Sometime back Deepika Padukone spoke about her depression. This time around she speaks about the choices that every woman is entitled to. In this brilliantly made film by Homi Adajania, featuring 99 women from across different professions, she talks about how a woman’s life, and every little choice in it, is hers to choose.

This video is not just for those with regressive sexist ideologies who think rape is a woman’s fault, this is also for the modern educated man who believes in being fair to women. Is he really fair to them down to every tiny detail? Is his idea of gender equality restricted to whatever is convenient to him or whatever civil society permits? Will he never judge a woman who sleeps around by choice or for money?

This video is for everybody who has ever judged a woman, based on her gender.

Your commentI clearly enjoyed the show but guys this is not the kind of program that should be available in the Public Domain like Youtube. Clearly AIB, Participants, Organisers and also those who went to see the show have not ensured that children, youth of our Country are not exposed to this kind of content and therefore they are suppose to sing in front of Law Enforcement agencies. Good thing is that hypocrisy of lot of people have been exposed and they cannot complain in future if somebody gives them their own medicines.

No doubt the show made me laugh. No doubt the people did have guts to face it publicly. But these things are good within a small group of like minded. But taking a public platform may not be a right. The good things are always good but negative things may give us initial kick but they harm us in the long run. We must understand what we are initiating in society as a part of this and what we are passing on to the next generation. Deepika recently had big problem with a news paper writing something about her but she herself was an object of making fun on her personal life. She found AIB cool just because Ranveer was there but was hurt when a news paper wrote something in similar lines. That clearly shows everything is not cool to everyone and the same thing need not be cool at different time. Personally I laughed at jokes but still I was questioning did we really need something like this? Let these dirty items be in their personal space and let the public platform be how it should be.

 AIB Knockout Roast of Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor has become a hassle of morality to a few launching their guns of wisdom to people. And while the platform of extreme madness and complete fun has taken down the particular show from YouTube, the act of criticism is attracting a lot of criticism in itself.

After Ashok Pandit, member of the current CBFC committee has garnered flaks of another level when he posted a filthy tweet regarding Karan Johar and her mother in the light of the incident; several other Bollywood stars have come out in open to share their views on the same.  

Actors like Sonakshi Sinha, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone who were seated in the front row during the show, took it to twitter to express their rage over the entire hoopla.

Alia Bhatt who is probably the most sporting Bollywood celebs we have today, wrote #AIBKnockout !!!!!!! What an unreal roast .. Clap clap clap @karanjohar arjunk26 @RanveerOfficial @AllIndiaBakchod outstanding !!!!!” followed by “Some "not taking life so seriously" lessons are needed. DESPERATELY!!!!”

Though the actress laughed her guts out at the show and have been doing that on every joke made on her mental abilities since always, Alia visibly raised a question that why to create fuss on something, which is about taking jokes on oneself and enjoying the life.

Actress Sonakshi Sinha, who is also often made an easy target of jokes due to her curvaceous frame and for being ‘Khamosh’ sarcastically wrote “So nice to see twitter is filled with such angels who point out hypocrisy n never use foul language n have nvr laughed at dirty jokes (haw)” on twitter.

The actress who was also targeted for possessing double standards – Deepika Padukone too took it to twitter and applaud her co-stars and AIB for creating a stupendous show. “The #AIBKnockout is the coolest funniest show I have EVER witnessed!@AllIndiaBakchod @arjunk26 @karanjohar @RajeevMasand,” she wrote.

Karan Johar, who became the severe one to be attacked by most of the criticizers expressed his stance in a single line and quoted “Not your cup of tea...don't drink it!!!”

Though both Ranveer and Arjun seem silent over the rage, the fact that they themselves have raised no objection over the entire ‘roast’ proves their point. When the celebs of such stature in the industry are not putting any objection over the jokes made on them, why people possessing extra ‘grey matter’ are unnecessarily extracting buzz out of it?

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to death my right to get offended. How dare you? Baahar mil.” – Desi Voltaire

Dear everyone,

Let’s just all take a deep breath. They’re just jokes. Unfunny, crass or whatever you want to call them, they’re still just jokes. The AIB Knockout video has been taken down. While we’d love to claim that it’s because so many people watched it that it broke YouTube, the truth’s a little sadder.

First things first; no one person or force forced us to take this video down. This is not something that’s happened because of a 3 am phonecall or a morcha at our front door or a gunman on a grassy knoll. Under the circumstances, this is us being pragmatic. Allow us to explain.

People who’ve been following our work will know that we’ve always tried to experiment with content be it on Youtube or a live comedy show, with the sole intent of making people laugh and/or think. AIB Knockout was another such attempt to try something new and bring the roast format to a country where celebrities aren’t often known to laugh at themselves. To our pleasant surprise, we managed to bring together consenting adults who were willing to be made fun of by other consenting adults in a crowd full of (wait for it) consenting adults. And if we’re honest, it was a phenomenally entertaining evening. Were the jokes repetitive? Crass? It didn’t matter because they happened in the spirit of irony and good humour. It was just liberating to be able to say those things, things that people have thought in one form or another privately for years. A lot of the laughter that night came from that spirit (there’s your answer, people who wondered why everyone was laughing at terrible jokes).

The video came with a clear disclaimer with several age and content warnings. No one was forced to watch it, we didn’t buy airtime on every single TV channel on Earth to broadcast it. YouTube videos do not magically auto-play in front of you. And yet the videos got over 8 million views. Far more importantly, on the video page, the people who liked them outnumbered the people who disliked them by ten times to one. Yes, ten times.

The format was the same as any international roast i.e. insult comedy, delivered in the form of one-liners designed to be as rude as possible. It is performed with the understanding that none of the material is to be taken seriously—none of the performers actually mean the “offensive” things they say to each other on the night. We clarify this simply to provide context.

With the Knockout, in our own juvenile, idiotic way, we wanted to push the envelope of comedy in this country. But then the envelope pushed back. Things got to a point where people who have supported us, people who work hard to make what we do come to life, were put in a position where things could get deeply unpleasant for them. And that’s a problem. We can live with abuse, hate, anger, fury, rage, ignorance, bigotry and perhaps even bullying. But we don’t want anybody to get hurt because of us. And we do mean anybody.

We hope it’s clear by now that we never write with the aim of hurting people. That’s not our goal and we daresay that no comedian ever does that. We don’t go to work and say, “Hmm, let’s offend XYZ people from XYZ community today.” If we really wanted to piss off people and hurt them, we’d be selling credit cards over the phone.

Our job is to raid the newspapers, pop culture and life for observations and analogies and it’s okay if you think we’re juvenile or unfunny. We respect arguments that are critical, and as for the arguments we don’t, we respect your right to make them without impediment. It is a courtesy we wish worked both ways.

Over the last few days, we’ve found ourselves subject to more scrutiny, judgment and opinion than we’re worth. This Knockout shouldn’t matter. In a secure culture it wouldn’t matter.

We’re lucky to have support pouring in from all quarters. First up, from our fans, just the greatest people in the world, who have nothing but good cheer and encouragement and positive thoughts. We were pleasantly surprised that people in power who we have made fun of in the past, including people from both the so-called right wing and left-wing, went out of their way to convey support to us. It was fantastic to know that they stand for free speech as much as us. Friends in the media have told us to stay our course, pledging their support for our right to say anything, no matter how ridiculous. Thank you to anyone who has stated in the last few days that we have the right to say what we want, not as comedians but more importantly as citizens of this country.

There’s a larger cultural conversation going on here, where we’re at the very edges of what it’s okay to say. And it’s a conversation we need to have now because the world we live in is entirely too complicated to be run by silences. We still stand by our belief in the right to absolute freedom of expression for us and for anyone who has anything to say about anything at all. We hope to be part of an environment that supports that sort of expression without fear of persecution, intimidation and most importantly, annoyance. As always, in our own AIB way we’ll continue to strive towards creating that very environment.

In the meantime, we’d like to say thank you to our fans and everyone else who is standing by us. You guys make the struggle worth it. To everyone railing against us and against the stars that were present, to everyone who’s decided we’re destroying the fabric of our culture, to everyone who’s called us seditious pornographers while plotting the downfall of Indian Values And Civilization As We Know It, we would like to reiterate that we are just a bunch of comedians who work, and have always worked, without any malicious intent whatsoever.

We encourage any and all conversation on the subject of freedom of expression, for our own silly selves, and for people better, smarter and more courageous than us. For hundreds and thousands of artists, commentators and any and all citizens that do not have the privilege of social platforms and reach that we do.

We are also cooperating with the authorities and hope to resume normal service soon. We’d like some sort of cheerful resolution to this so we can focus on more important national issues, like the upcoming Cricket World Cup.

P.S. Best of luck Virat Kohli. Sorry for the jokes. We heart emoticon you.

P.P.S. It’s a good thing nobody’s downloaded the file and put it on a torrent website or anything.