Comedian-actor Kapil Sharma has ruled the entertainment industry with aplomb for many years since he made his solo debut on Colors TV on 22 June 2013.
From being a non-entity in an already crowded Indian entertainment industry, the boy from Punjab soon became a household name. His show Comedy Nights with Kapil broke every record as far as the TRP was concerned.
Much to his credit, he did not let the unprecedented success affect his demeanour and remained a humble celebrity. No wonder, his fans adored him while admiring his humility.
Personal differences prompted the comedian to part ways with Colors in 2016, but by then he had already become an imposing brand and even had a Bollywood movie to his credit.
As expected, there were many takers for his talent and Sony TV moved in with lightening speed to sign him for a similar show. With a slightly altered show title and nearly all its crew, the popular actor was back with a bang on Sony. Colors tried its best to salvage the slot left by Kapil, but failed spectacularly leading to permanently shelving the prime time space on the weekends.
However, just when you thought Kapil couldn’t possibly get anything wrong, the entertainment industry was abuzz with his infamous in-flight brawl with Sunil Grover. An incredibly hurt Sunil left the show accusing Kapil of arrogance and warning him not to behave like ‘God.’
Kapil tried his best to persuade his former co-star, but to no avail. Soon, three more artists from the show namely Chandan Prabhakar, Ali Asgar and Sugandha Mishra too boycotted his show making similar allegations.
The feud affected the ratings of his show making the channel quite jittery. The channel, which was expected to renew the contract of Kapil Sharma Show for a whopping Rs 102 crore, soon developed cold feet. The last we heard was that Sony had given him one-month ultimatum to improve the show’s ratings.
Kapil Sharma Show has suddenly become very lacklustre with high profile guests from the show suddenly gone missing. Such is the loss of his charm that he’s been forced to invite two guests from another Sony TV show twice in as many weeks.
He first had Raveena Tandon from Sabse Bada Kalakaar with some participating children. And on Sunday the show once again had another celebrity judge from the same show, Boman Irani with the same group of participating children.
It was during the Sunday’s episode when one couldn’t but notice the sadness in his voice. His famous flamboyance has disappeared and the comedian is behaving with too much of political correctness.
On Sunday, there were several occasions when he expressed his sorrow making it abundantly clear just how hurt he has been because of the recent developments.
On one occasion, a lady in the audience, told him how she often sought solace from his show.
She said, “We have so much of problems in our life. Your show doesn’t necessarily solve our problems but makes us forget about them.”
To which, a visibly dejected Kapil announced that his own problems (involving Sunil and others) were not getting solved.
On another occasion, he told Sumona Chakravarti, who played the character of Dr Mashoor Gulati’s daughter, a role played by Sunil, that her father was still sulking.
But the most painful confession by Kapil came during an interaction with the captain of the India’s women cricket team, Mithali Raj.
Navjot Singh Sidhu was awestruck to know that Raj was one of the only two players in the world to have scored more than 5,000 runs in ODI.
He told Kapil that just like Raj, he too was an undisputed king of comedy.
To which Kapil replied with a tinge of sadness, “Now a days, there’s too much of comedy in my own life.”
Whatever may be the final outcome of the feud between Kapil and Sunil, it’s not a great sight to see a man in such a sorry state even though he may have been responsible for bringing a smile on millions’ faces for a number of years.