Sugam Pokharel is one of the most prominent Nepali pop stars. While most of his contemporary artists have chosen to settle abroad and get into other things over the years, the 44-year-old singer-songwriter has been doing what he does best for over two decades now. Apart from making his own music, he has also been doing playback singing. So yeah, truly an OG.

But something unfortunate happened during his Adelaide concert on Saturday. Currently on his ‘Dashain Tihar Australia Tour’ that kicked off from Melbourne on October 30th, he performed in Adelaide on November 4th. And from what we can see in the videos that are being currently circulated on social media, it doesn’t look like he was fully sober when he got into the stage.

He finishes a song, and starts chatting and having fun with the audience. So far so good! You can hear people requesting him to sing ‘Jhilke’, but he suddenly gets serious and starts talking about the most recent earthquake that has killed over 150 people in Jajarkot and Rukum. He requests the audience to keep maun dhaaran for a minute for the people who lost their lives.

However, the audience didn’t seem to be in the mood for it and just start heckling instead and you can hear them say, “Maun dhaaran garna aayeko ho yaha“. Obviously, that was extremely insensitive on their end. So Sugam Pokharel starts telling them that it could have been anyone, even our family. The audience still weren’t having it; and more particularly a guy — who pissed him off so bad, that the ‘Samhalinchha Kahile Mann” hitmaker gets off the stage and starts to go towards him. He even throws the mic towards him. Yep, reminds me of Cardi B’s Las Vegas concert video.

He is then stopped by the security personals and is taken back to the stage; but he again throws something (probably a bottle) at that person; and so he is then taken back stage.

Now, I know the people are divided — many are saying that the audience was disrespectful and insensitive, which is correct. And also, there are people who are saying that the artist shouldn’t have lost his cool — which is also correct. I think having liquor before getting on stage was a bad idea and he would have handled it other way if he was sober. The audience would also have taken him more seriously in that case. The organizers should have also made sure he was good to get on the stage.

Earlier this morning, Sugam Pokharel put out a short video on his social media in which he just straight up blamed the audience for being insensitive and did not accept at all that he too might have been at fault.

He has got his Launceston concert lined up today on November 5, followed by shows in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney on the 8th, 10th and 12th respectively.

All I wanna say here is, respect the artists and also, please do respect the audience as well as they also deserve to see their favorite artists perform live while sober.