Vishal Dayama, the senior writer at All India Bakchod (AIB), has found himself in a fix after making a derogatory blog post about his recent trip to Agartala on his personal blog. Dayama was invited to NIT Agartala for an event recently. The blog post was published on the 16th of November but it created a furore only later following which he deleted the post from his blog.
In the post, Dayama wrote, “A few days ago, Devaiah (my colleague) and I went for a fully sponsored trip to a place, which frankly, we could’ve afforded easily. For those of you who are unaware of Agartala: no, it’s not the changed name of Aligarh, it’s, in fact, the capital city of Tripura, which if you don’t know is one of the seven northeastern states, and again not a changed name of Muslimabad.” And it only gets worse here on.
In the next paragraph, he says, “…we exchanged a second look of shock since we both didn’t know whether Agartala was a place or was it the scientific name of a rodent”. Then, he went on to write, “The guys who came to pick us up had an Omni Van because I think they wanted to reassure us that we indeed were imprisoned there for the next two days. Since it was dark, we couldn’t see much of the city (read: forest) on our way to the five-star guest house. We entered our respective rooms only to be greeted by a spider in my room and a monitor lizard in Dev’s.” He continued, “…but because of the forest and the 17th century that Agartala has been living in, lizards were unaware that their greeting might be a cultural shock for two dudes who have lived their entire lives in metro cities.”
Dayama had some insulting words for the youth of Agartala as well. He writes, “We attended the event, everything went well, people were even taking selfies with us. We both came to the conclusion that it might be because they were seeing people from the 21st century for the first time.” His insults towards Agartalites do not end there. He speaks of his visit to the Bangladesh Border, “Dhaka border was nothing like Wagah border and we left disappointed from there after clicking some selfies with the big dump of garbage which was located right at the border. Either it was a metaphor for Bangladesh or it was a metaphor for people who go and visit that border. I think it was the latter.” He continued, ” Our next stops included a wildlife sanctuary, which was being run only by monkeys, both literally and metaphorically”.
People from Agartala were not amused by the blog post. Saikat Chakraborty, one such person, confronted him on Instagram, following which he deleted the post. In the screenshots of the conversation Chakraborty posted on his Facebook account, Dayama could be seen apologising saying it was written in humour and not out of spite and that he was sad that people had gotten offended over it. He then said that he was deleting it from everywhere.
Anup Paul, a content writer from Agartala, says, “That guy lacks general knowledge. If they think this is humour, then they must stop their content.” Another student from Agartala, who wishes to remain anonymous, said, “The AIB founders are accused of molestation and icon defaming. But still, they masquerade their insult as humour intended not to hurt sentiments”. Shubham Dey, a pass-out from NIT Agartala, said he was “disgusted” after reading the post and that he did not expect something like this from the senior writer of AIB.
A resident of Agartala told OpIndia.com on condition of anonymity, “The detailed description of Agartala he gave in his post, it couldn’t be just humour. Although he says that it was made in jest and he exaggerated things for the purposes of humour, I think there was genuine malice beneath his words. His post was degrading.” Another resident shared similar sentiments. He told us, “There is a huge difference between humour and disrespect. The way Agartala has been portrayed by that article shows that it has been written just to mock Tripura and its people. The writer was invited to a prestigious college but instead of being grateful, they attempt to belittle us and the hospitality shown by the students of that institute.”
Things haven’t been going well with the AIB in recent times. AIB co-founder Tanmay Bhat admitted to knowing about an employee’s sexual transgressions and yet remained quiet. Gursimran Khamba, another co-founder, was also accused of sexual misconduct following which he was sent on a leave of absence.
