Team Aisi Taisi Democracy, consisting of musician Rahul Ram, lyricist and writer Varun Grover and satirist Sanjay Rajoura, had a first of its kind experience during a performance at the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT) in Allahabad on Wednesday evening.
The group were invited to perform at gnoTalks 2016 on the campus and the audience consisting of students and faculty were thoroughly enjoying their show which started around 7pm.
However, trouble started when Varun began talking about how Indians are hypocrites when it comes to sex and about the lack of sex education. The mere mention of the 3 letter word made a few members of the faculty uncomfortable and they not only walked out of the show, but also shut down the performer’s mic and asked the ATD team to leave.
“The couple of members of the faculty who shut down our show, weren’t against us talking about sex, their problem was that we were talking about it in the presence of women, which is exactly the kind of hypocrisy we wanted to highlight,” says Varun talking to The Quint.
“We’ve done similar shows in several colleges including IIT Bombay, BIT Vellore but there have been no problems as such. Our content is edgy, which is sometimes uncomfortable but it’s always funny. In the middle of a punchline, my mic got muted and it took us a little while to realise that it was intentionally switched off and then we were asked to stop the show right then and leave, because we have offended some people,” Varun adds describing what happened at the event.
What Varun says next is the important bit.
“Actually they were not offended. They said ‘yeh sab ladkiyon ke saamne aap kaise bol sakte hain?’ So it was not about ki yeh sab aap kaise bol sakte hain but ki yeh sab ladkiyon ke saamne kaise bol sakte hain. Which is the core of our hypocrisy in a way - all-male gathering mein sab chalega -uss mein ultimate sexist, misogynistic stuff bhi chalega, but you cannot have a healthy discussion about sex when girls are there,” explains Varun, hitting the nail on its head.
Aisi Taisi Democracy’s Facebook page has put up a post explaining their stand on the incident.
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