Some days ago a video hit the net and turned viral in seconds. It featured two very popular young actors, the ebullient Ranveer Singh, best known as Deepika’s current beau, and the charming Arjun Kapoor, who is far better as himself than when he tries to reprise his uncle Anil Kapoor’s tapori act. Ranveer and Arjun are hugely gifted guys. They are also gifted with a sharp sense of humour. I guess that’s why they and ‘roast master’ Karan Johar, the favourite butt of sexual innuendoes, allowed themselves to be ‘roasted’ by the brilliant horrors of All India Bakchod, a nasty bunch of stand-up comics if ever there was one.

Can you really have a bunch of nasty stand-up comics in India? Very unlikely. Like us journalists these days, they too have mastered the art of self censorship to sidestep the inevitable reproach of the chattering classes and, worse, the fear of attacks from the political class who have us all by the short and curly. Politicians are a cunning lot. When you take them on, you can never anticipate the repercussions. You must be brave enough to face them. I know. I have faced them. And the funny thing is they don’t pinch you or slap you; they try to knock you out. They go after your job, your career, your life.

I was lucky; in my case, it was more often than not the Congress who went after me and their skills are not exactly exemplary. So I survived. Only to be labelled today as a Congress lackey by the BJP trolls who rule the net. This, if nothing else, makes me feel vindicated. When all sides dislike you, you must be bloody good.

But not everyone can take on the system. It’s ruthless and punishing. So, like our TV channels, we all try to censor ourselves. This does not make for great journalism. Nor, I dare say, great comedy. For we all know how easy it is for our netas and their four-legged flunkeys to provoke foolish, meaningless, violent outrage. Rare libraries have been burnt down. Movie theatres, vandalised. Newspaper offices ransacked and editors forced to step down, ostensibly for other reasons. But behind each act of vandalism was punishment for stepping out of what is perceived as The Line. A line set by our netas.

That’s why it’s so wonderful to see these young stars ready to be roasted. For those less informed, some of the world’s most famous people have allowed themselves to be roasted by the nastiest comics in business. They have not only lived to tell the tale but have actually seen their popularity leap as a consequence. It’s called, in common parlance, being a sport. To allow others to openly pick on what is seen as your weaknesses (an illegal son, a hidden mistress, a secret phobia or a busted Swiss account), the kind of stuff most famous people prefer to keep under wraps. It requires rare strength, courage, self confidence to take it on. And Ranveer and Arjun did it in front of a live audience of 4000 before it went on the net. Alia Bhatt had done a similar video, where the same guys poked fun at her for the booboo she made on a Karan Johar show when asked to name the President of India. That video, too, went viral. Making Alia into a huge star.

This brings me to the moot question: Why don’t we roast our netas? They have a zillion things to hide. To protect themselves, they have the censor board, the police, the defamation laws, the marauding mobs they command. They have every weapon they require. It’s only when they fall foul of their own ilk that the media begins to take them on. Like A Raja or Suresh Kalmadi. Or Shashi Tharoor. Or when they become a soft target, like Rahul Gandhi is today. Or Mamata Banerjee. Otherwise, no one can touch them. They are protected by an invisible cloak of teflon. What stops these mighty people from occasionally taking that cloak off and showing us they are human? That they are just like you and I, open to mistakes, often foolish, and generally quite confused. In short: mortal, human, charmingly vulnerable. Real people. Not what they seem to be, the ultimate horrors of our time.

Imagine what a roast we could have done of the pompous, self righteous Kiran Bedi or the muffler-clad self-declared anarchist Arvind Kejriwal just before the Delhi elections. (Nobody would even watch an Ajay Maken roast. He’s such a non-person.) What stupid, abusive trolls try to do on twitter could be brilliantly executed by clever comics with a sly and wicked sense of humour. Trust me, politicians will go up in public esteem if they signed on for a roast. It’s so much sexier than getting your flunkies to hurt abuses at rivals. It could enhance reputations, increase ratings of our leaders, make politics so much more fun. Currently all our leaders look like boring cardboard cut-outs.

Anyone ready? Anyone with sllab?

Want to see if we can change Indian politics with a little bit of irreverence instead of all this smarmy toadying up? It could make our netas more bearable.