The Incident.

On June 16, 2018, Virat Kohli, the Indian international cricketer, posted a video of Anushka Sharma, Bollywood superstar and his wife, to Twitter. The video was shot on a shaky phone camera, in a manner similar to the way most people today shoot the chores and regularities of their day, to share them with their social media followers. It presented Anushka, stopping another “luxury car” to a corner of a Mumbai road, and, in a tone of paternal anger and complain, bordering on an assumed superiority, asking the people inside to “please be careful, you can’t just throw plastic, like that, around on the streets. Use a dustbin.” The caption for the video was written from a vantage point of concern, and responsibility; Virat, the influential right-handed batsman, asking his followers to do the same, in pulling the defaulters up, and spreading awareness, if they ever saw something wrong happening.


There was also a sentence that snided the people caught up with, for being in a luxury car, and still having their “brains gone for a toss.” Interestingly, the statement assumed that with a luxury car comes a greater understanding and access to the democratic ethos that becomes an argument against littering on public property, as if it’s a given that those traveling in a luxury car are supposed to know what’s right from wrong, as if it’s a given that with money comes the right manner of existing in the public sphere. Whether it was the act, in itself, that angered the couple, or that a person in a luxury car would indulge in the act, is something that can’t be said for sure.

The video, obviously, spread like forest fire, across the jungles of trolls, and fans, through the plains of Twitter, and Facebook, and into the cavernous expanses of WhatsApp. There was an important disagreement in the masses that thought of the video as representing the “attention seeking and morally righteous” behaviour of the stars and those that thought of the video as an act of great strength and awareness, for celebrities who can suffer colossal backlashes for behaviour such as theirs. There were also those users who believed that the action had been right in its intent, calling socially problematic behaviour out, but the way the stars chose to deal with the issue, in not blurring the man’s face, they did not fully realise the capacity of the internet world to magnify even the slightest of misdemeanours into defaming and harassing narratives. The argument also factored in their celebrity status, and how easy things were for those living in the glass skyscrapers of Bollywood.


While one Twitter user said that “Virat and Anushka did the right thing,” because “it was required, first, it was a small lesson to the person who threw the garbage. Secondly, it has become the talk of the country,” another user mentioned that the “guy’s face is on news channel. His mom is being called out for supporting a patriarchy cultural. The internet world is not kind, they are brutal. All it takes is a flick of a thumb to destroy a life.” Virat followed up, to those who were busy converting the video into memes about the celebrity culture of the country, in a tweet that was slightly self-congratulatory, saying, “Lots of people who don't have the courage to do something like this find it funny.”

The Reply.

The man being scolded was soon identified as Arhhan Singh, a professional from Mumbai, who has had his share of the Bollywood glam as a child actor in the 90s. While the masses were busy trying to gauge the effect of Virat and Anushka’s actions on the man, in a public Facebook post, he stated, “While I’m apologetic for my carelessness, Mrs Anushka Sharma Kohli a little etiquette and politeness in your dialogue wouldn’t have made you a lesser star!” The post got a total of 661 shares on Facebook, and 11000 reactions. While one thousand people used the heart react to showcase their support of the man against the tyranny of the stars, 926 of them used the angry react, presumably to express their dismay at his actions and the response that followed. The very slight difference sure did strike this reporter as very interesting evidence of the postmodern dilemma, of who decides, in a world of permeating subjectivities, what is right, and what is wrong; what is the universal standard of understanding the reactions on social media as too extreme, or required.


But nonetheless, in mentioning the “square mm” of plastic, the apology and the post did read as reactionary and, largely, self-defensive. “It was just carelessly thrown plastic, just a square mm,” the post appeared to read, to this reporter. The masses, the citizens, were yet again, conflicted in the comments section, wavering between “Her asking you to “PLEASE BE CAREFUL” sounds like pretty good verbal etiquette” and “Anushka Sharma behaved like a brat. When you are trying to make people aware, your tone and way of explaining goes a long way.”

Becoming the fuel to the fire, Gittanjali Elizabeth Singh, a numerologist and the man’s mother, soon took to Instagram, on the 17th of June, with a reaction of her own. On her public Instagram account, she posted the video with a caption that held the entire episode to be nothing but a “cheap STUNT in the name of CLEANLINESS!” She reiterated the initial Twitter concerns surrounding the defamation of her son on social media because of the face that wasn’t blurred, and added that “You’ve also exposed him to unwanted hostility and danger from fanatics for such a small thing that you claim he has done but have no proof of anyways? I am concerned about my sons SAFETY !!!” This initiated into a conversation about the “Raja beta culture,” with Instagram users suggesting that it was because of mothers that always came to the rescue of their sons with their maternal sympathies, and articles that detailed the “syndrome” such as this one. The post had a total of 13835 likes when this reporter checked last, with close to 2000 comments.


Virat and Anushka have not yet responded to the posts by the man and his mother. Anushka has not posted anything related to the incident on her personal twitter, and the World has been in a frenzy trying to capitalise on this “feud” between the star and the common man, a myth that runs deep in the Indian consciousness. The reactions cannot be said to be uniform in any aspect, except that the event sure did manage to gather a lot of them. The only thing that remains objectively true is that a lot of people all around the world have become onlookers to the man’s “careless littering” and the celebrities’ “courageous” bravado.


There are several important things to be considered in reading this episode,, beginning with a genuine appreciation of the concern that Anushka and Virat have shown towards the public, the actress in putting down the glass window of the luxury car she was travelling in has surely initiated a conversation that is increasingly relevant in the light of Robert de Niro’s Tony Awards speech against the US President Donald Trump. If you’re wondering what on Earth can be the commonality between these two incidents, it happens to be the representation of a celebrity culture that isn't exclusive, shut up in the world of clubs and high rises, and Yeezys and windows with an impermeable film on expensive cars. India’s celebrity culture has long been concentrated in an almost religious worship that ensures a distance between the celebrity and the masses; this distance makes the celebrity blind to the concerns of the masses that accord them the stature they parade around with, and turn the masses into consumers of a universe that exists in isolation of the real one, illusions of a life very different from theirs and practically unattainable. In speaking out for a cause that has socio-political impact, the young filmstar and the cricketer have moved the social discourse slightly forward. But not without faults of their own, including not realising the capacity of their own impact and popularity, which has led to the very public defamation of the individual involved. The Privacy issue that Gittanjali mentions is not one that exists in her imagination, and looking at the ways in which the public outcry on the internet has come to affect the function and practise of several citizens, it remains real and something that Virat and Anushka needed to take into account while doing what they were doing.

Also, there is plenty to be said about their politics outside of this particular incident. In choosing to talk about this issue and then congratulating themselves on being aware, and their courage, they have made their indifference to the institutional problems of the country even more strikingly naked. This reporter remembers a beautiful photograph of Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli with the Prime Minister of the country, right after they had gotten married, and the mention of that photograph is not in passing, but because, there is a glaring lack of leaders, not from the system, in the Indian socio-polity. While the Hollywood has Robert de Niro and Meryl Streep, and the Palestinians have the BDS movement, the popular culture of our country has remained silent on the way the drama of the democracy is playing out, except for the few lone voices. Of course it takes courage to call the littering individual out and doing so on social media, but to be entirely honest, for stars of their position that courage just really takes the form of privilege, or at least the demarcation is a bit blurred.

But then again, who’s to objectively say that the “square mm” of plastic isn't just as bad as a slow and creeping decay of the Constitutional machinery and democracy.

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