Bollywood deserves a toast for Karan Johar, Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh's roast

"Why are they saying in public what we say in parties?" - AIB's (All India Bakchod) Rohan Joshi pretty much summed up with that statement of his, what the AIB Knockout was all about. Well, if you're still clueless about it, the case in point here is the AIB's roast of Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, the video of which was put up on YouTube last night, and has already managed to break quite a few records as far as the number of views is concerned. And why not, after all, how many times do we see two young Bollywood stars - actors who are just about a few years old in the Hindi film industry - brave the avalanche of "filthy, rude, offensive" jokes that the duo so gladly did!

Apart from the core AIB guys - Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya - the others roasting the two actors included names like Karan Johar, Rajeev Masand, Raghu Ram, Aditi Mittal and Abish Mathew. From extreme gay jokes targeted at someone like a Karan Johar, to asking Rajeev Masand to stop calling himself a journalist because every time he does so, "ISIS beheads a real one", from Ranveer Singh's kiss to Deepika Padukone (who was in the audience) to explaining to Alia Bhatt the meaning of ISIS... the roast, for many reasons, was a game changer of sorts. It was something, which probably Bollywood could never have imagined being a part of. And as for us, the viewers, neither could we have imagined such kind of self- and Ranveer-Arjun-damnation that this panel of roasters presented us with.

In all, a perception of Bollywood as being the touchy-tetchy-irate-offended-at-the-drop-of-a-hat ivory tower residents is quite down the drain now, thanks to actors like Ranveer and Arjun. And well, Karan Johar, too, who, right at the beginning of the act, says that his mother - Hiroo Johar - who was present in the audience "would need an ambulance at the end of this (the evening)", thanks to the numerous times he's the butt of nasty, downright evil jokes. In a way, the roast was probably Ranveer, Arjun and Karan's way to ask most of uptight Bollywood to loosen up a bit, and to learn to laugh at themselves. For example, just imagining a superstar like a Salman Khan or an Aamir Khan, up on that podium, having themselves subjected to 90 minutes of raw, bawdy darts seems like an illusion that can probably never come true.

In India - especially Bollywood - the idea of a roast is as unimaginable as, well, continuing in the AIB vein, Karan Johar coming out of the closet unless Jaya Bachchan has an aarti-thali in her hands and a song on her lips. Rumours and gossip, till date, have quite been the reason Bollywood has not exactly been happy with people who spread them. Facing those gossip-laced barbs, and a thousand times more caustic than what a normal rumourmonger would have been content with, is the reason Ranveer and Arjun are so to be lauded today. For taking a joke on themselves is exactly what Bollywood is not very famous for.

When actors who are yet to find a firm footing in Bollywood do something of this kind, they are probably paving the way for a much more open-minded and tolerant film industry, where people are not offended every single time someone begins a rumour about some dating someone else. The Bollywood, which is always raised a toast to in public, and torn apart in parties in private, was just roasted, ripped apart, stripped down and no one spared - this roast, for example, had jokes on Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor's accent at the Oscars, Sanjay Kapoor's lack of talent, Alia Bhatt's lack of brains, Deepika Padukone's choice of boyfriends, Virat Kohli's centuries, Anurag Kashyap's films, Sonakshi Sinha's weight... where does one end! And this young crop of actors - Deepika, Alia, Sonakshi were all in the audience when they were being torn apart - deserve a standing ovation for their ability to laugh at themselves.

The people who swear at Bollywood have fewer reasons to do so today. And the ones who swear by Bollywood, have even more reasons to be happy about them.