How Can She Slap, Sir?

Apparently, there is this reality show called Dadagiri (TV's meanest game show) on a channel called Bindaas. I'd never heard of either, till this happened (Via: Great Bong):

(Warning: The Audio/Video is NSFW)



After being covered on TMZ, the video is a global hit and copies are available on virtually every video-sharing website.

Here is a short summary, if you can't watch the videos for some reason:

The show pitches college students (contestants) against college bullies (hosts). Every round has different flavours of bullying (all intent on humiliation of contestants, basically). One of the hosts "Isha - The Goddess" - plays the role of the college rich bitch, who is supposed to insult contestants for their ugliness and for their lack of class.

She was doing her usual 'your-sideburns-are-from-60s' routine (Part 1, above) while the contestants managed to remain cool and didn't respond to her comments. Infuriated (scripted, I think) she asked them whether they have tongues in the mouths (direct translation from the Hindi quip - 'munh mein zabaan nahi hai kya'). One of the two contestants said that they are quiet because they don't want to talk to her. She barked at him to "fuck off". The contestant managed a (weak) comeback of "you go". Something cracked inside the hostess, and she slapped the contestant. Shocked, the contestant slapped her back (Part 2, above).

The other host then jumped into the fray to defend the hostess and started beating up the contestant who kept asking "how can she slap, sir?" Thereafter, the whole crew seemed to descend on the poor contestant and proceeded to beat him to a pulp. In the process, apart from getting physically thrashed, he gets thoroughly abused verbally as well. Expletives were all over the place, in Hindi and in English.

Now, quite obviously, the first slap wasn't part of the script. That explains the reflexive return slap by the contestant. Moreover, he kept asking the host about the slap that he received. He has confirmed as much now (and is suing the channel):

“This incident occurred four months ago. The participants of the show had to pass through the litmus test of abuses and spats. And it was all scripted! We were all given our parts where 70 per cent was to be said as is and 30 per cent would be improvisations,” says Ravi. “There was this girl called Isha opposite me who was supposed to abuse me and I was to retaliate, but calmly. After a while when it came to improvisations, I presume she was out of words and came and slapped me hard. I was shocked and in the heat of the moment, I slapped her back. That led to the entire unit of about 70 people jumping on me beating me black and blue. It was a miracle in itself that I managed to escape from there,” he says. [TOI]

Legal tangles apart, I am on the contestant's side on this one. She shouldn't have slapped him in the first place. The rest of the crew had no right whatsoever to beat him to a pulp (he was thrown on the ground and kicked, and was reduced to tears). And the verbal abuse is just shameful, especially coming from a TV crew who are supposed to know better than to scream obscenities when the camera is rolling. Disgusting. Funny too, in a sad sort of way.

The channel, no doubt, is pretty happy with this turn of events. In fact, it probably deliberately leaked the clip to create controversy and raise TRPs.

PS: The incident has also become an internet meme. There is even a dedicated website, which sells "how can you slap" t-shirts.