Arvind Kejriwal meets fake Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal’s landslide victory in Delhi’s elections made conventional headlines, but it was his sense of humour that won close to 9,00,000 hearts (number of views on Youtube; and still counting). In a new episode of Barely Speaking with Arnub by The Viral Fever (TVF) Group’s Online Network that was uploaded on February 10, Kejriwal sportingly spoofed himself and met his imitator Arjun Kejriwal, played by Jitendra Kumar.

The whole video was prepared in just 30 hours, after it was shot on February 8 at AAP’s offi ce in Delhi. “When we were apprehensive about some jokes, he was a sport and said, ‘No, let’s do it’.

More than laughing at himself, doing it at this time required guts,” says Arunabh Kumar, CEO, TVF Media Labs, “He had seen our Bollywood Aam Aadmi video earlier and liked our satire. But this time, the stakes were high.”

While the video seemed perfectly timed with Kejriwal’s win in Delhi, the idea was fi rst put across to the Delhi CM elect in October last year. Most of the TVF show was scripted, but there were spontaneous decisions. Kejriwal asked for the muffl er himself when everyone realised that the fake Kejriwal did not look like him without the accessory. And the bit where he talks about his wife Sunita was added to the script that very moment.

With the video going viral, Kejriwal joins the small club of politicians who can laugh at themselves, like US President Barack Obama. Literally — for most part of the spoof, Kejriwal can barely suppress his grin.