Mumbai—Actor and content creator Ishitta Arun, niece of the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey, has strongly pushed back against social media criticism after a video of her smiling and laughing at her uncle’s funeral went viral. Arun, who lost her uncle and former roommate Piyush Pandey on Thursday at the age of 70 due to pneumonia complications, insisted that her reaction was a genuine reflection of her relationship with the man known for his towering sense of humor.
The video clip, widely circulated on social media, showed Arun conversing and laughing with other attendees at the somber occasion, leading many online users to label her behavior as inappropriate and disrespectful.
On Sunday, Ishitta took to her Instagram Stories to directly address the “trolls” who “took time out of their empty lives to twist a single second.”
“Grief isn’t a single script,” she wrote, sharing a picture of her late uncle. Arun explained that the moment captured was an immediate reaction to someone recalling one of Piyush’s signature lines. “When you’re saying goodbye to a man who laughed louder than anyone else, remembering him through laughter isn’t disrespect. It’s continuity. It’s muscle memory. It’s knowing who he really was,” she stated.
Arun further stressed that her family chooses to remember the man who was “laughter, courage, and life itself,” adding a sharp message to her critics: “We don’t stage grief. We don’t mute memory to make strangers comfortable… Next time—know the story before you comment on the moment.”
Earlier in the week, Arun had shared emotional posts recounting her childhood with her mama (maternal uncle), including his early days in Mumbai when he lived with her family and his dramatic warning to hang her “upside down from the fan” due to her off-key singing.
Piyush Pandey, the creative visionary and Chief Creative Officer Worldwide of Ogilvy & Mather, was celebrated for giving Indian advertising its distinct soul through iconic campaigns like Fevicol and Cadbury.=