Why the mummy stepped in after Virat-Anushka exposed a litterer on social media
Too many things have happened on Indian social media recently for any of it to make sense; but let us attempt to, anyway.
On June 16, actor Anuskha Sharma and her husband, the cricketer Virat Kohli, decided to demonstrate their combined modern, “woke” social media clout. Being a power couple, they decided to further the mantle of Swachh Bharat; by attacking a random — and privileged — stranger in the car next to theirs, for allegedly “throwing plastic on the road”.
Being the supportive husband and the modern man that he is, Virat Kohli recorded his wife lambasting the man, and subsequently tweeted it out and in just about two days, the video has, at least on his tweet, been viewed more than 1.4 million times.
Wunderbar.
But this was just the beginning. The aforementioned “too many things” are as follows:
Virat Kohli got trolled by way too many people for galloping on a moral high-horse and trying to gain “woke” brownie points for something this paltry, while conveniently maintaining a calculated silence on many issues that need to be voiced by influential celebrities.
Virat Kohli got miffed about said trolling and the consequent memefication: “Lot of people who don't have the courage to do something like this find it funny. Everything for people nowadays is meme content. Shame.”
The man who got an earful from Anushka Sharma, Arhhan Singh, who is supposedly “A God & a Man, a Philosopher & a Realist, a Dreamer & a Cynic, a harmonious polarity, a Contradiction…” decided he wanted his side of the story out as well. In a badly-worded, tone-policing Instagram post, Singh wrote: “The garbage that mistakenly went out of the window of my ‘luxury car’... Was way less then [sic] the garbage that came out from your mouth... From ur [sic] ‘luxury car's’ window... Or the trashy mind @virat.kohli to shoot and post this online... For whatever gains... Now thats [sic] some serious trash!!!” but not before adding a disclaimer that clearly pointed out: “i have no desire to gain any mileage from this post of mine...”
What integrity!
But what took the cake was an instance of something so excruciatingly typical of upper-class, upper-caste Indians, it is truly indicative of the kind of post-ironic age we exist in: His mother took to social media to vehemently defend him.
Gittanjali Elizabeth Mordecai, a numerologist, the author of And God Spoke in Numbers, and the mother of poor Arhhan Singh (the repetition of letters in both names makes sense now) took to Instagram as well — for an app that’s mostly full of aesthetic food photos and selfies, there’s a lot of drama there — and wrote a long-winded post about how this incident has led to her son feeling unsafe! And while it is worth noting that some of the points, nay, most of the points made by Gittanjali are extremely valid, the sheer hilarity of a grown man being defended by his mother in public overshadows everything.
To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong or (non-masculine) about a man turning to a woman for help. What is worthy of chuckles, however, is something author Samar Halarnkar likes to call the “Raja Beta Syndrome” — the idea that my privileged cis-gendered, heterosexual son, with his sheltered upbringing and bubble-existence can do no wrong. How dare you question him?
At the heart of this condition is the doting Indian mummy, amma, ammi, maa, aai, etc., who pampers and mollycoddles her son to the extent where he is almost incapable of performing most tasks without help, including cooking or cleaning or even finding a partner (who is often chosen by the loving mother to replace her as a caregiver; partner is a misnomer, really). A raja beta who can’t function beyond traditional male stereotypes is a raja beta who obviously needs help calling out a social media power couple for their brashness.
And as mummy dearest’s post continues to get more views, likes and “mileage”, especially compared to that of the son, one realises that while the real victim of this act of social media oppression has always been Arhhan Singh, the culprit is not Anushka Sharma or Virat Kohli, but the mother herself.
Despite doing it badly, Singh was doing his best to defend himself to the best of his principles and beliefs. Yet, for reasons we shall (possibly) never find out, his mother decided to intervene and save the day.
Do Indian men always run to their mothers when in trouble (perhaps mothers condition them with Pavlovian tricks)? Or, perhaps, Indian mothers are incapable of mastering the impulse to coddle their male-born(s). Either way, it has led to what can only be called a stellar weekend for Indian social media.