times because this is what happened for the rest of the night.
“Rohan is towny, he thinks Malad is something lawyers say in courts.”
“Rohan moved from Malabar Hills to Santacruz. That’s like going from Ranbir Kapoor to Ranvir Singh.”
“The only way you make Tanmay read something on paper is by serving him bhel on it.”
“When Tanmay is lonely, he doesn’t go on Tinder, he goes on Zomato.”
“Alia in the front row has no idea what the fuck ISIS is.”
“Alia, don’t even try to make a connection between ‘K’ and Potassium.”
“Arjun Kapoor has flunked his 12th grade.” *on repeat* Almost 3 of them made the same joke.
“Arjun, your greatest role so far has been your career.”
“Give it up for Karan Johar guys, like many in the industry have.”
“Director, actor, producer, screen writer, you’re like 4 guys in one. Exactly how you like it.”
“In Lootera, Ranveer digs a really long tunnel. It proves that no matter how remote, dangerous or smelly, if there’s a hole, Ranveer Singh will enter it.”
“We wanted to get Ranbir Kapoor for the show, but we could only manage to get Ranveer Singh, which is what Deepika did.”
“Ranveer Singh is so Sindhi, he insists that his girlfriends bring back the receipts from the abortion clinics.”
“Deepika, I want to thank you for dating Ranveer. You’re taking one for the team.”
“Ranveer, you’re so slutty, every time I start to write a rumor about you, you’ve already done it.”
“If you fucked a chick with Ebola, she would die of AIDS first.”
As I was nearing the end, I saw Tanmay Bhat’s roasting and I liked it genuinely. He made some really good points – “Karan Johar is awesome at uplifting the already fucking uplifted!”
And after all of these, finally, Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor take their turns for the roast. Without any cue cards in hand, I must give it to them that they were the ones who were quite funny than the ones who were supposed to be. “That hurt harder than the time I gave Karan an audition for Shuddhi”, said Ranveer. Yet again, pointing at how clean the auditions can be. Ranveer pointed out that all the jokes by Aditi Mittal were male bashing, but quite surprisingly, not many were made on her!
“Call us whatever you want, we’re fine with it. Because unlike these losers, we have the option of having sex with whoever we want.”
So that is what being stars is all about, yes? I guess.
Here are some Twitter reactions about the show:
AIBKnockout: “Sex is like money, other people have it.” Girls: Bwahaha. Altaf Raja: Have sex with me, I have Rs 900 Girls: Chee.. Low life — Finger of India (@IndiaFinger) January 30, 2015
And the there were people who liked it just because they were fangirling!
Withdrawing myself from the race to publish an #AIBKnockout thinkpiece due to fangirl status. Way to change the game, @AllIndiaBakchod :)
— Rega Jha (@RegaJha) January 29, 2015
And then the truth was spoken!
After watching AIB Roast.. Virat Kohli started using ‘Tanmay Bhat’ instead of bc — Champ-u-terology (@BolshoyBooze) January 30, 2015
AIB: Bahenchod Girls: Bwahahahahahahahahahaha Normal Tweep: Bahenchod Girls: Maa Bahen ki izzat karna seekh le
— Bhaiyyaji (@bhaiyyajispeaks) January 29, 2015
#AIBKnockout Show-All celebs BC,MC pussy etc etc Girls-wow they r so cool Me on Twitter-BC MC Girls-Haww u abuse how bad BC Double Standards — ROFL India (@ROFL_India) January 29, 2015
Karan Jo: Hey dude. Looking handsome. ;) Guy: Excuse me. I am straight. KaJo: Koi nahi tu straight hi rahiyo.. me jhuk jaunga saamne.
— Maithun Chakraborty (@Being_Humor) November 20, 2014
In the end, all I would like to say is, where at one place I did laugh, it saddens me to the core to see the hypocrisy and double standards of the people involved. If humor is to be taken in a good sense, let us standardize the things that are joked about and let us take them as jokes always, not make issues and controversies out of them the other times.
What do you have to say about the show? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
All images are sourced from AIB.
