From sailor to satirist: Meet the fake Ashutosh

Monalisa Das| June 27, 2014| 8.35 am ISTWhen AAP leader Ashutosh changed his career from a journalist to a politician earlier this year, the headlines he made gave purpose to an injured sailor in another part of the country. And thus rose another Ashutosh, quite literally.Unlike the real one however, this Ashutosh’s focus was not to obliterate corruption from the country; he aimed at the humourous bone in people instead.In January this year, Mohit Pannu, a sailor in merchant navy, was recovering from an injury from an accident he met with in December 2013.He was forced to take a six month leave from work to get back to health. An idle mind is a devil’s workshop, they say. And Pannu’s devil turned out to be a clever one. To counter his unproductive days at home, Pannu opened a parody account on Ashutosh on Twitter.Their Twitter handles are too similar, and if you had followed his account closely during the Lok Sabha election, it would have been difficult to point the fake one out. In fact people also seem to mistake him for the AAP leader. That is how real it is at being fake.Today the @ashutosh083B handle has over 11,000 followers on the micro-blogging site, an ‘unexpected’ response (the real account can be reached at @ashutosh83B)So how did Pannu zero on in Ashutosh at a time when other senior politicians were constantly grabbing the limelight? “It was the easy availability of content that made me choose Ashutosh. He always had things to say I could later mock. Also he was actively covered by the media then”, quips Pannu.Pannu has been an active Twitter user from much before he began the parody account. “But the kind of response that I am getting through a separate account wouldn’t have been possible from my own one”, he explains.Elections came, stormed the nation and went by. So what’s now in store as the AAP has been swept off the face of the new government and Ashutosh is not seen or heard about much anymore? “I put my own thoughts into the tweets now, pick up any issue that is going around”, Pannu says.His tweets are witty and intelligent and in a sense unique to him. And that’s exactly what people seem to be liking. His funda behind a successful parody writer is “what makes people laugh is not how well you write, with the least mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. It all depends on the content eventually. I write what I feel at the moment.”However, with his resting period coming to an end soon, he will need to join work in a few weeks. Does that mean that the parody account is nearing its end too? “If I get someone equally good at it, I shall ask him/her to handle it”.When asked which other person he would like to do a parody on, he is quick to say Subramaniam Swamy. And why exactly Swamy? He signs of with a hearty laugh, stating he has his own reasons, and he’d like to keep it to himself as many would be offended.As the future of both Ashutosh-es likely dangle in mid-air, but well, here are few recent tweets from @ashutosh083B.Now we are asking for suarez instead of swaraj, our volunteers will bite everyone who will talk sense and logic.— Ashutosh (@ashutosh083B) June 25, 2014Planned to die my hairs, allergic to cosmatic items so just washed my face and died my hairs with that water, looking youth again now. :)— Ashutosh (@ashutosh083B) June 25, 2014Me and kejriwal going Brajeel next weak with 16 ques for FIFA, as they selling gas to footballers at 8 $ per hour. FIFA is ambani agent.— Ashutosh (@ashutosh083B) June 16, 2014