Why Tannishtha Chaterjee’s complaint against Comedy Nights Bachao seems suspicious

On Wednesday afternoon, people were outraged, shocked beyond measure by the realisation that our society still places value upon skin colour, that somehow skin pigment is still directly related to our notion of beauty. They were shaken out of their stupor  when actor Tannishtha Chaterjee, wrote a Facebook post in which she claimed that she was ‘shocked out of her wits’, after encountering racist, casteist comments about her ‘dark skin’ on the show Comedy Nights Bachao. 

While the Colors team ‘apologised’ to Tannishtha, the show’s anchor Krushna Abhishek felt she was doing it for ‘publicity’. He told dna: "Tannishtha is going overboard. She is doing this for publicity. We always meet the actors before they come on the show. I had asked her if she had seen the show before and if she was familiar with our (roast) concept. She said she hadn't seen the show. She hadn't watched even AIB Roast. If she didn't know what it was, she shouldn't have come on the show. Secondly, we gave more importance to Radhika Apte who is a bigger star. That must have also been a problem for Tannishtha."

He said: "... it is a roast format, aur hamne wahi masti ki jo hamesha karte hai. Initially, she was enjoying, but after a while she told us she doesn't like this kind of mass humour.” Krushna even denied that she walked away saying that they had decided to cut it after three acts when they realised she wasn’t enjoying the show.

Despite not being a fan of mainstream Indian comedy shows, one is inclined to agree with Krushna here. Really what did she expect from a roast?

A roast is the opposite of a toast, and it's implied that you leave your self-consciousness back home. Everything that can be mocked is mocked.  Charlie Sheen’s roast knocked his drug habit and sleeping with hookers. Pamela Anderson’s focused on her boob job. Justin Bieber was asked if he dumped Selena Gomez because ‘she grew a moustache before him’. And Justin Bieber hit back with: “What do you get when you give a teenager $200 million? A bunch of has-beens calling you a lesbian for two hours.” Because that's what one does at roasts. One takes it and hits back. 

Jokes like kali kalooti or eating jamun are kosher. They hardly fall in the offensive territory. Not that one is denying the existence of prejudice against skin colour.  There’s a Rs 3000-crore fairness cream industry (2014 value) that functions on the premise that fair means huge professional and personal success. We still live in a nation where a woman’s fair skin and virginity is rated as highly as a man’s IIT-IIM degree. We as a nation are so-turned off by dark skin that we actually converted our black gods into blue avatars.

Going to a roast and being insulted is like going to the Vatican and complaining that one can’t fully discuss atheism, or going to the BJP National Meet and discussing the merits of a rare steak. There is a time and place for things, and expecting grace from a mainstream Indian comedy show is optimism to the point of foolishness. As is the outrage over it, suggesting  we as a nation are just waiting for something to get angry over. 

 India’s most infamous roast, the AIB roast mocked everything including Ashish Shakya’s dark colour, Ranveer Singh’s supposed promiscuousness, the Bollywood casting couch and Karan Johar’s perceived homosexuality. Back then, no one complained, and no one outraged other than the politicians and religious leaders who found a good reason to remain relevant. Doesn’t a ‘mass show’ deserve the same rights to mock as AIB? Or are their rights curtailed because the show doesn't match your elitist perception of entertainment? 

While it's the norm to blame Bollywood for casting Indians or even foreigners who are almost always as white as Caucasians, but the film industry is just a reflection of the our hopes and aspirations as a society.  Bollywood movies usually have fair-skinned heroines because that is what the societal perception of beauty is. Just look at Kajol, one of the few dark-skinned main actresses of the 90s, who seems to be using a whitening Instagram filter these days. However, on the flipside things seem to have taken a turn for the better now. Just as the industry is making better and more culturally relevant movies these days, we also have mainstream actresses who aren't as white as sugar. The likes of Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra and Bipasha Basu are all dusky and killing it in Bollywood these days. 

As for Tannishtha, all one can say is well-played. One totally supports your fight against skin colour prejudice, but the timing of the fight – four days after the release of your film – doesn't feel like a coincidence.  After the Radhika Apte leaked sex tape from Parched, which caused a huge discussion about gender-issues, this outrage will continue the buzz about this movie. Like they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Hopefully, it can translate into a few more people wandering into the theatre because despite one's disapproval of this particular 'marketing campaign', there's no denying that more people watching a nuanced movie like Parched is a good thing.