A day after musician Ramesh Narayan’s apparent insult of Asif Ali, the actor addressed the media to speak against the hate campaign unleashed on the musician. Ramesh Narayan has been facing a lot of criticism after he appeared to ignore Asif Ali when the actor presented him with a memento during the trailer launch of the film Manoradangal in Kochi on July 15. 

The musician had gone on to call filmmaker Jayaraj on stage, preferring to receive the memento from him instead. All those who worked in the film, including Asif Ali and Ramesh Narayan, were honoured at the event. Since a video of the incident came online, Ramesh Narayan has been subjected to a lot of trolling on social media, while a massive wave of support rose for Asif Ali.

“While I am very happy and proud to have received so much support from Malayalis all over the world, I also witnessed a hate campaign against him. I understand that he was under some tension at the time. He was feeling bad since the organisers had initially forgotten to call him on stage, and later when they arranged it, they called the wrong name (Santhosh Narayanan in place of Ramesh Narayan). It was then that he reacted in this manner. But I was not at all offended by it. Once he took the memento from me, I moved aside as he called Jayaraj sir, since my duty there was done,” explained Asif Ali.

Asif added that he had not been keeping well and saw the online attack on Ramesh Narayan only last afternoon.. “I had to think about my response because I saw that it was also taking a communal tone. It was nothing like that. It was just a bad moment he had. He called me today to talk about it and I could hear his voice crack. It is sad that in his age and with his seniority he has to go through this and offer me an apology. I don’t believe that any artist would deliberately insult another artist,” Asif said.

After the incident became viral, Ramesh Narayan had explained that he did not mean to insult Asif Ali, he was just upset over the memento confusion. 

Dhyan Sreenivasan, who was asked to comment about the incident, said that while Ramesh Narayan must have felt bad about being forgotten and later when his name was mispronounced, it was not right to take it out on another person in a public forum. “I did not think his apology was genuine,” Dhyan said.