Virushka v/s Arhhan Singh - Clean India has taken a backseat in this slanging match

A guy in a chauffeur-driven car throws a cigarette packet outside his plush car. A starlet reprimands him. Her husband, a star cricketer, records the incident and shares it on social media. And the rest is all ‘twistery’!

The first ‘kahaani’ mein twist was that he immediately apologised on social media. Here’s what his Instagram post read:

Disclaimer: i have no desire to gain any mileage from this post of mine… Horrible! So I happened to carelessly Litter a sq mm of plastic while driving ! A car passing by rolls their window down and there we have our wonderful @anushkasharma ranting and yelling like a crazy roadside person! While I’m apologetic for my carelessness , Mrs Anushka Sharma Kohli a little etiquette and politeness in ur dialogue wouldn’t have made u a lesser star !! There are all kinds of manners and hygiene .. verbal etiquette is one of them ! The garbage that mistakenly went out of the window of my “luxury car”… Was way less then the garbage that came out from your mouth… From ur “luxury car’s” window… Or the trashy mind @virat.kohli to shoot and post this online… For whatever gains… Now thats some serious trash!!!

A post shared by Arhhan Singh (@arhhansingh) on Jun 16, 2018 at 7:05am PDT

The thrash star v/s the trash star

The next twist in the story was that the public went berserk, switching sides at their own free will, oscillating between the thrash star and the trash star. While some were offended by Virat Kohli sharing a ‘shame-shame’ video of a random guy throwing garbage on the road, others found the act of shaming the ‘offender’ quite befitting and lauded the star couple’s guts for doing so.

Saw these people throwing garbage on the road & pulled them up rightfully. Travelling in a luxury car and brains gone for a toss. These people will keep our country clean? Yeah right! If you see something wrong happening like this, do the same & spread awareness. @AnushkaSharma pic.twitter.com/p8flrmcnba

— Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) June 16, 2018

I think, more than having guts, isn’t it about having the ‘power’ to do so? Celebrities and affluent people are blessed with the ‘power’ to either slap someone or indulge in a vulgar verbal war and still get away with it. Try doing what Anushka and Virat did – thrashing someone for littering on the road and recording a live video of the incident. There are sure-shot chances of you getting hit left, right and centre (ouch!), till you apologise to the ‘offender’.

If you are lucky enough, you just might get a ‘Sorry, won’t do it again’ kind of response. But then that’s leaving too much to chance, isn’t it? The keyword, hence isn’t ‘guts’, but ‘power’. So, when Virat Kohli tweets and urges people to do the s(h)ame, his advice needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The unexpected twist

Coming back to the ‘twists’, while this oscillation game was in full-swing, there came another unexpected twist! Turns out that the guy in question, Arhhan Singh, has worked with some of the biggest names in Bollywood, including Shah Rukh Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Shahid Kapoor. The next twist around the corner might just be that Madhur Bhandarkar announces his next film as ‘Kachra’ starring Arhhan Singh. Perhaps Arijit Singh could croon a melancholic Kachra song.

Can public shaming through social media work?

Pardon the indulgent digression, but the point is: Can public shaming through social media work wonders for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan? Love it or hate it, but you just can’t deny the fact that it can make a difference. Public shaming, be it online or offline, always works. But hey, hold on to your horses or rather chauffeur-driven cars, there’s always a different side of every story.

Arhhan Singh responded to the video with an Instagram post, in which he slammed Virat and Anushka for making a huge deal of the “garbage that mistakenly went out of the window”. Some Watsons even pointed out that that the video shared by Virat Kohli doesn’t actually show the ‘offender’ in action.

It need not, come on! If a man brushes against a woman in a crowded bus and she shames him on social media, do you expect her to share the ‘brushing against her body’ video too? It’s as if Virat Kohli knew well in advance that this guy in the swish car is going to throw a ciggie pack.

The latest twist in the tale

Now the next thing we hear is that Arhhan Singh’s lawyers have sent a legal notice to Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli for shaming him on social media. The ball, as he puts it, now is in their ‘court’. This seems to be the beginning of a barrage of accusations about to be thrown at each other that will likely transform into a war of colossal egos. You hurt someone’s ego by shaming him on social media and end up battling it out at the court of law. The court summons must have surely fired up egos of the star couple too, perhaps with an unspoken, ‘How dare he!?’ Now the question is: Whose ego will finally win?

Clean India clearly seems to have taken a backseat in this war of egos!