When Harman Preet Singh walks onto a comedy stage, sporting a proud beard and moustache and a pagdi wrapped around his head, an uninitiated audience member might expect Hindi or English words to slip out after Singh adjusts his mic and meets the crowd’s eyes. His ‘Namaskara Nimmellarigu’ immediately dispels such notions, a beat of surprised silence following applause and hoots. He’s quick to clarify that he will speak, “Sixty per cent in Kannada and 40 per cent in Kannada gothilla, swalpa adjust maadi”. This, the beginning of his 12-minute set ‘Heart Alli Kaveri’, on YouTube, along with other short clips on Instagram in which Singh speaks nearly fluent Kannada, catapulted him to popularity in Bengaluru’s Kannada comedy scene. On April 12, he will be performing ‘Moor Jana’, a Kannada crowdwork show.
Being born and brought up in Bengaluru, Singh picked up Kannada ‘in bits and pieces’ throughout his life. However, Kannada comedy was never on the cards until last year, when seeing comics like Nithin M Kamath and Ganesh Kashyap at the Underground Comedy Club (which Singh co-founded) gave him the push to try. “It was never my plan to perform in Kannada, but Kamath, Kashyap and a bunch of other comics were quite open to me performing, giving me stage time. Kannada standup keeps me nervous, that’s when my brain is operating at 120 per cent because I’m not just translating, I have to be funny also,” says Singh, who also performs in Hindi and English.
Now, often recognised as the ‘sardar who speaks Kannada,’ he’s been placed in a unique position of having an audience of Bengalureans who learnt Kannada, those who have not, and the born and bred Kannadigas – all while making jokes like his ‘Should North Indians Learn Kannada’ bit on Instagram with 3.5 million views, which jokingly wonders if it would be such a good idea if everyone could road rage with Kannada cuss words.
On whether he considers language tensions when framing a joke, Singh, who considers himself South Indian, explains, “I thought about it in two frames only: how I look and how I want to be perceived. I look like the epitome of North Indian, but culturally, I’m more of a South Indian, and I refer to myself as South Indian in that joke. I felt this was a simpler way to put across the joke too, because it’s not aggressive.”
Toeing this line comes with its risks; however, Singh is no stranger to online backlash. “I got a little hate from both sides, but I realised that this is just part and parcel of being on the internet,” he says, despite revealing getting death threats that led to him cancelling a show in Chennai. “These guys operate on keywords. If I take care of certain keywords, they will be fine. On tour, I’m able to say whatever I want, but most of it can’t go on the internet. In intimate rooms, the audience is way more reciprocative of the joke – they understand where it’s coming from and you, as a comedian, too craft it in a way that your personality is built and your thought process comes through. But 60 seconds on the internet is too little for people to know who I am,” he says.
(The show will be performed at Big Pitcher, Indiranagar, 2pm onwards)