Chaya Unnikrishnan (DNA; April 21, 2015)

Hrithik Roshan is annoyed with a TV commercial. Recently, he posted on a microblogging site, “An Intex ad using a handicap — a boy with a stutter to enhance the fluency of its product. Irresponsible. Insensitive. Want to ban something, ban this.” If you are wondering what got Hrithik’s goat, it’s the commercial that shows girls drooling over a guy Bhaskar, who is hot and fast. While the girls talk about how they love him, he doesn’t speak a word... till a voiceover says, ‘Bhaskarbhai tu kitna atakta hai’. To which he stammeringly replies, ‘Main atakta hoon, mera Intex Aqua Speed nahi.’ The point being made is that the phone does not hang. Playing on somebody’s disability is not cool.

For those who came in late, Hrithik, has struggled with stuttering since childhood. The actor to his credit has openly spoken about it and is quoted as saying, “It is one of those handicaps that is made fun of. Especially kids, you can’t blame them, but they end up being mean because it looks funny! So the childhood of a person suffering from a problem like this, is pure hell. From the time you wake up in the morning to night, you almost dread some days …. to wake up!”

Hrithik has admitted going for speech therapy to speak fluently and still does those exercises every day.

So his anger against the Intex ad is understandable. However, he seems to have missed a bike ad featuring cricketer Virat Kohli. This one shows a mute guy miraculously gaining his speech when he hears the mileage Virat’s bike gives! Maybe the actor should raise his voice against that as well. Or is this a case of selective sensitivity because Virat is a celebrity?