Ahmad Ali Butt takes dig at SLB's work, calls it ‘Kheeramandi’ 

Bone-tired of the unending accolades Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar has accrued since being dropped on Netflix on May 1, actor and comedian Ahmad Ali Butt took to his Instagram stories to deliver his crushing verdict on the series. 

Using the medium of art to share his scathing views, Butt made not-so-subtle changes to the poster of the show, scribbling over the title so that it read "Kheeramandi", along with the tagline “A Wonderful Visual Disaster”. In case anyone was left in doubt of his views, Butt also helpfully placed a certain brown emoji in the top left corner to make his feelings crystal clear. 

Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi had been in the limelight since well before its May 1 release date. As picture after picture of the costumes and sets appeared online in the preceding weeks, social media was abuzz with speculation that true to Bhansali’s style, Heeramandi would be an epic that would go down in history as one of television’s greatest shows. Bhansali himself had given interviews detailing how the series had been in the making for decades, and shed light on the time and effort that had gone into constructing the elaborate sets. 

Living up to its hype, Heeramandi has garnered an overwhelming flurry of positive reviews from fans on social media since being released three days ago. The overarching majority of viewers on social media lapped up the grand costumes, declared the music “superb”, lauded the acting as “pitch perfect”, and labelled the entire show “pure magic”. A minority, however, took issue with Bhansali’s depiction of grandeur and felt he had gone over the top. Without being quite so damning as Butt’s poster, a more restrained but still unimpressed viewer noted, “Just wish the director had not overindulged and got carried away by his reputation for grandeur.” 

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