When you over-do the public image-building exercise under the misguided persuasion of your marketing team, you are bound to fall flat on your face.

So it is with Kartik Aryan. The Gods of good fortune have been smiling on this affable lad for a few years now. Things swung into speed gear for Kartik after the success of his mentor Luv Ranjan’s Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety. Both the earlier Pyaar Ka Punchnaama and this Sonu story were called out for being misogynistic.

Kartik didn’t care, as long as the fans loved him. The 12-16 bracket seemed to have fallen for his charms. And every day the gossip media dutifully reported a new romance with a comely-costar. Was Kartik courting Sarah or Ananya or Jahnvi? Casanova had finally met his match.

Even during the current lockdown, he continued to be the darling of the masses with videos almost every day, some of them cleverly supporting PM Modi for his Corona combating tactics.

This boy will one day make a great politician, I tell you! Not having the ability to tell a cheer apart from a jeer and certainly unaware of where to stop, Kartik has gone and ruined his party-time mood with a new shockingly misogynistic video where his sister is pulled by her hair and then dragged around the room as the camera accosts her for making a bad roti. Belan be damned.

I would like Kartik to come in here. I need to understand why he made this video, and that too with his sister playing the female lead? Was it done out of boredom or defiance? If this what the lockdown is doing to the stars then I suggest some deep-breathing exercises and mild meditation to combat the wild thoughts that enter a star’s head when he is not shooting or dating or trying to create the impression of being a serial dater.

And is Kartik’s sister playing his wife in the video? A wife who angers her husband for not making a roti properly? In that case, this is creepier and more distasteful than we thought.

Come on, Kartik. At a time when the lockdown has aggravated the volume of domestic violence in the country, you really think pulling your sister’s hair for not making a roti properly is funny?

Trolls have gone at the dimestore superstar with hammers and tongs. And he deserves it. Being stupid is not a crime. Celebrating stupidity certainly is.