Kamaleswar Mukherjee decries cyber bullying

Director Kamaleswar Mukherjee recently lashed out at the netizens for sharing a meme ridiculing him and director Srijit Mukherji. The meme, which has pictures of the two directors along with Satyajit Ray, says that though Srijit went to Switzerland for his shoot and Kamaleswar shot his film in Amazon, their work has not been able to reach the bar set by Ray, who always shot everything in India.
In his Facebook post, a clearly offended Kamaleswar has written that in order to appreciate someone’s talent, it is not necessary to look down upon others. “Ray is the one who taught us to watch films. So, I’m having a mixed feeling. While I am humiliated, I am also feeling a sense of pride,” the post read. When we contacted the director, he said that social media has become a place where many openly share mindless and cheap humour. “Humour is an essential element of life. Had they established their point with logic and in-depth knowledge on the subject, I wouldn’t have any issue with that. But when people try to hit someone personally with cheap humour, it is wrong,” he said.

“When a Japanese filmmaker makes something, no one compares their work with Akira Kurosawa, modern French films are not compared with the work of François Truffaut, even Hindi films are not compared with Raj Kapoor’s creation, then why do such comparisons happen in the Bengali film industry is beyond my understanding,” he added.
Talking about the trend of cyber bullying and trolling, Kamaleswar said that this has been happening for quite long. In the last one month, there have been at least four instances where social media has been used to circulate posts that were not in good taste. When Mimi Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan joined politics, hundreds of memes started doing the rounds of the internet. Recently, Srabanti’s marriage and even a natural calamity like Fani became targets of humour by some netizens. “I am not saying that people shouldn’t laugh. Sarcasm and humour are two very effective tools. But they have to be used productively,” Kamaleswar said, adding that memes of Srabanti and Nusrat are proof that people of our country are still used to a feudal and semi-colonial way of life.