Satheesh Vellinezhi
| Photo Credit: Satheesh Vellinezhi
People, please stop it! I beg you. I know you are probably saying the same thing to me, ‘stop writing’, that is. Please understand, before I deal with your ‘stop it’, you must also promise to deal with my ‘stop it’. Okay, before you start sulking, let’s address your call to ‘Stop It’, first. In my defence, it’s not in my hands to ‘stop it’. You must, in all earnestness, take this up with The Hindu, management. They’ve put me under a massive contract where I get large sums of money and a fortnightly audio message on WhatsApp, saying ‘shaabash’, in exchange for which I must return the favour by writing this still-to-be, after many long years, award-winning article. So, I can’t ‘stop it’. You can’t ‘stop it’. Only they can ‘stop it’. Kindly contact ‘they’ to take this matter forward, and obviously, you have my full and unconditional support.
Now that we have swiftly dealt with your ‘stop it’, can we please, I beg you please, deal with my, ‘stop it’? I’ll begin by requesting a little patience. I have to provide background and context to my particular, ‘stop it’. This begins with a controversy surrounding a certain famous podcaster and youtuber, (both, today, are acceptable professions with degrees in both being available online, I speak from experience), whose name is Ranveer Allahbadia. However, since I came from a long line of lawyers, to avoid any possible libel or defamation motion, we must use an alias. So, let’s agree to refer to the above by the name Sanveer Ballafadia. As you can see, there is no remote resemblance between the two names.
Sanveer now finds himself embroiled in a controversy over a comment he made on a show, which I thought was about historical facts, but then descended into the never-ending abyss of the genre people in South Asia call comedy. Having done my due diligence, I can honestly tell you I have no idea what Sanveer said because I couldn’t watch the show. My server is down. Suffice it to say, this whole brouhaha has led to poor Sanveer being branded amongst the world’s top 10 criminals, sandwiched between Harvey Weinstein and Bernie Madoff — a position, which in certain cultures, one could be proud of. The problem is people from various media outlets are all asking me to react to Sanveer’s comments. I’ve been inundated. I can’t breathe, have started throwing up, buried and suffocated by these requests. I hope you realize now, where my ‘stop it’, is coming from. If you don’t mind, I’ll use the power of this newspaper column to explain my stance once and for all.
“Dear Media, I am innocent of this whole matter. I have not watched this controversial episode, as there is paint drying in my house, and I’m fascinated by that process. Also, I really don’t know much about Sanveer Ballafadia, except for some data I found online, such as he is a male, is right handed, and can smile for over 15 minutes for no reason whatsoever. Now, coming up is my legal defence. Here’s the thing, cultures and admin are more interested in censoring viewership according to age. That is, the content should be for people aged 21 plus only. Au contraire, I think age censorship must be applied the other way round. Over 50, (myself included), should be stopped from viewing certain programmes. I sincerely feel we could’ve skipped the entire controversy if the reverse age ban had been in place, and, more importantly, I could’ve referred to Sanveer Ballafadia by his birth name”.
Let’s hope everybody gets the message and “stop it”.
The writer has dedicated his life to communism. Though only on weekends.
Published – February 21, 2025 05:03 pm IST
