Earlier, films like Padosan (1968), Agneepath (1990), and Khiladi (1992) mined this stereotype for slapstick laughs with characters like Mehmood’s Master Pillai, Mithun Chakraborty’s Krishnan Iyer, MA (pronounced repeatedly as “Yemm-Yay”), and Johnny Lever’s Anna. At the time, audiences laughed along because cultural sensitivity was never part of the discourse. The humour was reductive, but went unexamined. Lever’s “mere chote chote bachche” (my little kids) dialogue is still considered funny, which is perhaps why Bollywood keeps falling back on these same speech patterns and mannerisms to portray a people who have as much diversity and nuance as any other.