 "On Air with AIB season 2 explores a funny side to Nationalism, Pahlaj Nihalani and Gurmehar Kaur")
On Air with AIB season was quite popular, with 10 episodes that spoke about topical subjects like Punjab’s drugs situation, HIV/AIDs in India, police brutality and Delhi pollution.
The second season of the show premiered on Monday, 6 March, and the boys at All India Bakchod, Gursimran Khamba and Ashish Shakya started the show with everyone’s favourtie sanskaari person (not Aalok Nath, but better) — Pahlaj Nihalani. (Or as AIB calls him, “chwanprash se brush karne wale pahlaj”)
This colourful introduction was courtesy the recent news of Pahlaj Nihalani banning the film Lipstick Under my Burkha, a film about four women exploring their sexuality, for being “too female oriented”.
As Khamba said, rather funnily, about this whole episode, “a film about women discovering their sexuality, or as Bollywood calls it, ‘flop’”
Ashish Shakya add, “some films are violent, some films are communal, this film has ‘aurat’.” Khamba pointed out that the CBFC seemingly “lose their shit when they realised that “aurat log bhi sex karte hai? kya baat hai (women also have sex? wow, nice)”
AIB then came up with an idea for making sure Lipstick Under My Burkha gets a release. “Call it Lipmasti, and put Ritiesh Deshmukh in a burkha — superhit!” (Except someone remind them that the sex comedies of 2016 were massive disasters at the box office. Small mercies?)
The episode then veered towards the most used term by Indians today — nationalism. Or as AIB calls it, “patriotism after 4 pegs”.
Rohan Joshi and Shakya go on to moderate this section, but not without a disclaimer: ‘Haan hum Anti-national hai!’
_"_When mughal came to India, AIB gave them wifi password,” says Rohan Joshi, also pointing out how, in Gurmehar Kaur’s case (this episode brings in the nationalism debate by using her now viral video as a peg), when woman in their audience hear that she go rape and death threats online due to her stance on Pakistan and peace, they probably are thinking, “oh regular monday then.”
This brings light onto the fact that depsite your views on nationalism and hyper-nationalism, normalising of death and rape threats on Twitter is extremely prevalent. And it’s a sad state of affairs.
Adding their humour to a serious discussion, Joshi further said, sarcastically, “India needs this brand of nationalism the same way Punjab needs more songs about luxury cars,” and how the word “solider” in any nationalism debate is like a Draw 4 card from Uno.
Make sure to watch Tanmay Bhat at the end of the episode in a special skit about standing up during the national anthem in theatres.
For other hilarious gems such as the above, watch the first episode of On Air With AIB season 2 here .
