Kunal Vijaykar must be a worried man. Who would have imagined that his rather innocuous TV series on restaurants across India, will turn out to be a vital ingredient for a political storm? In fact, Vijaykar has done many political satire gigs with Cyrus Bharucha for The Week That Wasn't and The News That Wasn't, but stayed clear of any major controversies.
The programme in question was his visit to a restaurant named ‘Silly Souls’, run by Union Minister Smriti Irani’s daughter Zoish. It looked like one of those fine dining restaurants located in suburban Goa, which also calls itself a “Southeast Asian & Italian Restaurant and Bar” offering an eclectic fare ranging from seafood to pork to beef.
The programme got aired without much ado a few months ago and the minister later was quoted by a website saying she was proud of her daughter’s achievements. Trouble broke out when the restaurant got caught up in a controversy regarding its bar licence. It was issued in the name of a person who died a year ago.
This was a Godsend opportunity for the Congress party and it was quick to fire potshots at Irani. She tried to deny the allegations and even held a press conference to say that her daughter was a college student, and the Congress party was doing all this because she had taken on the Gandhi family. The presser got wide coverage in the government-friendly mainstream media.
But all her spirited defence came unstuck thanks to Vijaykar’s video and Irani’s own earlier statement praising her daughter for her entrepreneurship. Her detractors are having a field day sharing these two widely on social media.
Her supporters, meanwhile, are a bit wary to back her as firstly they see her on a weak wicket with she herself endorsing the restaurant, and secondly, the issue involves alcohol, beef and pork - not kosher to their saatvik sensibilities.
People generally steer away from politics and crime reporting and opt for food and lifestyle reporting to keep controversies at bay. But no such relief for Vijaykar - His food video has become an innocent cause for a political blood sport.
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