Pahlaj Nihalani has got the tag of being too “Sanskaari”; he has problems with the content of almost all the movies. Inclusion of adult word or adult act in the movie is completely against the CBFC chief’s thoughts. Recently, he has targeted the movie “Jab Harry Met Sejal” because of the word “Intercourse” in it.
He said that he will allow the makers to release the trailer only if one lakh people vote in favor of the word. Well, a news channel Mirror Now did take the challenge and complied to his terms; they garnered 1 lakh votes and posted the results on Twitter. Despite the terms being fulfilled, Pahlaj Nihalani maintained silence over it.
Yesterday, we reported about how a reporter tried to ask him about his change of decision and how he stayed mum. The Mirror Now reporter convinced him to give an answer but he didn’t speak a word and this continued for almost 3 minutes.
While some people found his silence too funny, there were some who wanted to know the reason. If he promised that he will allow the trailer and film to release after 1 lakh votes and if the result was achieved, why did he behave weirdly?
A reporter of Quint got in touch with him to know why he stayed silent. On this, Nihalani said,
“They claim they’ve got 1 lakh voters to say they are fine with Shah Rukh talking about intercourse on screen. I don’t believe them. I think it’s Shah Rukh’s fans on Twitter endorsing the use of the word ‘intercourse’. He has millions of followers on Twitter. If among them a lakh say yes to his dialogue, what is the big deal? Show me a lakh of ticket-paying members of the audience approving of an actor with a family image talking so blatantly about sex, and then we’ll see.”
He further added,
“They’ve been attacking me headlong because no one watches this channel. This is is their way of boosting their TRPs. They are not only using my name to sell their channel, they’re also hounding me to get me to speak.”
Then, he also got a bit sanskaari once again and said that he didn’t want to answer the question because the reporter was a young girl, who was of his daughter’s age.
Talking about this, he said,
“She was just a young girl asking these embarrassing questions. Sorry, I may be old fashioned or fuddy-duddy as the news channel calls me. But I can’t talk about sex with a reporter young enough to be my daughter. She insisted and kept following me right into the lift. To my credit I kept my cool. What if I had lost my temper? She’d gave gone back and made a story about sexual harassment against me.”
No doubt, Mirror Now doesn’t have many viewers, but our question to Mr. Pahalani is, “If you knew the channel isn’t popular, why did you even challenge them sir?”