Gulaab Gang director wades into Twitter controversy

Time for some name-calling on Twitterverse. A Bollywood director just got called out for allegedly lusting after women through DMs and calling them his ‘muse’. 

Gulaab Gang’s Soumik Sen (with Twitter handle @bangdu) was accused of sending some inappropriate direct messages to a woman on the social networking site. Chef Aakashvani (@aaliznat) tweeted - “Listen, stop using your ‘Bollywood fame’ as a carrot for your perverted desires here on twitter. This isn’t your aMUSEment park a*****e...he scours for women. Tell them he wants them as muses. When they refuse says he likes hot aunties, anyone will do...”

What followed were a series of responses to her expose where other women also admitted that they too had received simmilar messages from the director. 

WolfMomma (@wolfmiaow) tweeted - ‘Twitter scum compromises a self-proclaimed “main bhi” Bollywood director scouting followers for ‘hot muses’.”; following it up with, “It’s scary to think of how many might have been lured into ‘a coffee’ on the hopes of a Bollywood break. Be alert.”

Sen tried to salvage the situation when he apparently called Chef Aakashvani - “...to apologise and asked me to take down my tweets” to which she decided, “ Not at all. Told him as much. I am not lying and neither is any other woman. Why should we be apologetic to this.”

The accusation was added on to with tweets like - “...People like you are the reason men get a bad name. He hunts for muses here and when women deny he tells them no one will believe u...Please RT these tweets so women know that assholes like @bangdu who feed the my wife doesn’t talk to me line to many are aplenty... I know of 3-4 women who he has tried to be creepy with and thinks its ok cause this is how the industry works. @bangdu no a*****e, does not.”

But maybe there is much more to this Twitter ‘propaganda’ than what meets the eye. While Twitter allows you to unfollow and block people with as much ease as it allows you to follow people our question is - why didn’t the lady do just that if it made her so uncomfortable? Is it just a way to make sure she has her 5 minutes of fame on Twitterverse as a scathing feminist sword gets wielded over Sen?

It is very easy to male-bash and it is also easy to dump it all on a Bollywood director - obvious implications to the who’s who pitching in their two cents in the hullabaloo. And if it amounts to anything - Sen isn’t the first director to have had allegations thrown at him. Remember the Dibakar Banerjee-Payal Rohatgi matter that happened 2011?

We aren’t fence-sitting or picking sides here. There are always two sides to a story isn’t there? And it is rather easy to cry wolf.