Watch full video before defending Gurugram man on Pranit More’s show
On Pranit More’s show, a viewer from Gurugram talked about following a woman after buying biryani and how he harassed her. But really, have you watched the full video of the show?
There has been a lot of discussion and debate on the story of this boy’s Rs 370 biryani in comedian Pranit More’s show. Yes? No, what they said, how they believed it was funny, and why no one – not even the stand-up comic hosting the show – silenced or stopped them, deserves far more scrutiny than the conversation that has happened so far. So before you feel bad about the guy losing his job and being criticized left, right and center for that unsavory story, learn the whole story as he told it. Because viral clips only tell you part of why it’s so disturbing.
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This matter came to light for the first time last week. Some video clips of the guy (we declined to reveal his name because why promote him?) from More’s Gurugram show went viral. The 23-year-old web developer man told the story of a girl with whom he wanted to have sex.
long story short.
He met a girl. they talked. They met again. He claimed that he paid Rs 370 for the biryani he ate. That transaction created a hope in his mind. He believed that she had spent the money and now he was entitled to access to her body in return. They went to a park where he started looking for opportunities to touch her. She initially refused the kiss, but he kept pushing. Eventually, they kissed and then he started touching her.
“put my hand in her leggings (I slid my hand inside her leggings),” he said into the microphone in front of a laughing, cheering crowd. And God knows how much I hate writing those words. But if he can say them publicly and proudly, then we can write them clearly and expect people to confront what’s actually being described. While people were laughing at the show, and Praneet treated it like a box of gold material, and that person himself validation. Here’s a more honest way to describe that story:
The moment he believed he had successfully crossed one boundary, he immediately attempted to cross another. He put his hand inside her pants in an attempt to touch her between her legs. Before describing that act he also says, “I was not enjoying it (I wasn’t feeling it).”
Think about that sentence for a moment. The kiss wasn’t enough. He wanted more. Not because he expressed a desire for more, but because he wanted more. The entire story is woven around his desires, his expectations, his disappointments and his sense of entitlement. The woman exists only as an object that moves through his narrative.
Watch the clip here and save your outrage for later. Because there’s more.
While the clip ends with her talking about putting her hand inside her leggings, the story doesn’t.
Praneet, arguably the most accountable person in the room, given that it was his stage, his microphone and his show, rewarded the man with the prize money. He praised them for making the show a success and giving the kind of crowd-work which, according to him, had never happened before in his shows.
That – right there – is the problem.
You think the man has already paid a heavy price because he lost his job. Not me.
Can get a job again. Career can be rebuilt. Public memory is very weak. But even when such a story is laughed at, celebrated and rewarded, what society loses is far more difficult to compensate. Because what was being appreciated on that stage was not intelligence or humor. Not even shock value.
This was the right – A rape-culture mentality.
A man stood in front of the crowd and explained how he believed that by spending Rs 370 on a woman, he would get something in return. He described her clothes. He described her body. She told how he kept crossing her boundaries even after she had already said no. And he described all this as if he was describing some personal victory. And the room laughed. Not only laughed, but also rewarded him.
Every time this mentality is encouraged — or worse, celebrated — it sets the conversation around women and consent backwards. Whenever a man is encouraged to treat a woman’s autonomy as non-negotiable, anyone else watching knows that this behavior is normal, acceptable, perhaps even admirable.
Leave patriarchy aside for a moment. Leave ideology aside.
Any sane person who has been raised by women, around women, and who has witnessed their struggles, triumphs, and humanity, should have no difficulty calling this story what it is: a disgusting display of entitlement and outright hatred.
Now make that face.
Because a grown man stood in front of the crowd and reduced the price of the biryani bill to a woman’s clothes, her body and the access he bought. And he was not saying this out of shame. He was narrating it with great pride.
He was telling the story of his bravery. He laughed, gestured, recounted moments and recounted details.
Watch the clip again. Pay attention to laughter and expressions. Notice how vividly he revisits every detail. This is not a mistake to remember. It is the person he is resurrecting that he considers his victory. He tells the story the way people tell accomplishments, the way people tell the moments they are proud of.
This is what you should be afraid of. He lost his job, strangers criticized him online, his life became difficult for a few days. Yes. But the real horror is that for a few minutes, the entire room considered a woman’s violated boundaries as material. The real loss is that thousands of people watched and laughed and some people watched the same clip and still came away feeling sorry for it.
If your first instinct after hearing that story have sympathy for the man Whoever said it, anger is not a problem. The fact is that you can’t see why people are angry.
The tragedy is that predatory behavior was momentarily mistaken for charisma and some people are still debating whether the reaction was excessive, rather than asking why the story was appreciated in the first place.