Twitter. The bestselling author of Five Point Someone, One Night at
the Call Center, Three Mistakes of My Life and more recently, Two
States, had more than 27,000 followers and was possibly one of the
most accessible Indian celebrities on the popular microblogging site.
All that changed around 5 pm Monday evening when he blocked Saad
Akhtar, a Delhi-based writer and cartoonist who runs a web comic
called FlyYouFools, who poked fun at Bhagat's apparent bad mood by
saying, "In a bad mood today, aren't we? Let me guess: Royalty check
came in?" Akhtar retweeted that message, which otherwise would have
been regular reply on Bhagat's and Akhtar's Twitter timeline.
This act triggered an avalanche. In the next couple of hours, a large
part of the Indian Twitterati seemed to rise against the "block". So
much so that, the hashtag #Chetanblocks became a trending topic on
Twitter's home page.
A flurry of messages, accusations, counter-accusations, one-liners and
cartoon strips followed. Around 8 pm or so, a video spoof came up on
YouTube showing German dictator Adolf Hitler getting upset that Chetan
Bhagat has blocked him.
Akhtar, whose Twitter handle is also called "FlyyouFools", was
responding to Bhagat agonising over the piracy of his books in three
different tweets: 1) "Almost anyone who is reading my pirated books
can afford the original. It hurts me a lot personally. Just sharing."
2) "Piracy kills publishers, esp domestic literature. Gives incentive
writers to move westwards. Don't do it if you care for Indian
creativity." And 3) At a broader level, a society that doesn't respect
intellectual property never excels at innovation. See what kind of
India u want."
Bhagat, whose latest book Two States retails at Rs 95 - around the
same price as a pirated book - told Akhtar he would block him if he
continued to be smart alecky in his messages, and when the latter did
not stop, Bhagat blocked him.
Bhagat in Hong Kong
The author is currently in Hong Kong helping a friend set up a new
company, and did not respond to our phone calls or emails, but he did
put out a clarification on his Twitter account saying he stands by his
decision to block Akhtar.
"Today, someone who had done so many times, trivialised my commitment
to India," he wrote. "Few things can hurt me more. I still didn't
block him and told him to stop. He enjoyed the attention and ridiculed
that as well. I took a call and blocked him... I stand by my decision
to block him, and I think I have the right to. Am aware tweets can
still be accessed. Just don't want him in my timeline."
Mail Today asked Akhtar if he and Bhagat followers on Twitter went too
far. "The situation got out of hand," he said. "He was angry over his
books being pirated and I kind of made fun of the fact that he's
getting a little too righteous about it as he was bringing in Indian
culture and intellectual property rights into it. So anyway I made a
smartass comment on it, which is what I do - I run a web comic after
all. He didn't like that, warned me that he'll block me if I didn't
stop. So I retweeted that message and he blocked me. All well and
good, except that fact that he blocked me (and a couple of others) got
picked up by other Tweeple and started gaining momentum. Pretty soon
#chetanblocks was trending on Twitter's home page and it quickly
degenerated into an angry mob."
'Price of fame of celebrities'
Delhi-based communications professional and active Twitterer Surekha
Pillai said the entire exchange - which lasted around four hours - was
"the price of fame of celebrities had to pay on a democratic medium
like Twitter", but also felt it went too far. "I believe it went way
too far," Pillai said. "While it was amusing to begin with, it was not
when it spiralled out of control with a virtual mob ganging up against
Chetan."
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