This image on the left was posted on Facebook by Amir Efrati
The inability to spell on the part of several people have made an unlikely social media celebrity of someone living halfway across the world. His name is Amir and he is not a Khan. He's not an actor, he's not even Indian but he's been conscripted into the controversy over Aamir Khan's remarks on 'intolerance' and has, willy-nilly, been watching from the sidelines. (Also Read:
Aamir Khan Stands by Comments, Says 'Wife and I Don't Intend to Leave India')
In a case of mistaken identity that is equal parts hilarious and tragic, Amir Efrati, a reporter based in San Francisco, woke on Tuesday up to find his Twitter feed inundated with messages meant for the Bollywood actor. For want of a missing alphabet - the spelling-challenged searching for 'Aamir' and instead typing on 'Amir' have chanced upon Mr Efrati, who has a verified account on Twitter.
On Monday, Aamir the actor spoke about being 'alarmed' by several recent incidents and how his wife had suggested they consider leaving the country. "When I chat with Kiran at home, she says, 'should we move out of India?' That's a disastrous and big statement for Kiran to make. She fears for her child. She fears what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers every day. That does indicate that there is this sense of growing disquiet, there is growing despondency apart from alarm," he had said while speaking at the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards.
He was instantly attacked, especially on Twitter where he was the top trend all through Tuesday. Several comments had suggestions about which country he could move to - unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), several of those messages directed at Aamir have gone astray and reached Amir instead.
Luckily for everyone concerned, Mr Efrati has dealt with being mistaken for a currently out-of-favour filmstar with aplomb and humour (thus the aforementioned 'fortunately'). In various tweets, Mr Efrati has been told to go to Pakistan or Africa, informed that the app for Snapdeal (which Aamir the actor endorses) was being uninstalled by the tweeter, advised to think before speaking and chastised for not being a 'proud Indian.' He's responded to several of these messages with a dose of humour ("My wife gets on my case for this all the time," he told the person suggesting he "think thrice" before speaking).
This is what he said about being trolled by spelling-challenged Indians:
Here's a sample of the sort of hate tweets Mr Efrati fielded on behalf of Aamir Khan:
In separate tweets, Mr Efrati clarified he wasn't Indian and had never been to India:
Meanwhile, Aamir Khan said in a statement on Wednesday that he was proud to be Indian, had no intention of leaving the country and stood by what he had said. Mr Efrati can probably expect a fresh set of notifications.