US techie comes under fire for anti-Indian ‘imagine the smell’ comment; his boss says it’s OK

Nik Pash, the AI head of Cline, drew massive flak after he made an unsavory comment on a photo of apparently Indian coders. But his company head came to his rescue and explained that social media users took his comment out of context and that there was nothing racist about what Nick wrote. But the social media fire was far from being doused as nothing but an apology was expected from them for the comment. The photo at the center of this controversy was of a hackathon of @xai. The room was packed with coders working to win the hackathon. “Imagine the smell,” Pash replied. The comment was interpreted in a racist way as people expressed their shock at such a brazen attack on coders of Indian origin, calling them smelly. But Nik’s boss swooped in and said he, as being a person of South Asian descent himself, can vouch for Nik that he did not mean what people thought he meant. Hackathons are generally smelly, Saoud Rizwan clarified. “hey all, i’m founder/ceo at cline and of south asian descent myself. fun story cline was started at a hackathon which in fact was quite smelly. i work with pash everyday and can confirm this tweet was taken the wrong way,” Rizwan wrote, Nik thanked his boss and asserted that hackathons with packed rooms never smell great. “Sure buddy. I’m sure if that asshole would’ve said “These fucking n***ers” then you’d have come to tell the fun story of how there was rap music being played in the background at the hackathon where your company was started….The dude could’ve said sorry or clarified or just deleted the tweet instead of waiting for you to come justify on his behalf,” one wrote condemning Rizwan’s defense of Nik.