New Delhi, April 8 Popular comedian Samay Raina has teased a second season of his controversial show "India's Got Latent" in a new stand-up special where he spoke about the controversy that led to multiple FIRs against him and other panelists on the show.
In February last year, a joke made by Youtuber Ranveer Allahbadia led to widespread outrage and multiple FIRs against every comedian who was part of that particular episode of "India's Got Latent".
In his new special, Raina evoked George Orwell and his Kashmiri Pandit heritage to talk about the aftermath of the storm that led him to delete the entire show from YouTube.
"I don't think my show would have ended on a higher note," he said in the special, uploaded last night.
Before rephrasing it to, “I don’t think the first season of my show would have ended on a higher note than this. I will definitely bring back the show because I enjoyed doing it. I want to do a wild show and you can watch the softer version after the censors.”
In an emotional moment during the over-hour-long act, the 28-year-old comedian recalled how he finally broke down when he saw the parents of his friend, and the owner of the show’s venue, Habitat club, Balraj Singh Ghai, caught in the crossfire.
“Ranveer is receiving death threats, his family is scared, and everyone is messaging me, ‘Bro, what happened?’ I was feeling so guilty that morning because something that I had uploaded had caused all this… Then I saw one video that Balraj’s wife sent to me and that broke me completely. That was the final nail in the coffin.”
“Inside Habitat, Balraj’s parents, who are in their 70s, and they haven’t done anything wrong, they are just running that comedy club where we used to shoot. They were pleading with the young police officers, ‘Sir, please let us go, we have done nothing.’ I completely broke down watching the video, and I was just crying,” Raina said.
The comedian said when his mother called to check on him, he was so disturbed that he didn't pick up her call. But when he did, she was shaking with fear and worry.
He also spoke about how Apoorva Makhija, who was also facing backlash and named in multiple FIRs, was only defending herself against a misogynistic comment.
"Now I have three FIRs against me. I always knew that this would happen, but I used to think that I would get in trouble for something I said. In that episode, I didn't even say anything. I was just sitting in a corner. We Kashmiris always end up in the crossfire.”
The comedian said that the Assam police kept asking him if he was ready to apologize, and he kept repeating that he hadn't said anything, and that the joke made by Allahbadia was also an old one.
"But they kept asking, and I thought about it. Whether to apologize or not, it's a serious question for a comedian. I remembered a line by George Orwell. He was a great writer, and he once said, 'Every joke is a tiny revolution, and the revolution must never stop'."
"But the Assam police also said, 'We will put you in jail.' I thought about these two lines, and I realized that saying sorry is better here. You can't bring a revolution in your society through a joke. If George Orwell was in Assam, he would say, 'Every revolution is a tiny joke'. You only fight when the fight is fair and you have a chance of winning. When the fight is not fair, you just back off."
The comedian also roasted the media, politicians, comedian Sunil Pal, singer B Praak, and "Shaktimaan" actor Mukesh Khanna in his inimitable style.
"B Praak came to criticize us. He said, ‘He will never attend our podcast’. Who called you, bro? All of them were ready to eat us alive. Politicians, celebrities, Sunil Pal. He said, 'They should learn from Kapil Sharma'. And Kapil Sharma was to be the next guest on the show, and he was messaging me how he loved my show. Shaktimaan was also there. What do you say to him, 'Sorry, Shaktimaan'?"
"He said it would have a bad influence on children. Really? I don't know how many of you watched 'Shaktimaan' in that era. Every month, there would be news that some child had jumped from a building after watching 'Shaktimaan'."
Raina also addressed the elephant in the room, when he answered why he decided to retain Allahabadia's controversial line in the first place.
"But what you don't know is that he said it eight times. He said many other vulgar things that I edited out. From my POV, I had killed 99.9 per cent germs.”
The comedian said he was determined to defend Allahbadia until the end, but he couldn't even defend the Youtuber at his home.
“Ranveer Allahabadia broke character, which is why people couldn't digest what he said,” he added.
The special, uploaded last night, has already garnered over seven million views.
