AIB-like roast has been part of Indian culture, so keep calm and roast

If I had hoped that the AIB Knockout video would have knocked some sense into the easily-offended Indian, I was wrong. The video has the culture-walas outraged, so much so that filmmaker and Censor Board member Ashoke Pandit has used the same idiom that participants had used to condemn the idiom the participants used: "Karan Johar could have easily shown his position while performing sex to his mom at home instead of making it public.#AIB Porn Show." You can safely say that he's being a member that he is.

The Maharashtra government has promised to probe the event after some news channels called it a blot on the nation. The raw nerve for them was the liberal usage of the four-letter words and the indecent gestures. Karan Johar was talking filthy in front of his mother. Ranveer Singh was a gutter-mouth with girlfriend in tow, and Arjun Kapoor was down and dirty in front of his family. This is not done. This is not Indian culture. A 'roast' is a format borrowed from the West.

That's not the real reason behind the outrage, though. They are outraged because AIB attacked their culture of hypocrisy. A common North Indian child grows up hearing the same words, in the streets, often at home and from peers in schools. Although these days, they grow up hearing less and less of those swear words and curses, thanks to the society westernising itself. Otherwise, the Indian culture provided ample space for this genre of growing-up knowledge. Swear words and curses have been an integral part of the North Indian life, since time immemorial. We have had our own 'roast' performed by women. Yes.

Sample this. At weddings, when the groom's side would arrive at the bride's home, in a baaraat, there would be song and dance, followed by women hurling swear words at the groom's side. The choicest of them would be reserved for the closest relations of the groom. The filthiest for the groom's father, mother, brothers and sisters. All of this, sung in chorus. There are children, little boys and girls, listening to all that. For those not used to it, this could be really offensive. But the groom's side laughs it off, and some relatives mind if they are not targeted. Because that could mean that they are not deemed important or close enough.

It serves a purpose. A wedding, fortunately or unfortunately, is supposed to be the unification of two families. If you cannot take insults from your own, you are yet to be a part of the family. That is the consent. That even if you insult me, I would not mind. That's the test of their sense of humour. This test has been applied in rural North India for centuries. You find insults insulting only when they come without consent. You mind people laughing at you, only if you are not laughing with them. We also have, in this part of the world, a festival called Holi that has a similar test. A colourful festival in more than one sense of the term. It begins with plain water to greasy colours, and goes on to insults of mild to vile kinds.

There are special functions attended by the high and mighty in small towns, where the high and mighty are insulted and hurled curses at by performers. And everybody laughs, including the target. There are special booklets printed and posters stuck on electric poles that on any other day would invite mass violence. It doesn't. Because Holi is the day of the unwritten consent. The poet Chirkeen, apart from writing about excreta, wrote extensively and filthily about other filth. Qawwal Shahid's concert drew large crowds for his style of elegant Urdu words infused into the filthiest of thoughts. These are all on YouTube. They are disgusting. But it used to be public, and purportedly part of our culture. Unlike the West's birds and bees, Indians learnt it all from literature of the street, from the song and dance of the unspeakable. They did not need to brush anything under the carpet, because there ain't a carpet on the streets. It was open, like the books wrapped in yellow cellophane.

I watched the AIB Knockout show, uploaded in three parts on YouTube, and found it to be filthy in large parts and funny in some and filthily funny in most. Some parts were so offensive that I would fast-forward them if I ever watched it again. Yes, things offend me. And when I know that something would, I try and keep away from them. But I marvel at the easily-offended, who get easily offended and decide to shut other people up.

Though it is obviously an offensive show and is meant to be so, in this dumbed-down literal age, let me point out some facts before I get on with saving Indian culture. The show is a roast, a form of insult comedy where people insult each other. It gets filthy and nobody minds it, because there is consent. Written, and unwritten. There's a lot of pushing the envelope involved. In the AIB Knockout, one could see the envelope being pushed, because it was forced, and doesn't come naturally. It was so deliberate that it stopped being funny at times. My reaction was, 'What rubbish!' But I also realised that this needs to be done. We cannot forever shy away from things thinking that the Indian society is not mature enough to handle this. Well, let's raise the society by raising, or shall we say lowering, the bar. The bunch of guys at AIB did just that. You don't like the bar, change your position. Because KJo is entitled to his. The Freedom of Expression enshrined in the Constitution gives Ashoke Pandit the right to say nasty things about Karan Johar and his mother. But it is not funny because for being funny, it must have their consent.

PS: It is rare that swear words targeting men involve men. Often it is the mother and sister that are used in abusing someone. Is it because AIB went beyond the culture of the mother-sister imagery. Ashoke Pandit would know.