Saif Ali Khan
Saif Ali Khan

The team of Bullett Raja, including Saif Ali Khan, Sonakshi Sinha and director Tigmanshu Dhulia, were in Delhi yesterday for an event to spread awareness of people’s voting rights. The event was a bike rally, and the team was supposed to ask the audience to exercise their voting rights in the December 4th assembly elections. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse – apparently, the media was left waiting for three hours for Saif and Sonakshi to arrive, and were understandably irritated when the event finally kicked off. Reports suggest that they began shouting at the stars and demanding an apology for their tardiness. Saif Ali Khan, however, was having none of it – the actor said that he would not apologise, since he did not believe it to be his fault.

Sonakshi Sinha
Sonakshi Sinha

According to TOI, Saif said, “Meri galti hoti toh main zarur sorry bolta. Hum do ghante se traffic mein ghoom rahe the.” (“If it were my fault, I would definitely say sorry. We were stuck in traffic for two hours.”) This didn’t go down too well with the waiting photographers, who began yelling for them to go back. Saif retaliated by saying they made a big mistake by visiting the city, and from now on they won’t return to Delhi, but will only give interviews from Mumbai.

Saif apparently even commented that if anyone should apologise, it is the election officials as they didn’t convey the right time to the team. The District Election Officer, however, only told PTI this:

“(Saif) apologised. We from the district administration also apologised on this issue that he got late. This should be considered by the media. We are coming together for the cause. Generally stars have other engagements, he must be having some other commitments.”

Saif Ali Khan
Saif Ali Khan

Accurate or not, his comments about Saif perhaps having “other commitments” still make it seem like the actor’s fault. It’s difficult to comment on an issue like this because you don’t really know who went wrong – maybe the event organisers did give the media and stars different times (which happens), or maybe the team really was that late. In either case, waiting for three hours for stars to arrive is extremely irritating – speaking from experience here – and I can understand the media’s demand for an apology. Apparently, they were given an apology as Saif walked out of the venue (the event had to go on without them, and the subsequent press conference was also cancelled) but it seems like it was forced rather than genuine.

Saif Ali Khan
Saif Ali Khan

Still, stars’ tardiness really is a cause for concern, and the sad thing is that this isn’t really a one-off – it has become the norm to expect most of them to be an hour or two late. We’ve been to events before where the media would yell “pack up!” at regular intervals when the stars are particularly late, but more often than not, they end up staying put because at the end of the day you have a boss to report to and everyone needs a story. This is one of the few instances where the media has actually held it’s ground and the event ended up getting cancelled. I remember Priyanka Chopra had a similar situation sometime last year during an event at a Nokia store – after waiting three hours for her to arrive, most of the media decided they would boycott the event and walked out. PC did end up showing up eventually and apologised, saying that she was ill, but by that time, the store was practically empty.

Again, though, it’s difficult to know what the actual situation was in this case, and you could give the Bullett Raja team the benefit of doubt if you wanted. Either way, though, both the media and Saif left the event yesterday feeling very disgruntled.

Pix: Viral Bhayani for MissMalini