Delhi. VIP culture. Drunken brawls. Guns.
Surely, there's nothing new in this stereotype—one that gets repeated ad nauseum in the national capital. And so it was this weekend—a party-goer flew off his handle, brandishing his gun at a girl outside a five-star hotel. He bragged as a warning to the onlookers, including hotel guards, “I am from Lucknow!””
India, meet Bharat. Apparently, the out-of-towners have the same skewed dreams of power trippin' and privilege as the original carpetbaggers of the Lutyens zone. So, is a democratisation of the great entitlement game in the offing? An achche din for the wanna-bes?
In the video, the man in pink pants and a designer t-shirt apparently flew into a tizzy after being told off by a girl for 'mistakenly' (We hope and assume. This is Delhi, after all) entering the ladies' restroom at Hyatt Regency in south Delhi. In most parts of the world, you would think a sheepish apology and embarrassed smile would have been the end of it. But not in the Hindi heartland's very own heart. Our man followed the girl (and her boyfriend) to the hotel's porch, arguing and spewing the choicest abuses. Nervous security detail walked up to him, though, of course, nobody really talked him down or overpowered him. They obviously know their city's track record rather too well.
Instead, what happens is a farcical reinforcement of the cliche about north India's nouveau riche and power wielding class. At one point, he clambers back into his BMW (but of course), flying off the handle again as his female partner in stillettos points out that the girl's partner raised his middle finger at them. A male friend tries to cool him down, coaxing the man to put away the .45 automatic Colt pistol (as identified by an Army kid on social media. THE WEEK could not independently confirm this) he brandished, like regular folks would the iPhone XS.
While it is everybody's good luck that the gun didn't go off, things do not look too bright for pink pants. Ironically, the video was shared on social media by one of the three girls in the company of our man, and not only did it quickly go viral, electronic and other media outlets soon picked it up. Delhiites vented anger at the brazenness of it all, with even an SPG protectee like Robert Vadra tweeting that he felt unsafe. Delhi Police quickly filed a complaint, and used the hotel's CCTV footage to trace the registration to identify the man with the gleaming gun—Ashish Pandey, son of former BSP MP Rakesh Pandey.
So, you can almost hear the line being thrown about—jaanta hain mera baap kaun hain?
