BENGALURU: I was on a flight to Kashmir and was brimming with excitement as we were about to land. A crew member asks us all to put our phones on airplane mode. In my head I went, ‘All of Kashmir is on airplane mode, what difference is this going to make,” recalls Samay Raina, who will be in the city soon for his performance. No points for guessing that this Jammu-born is a stand-up comedian. His upcoming special, Main Samay Hoon, will reflect on his life, perspectives and will also have a segment on Kashmir.
The 22-year-old discovered stand-up comedy unexpectedly, when he enrolled in a Print Engineering course in Pune, which he later found to be “a waste of time.” Further experiments led him to try playing the guitar, poetry and open mic. “My friend suggested the last one after seeing what a cynic I had become. I came second in that competition,” he says. What made him stick with comedy though? He quickly states: Receiving a food pass worth `15,000 from a hotel that hosted open mics and events on a regular basis. This made him a regular in the Pune comedy scene, with his talent eventually leading to a win in season 2 of Comicstaan. Raina won the OTT platform based comedy talent show alongside Aakash Gupta.
The journey hasn’t always been smooth-sailing. Hailed from a conservative background, his foray into comedy wasn’t well-received in the beginning. “I come from a conservative Kashmiri Pandit family so one can imagine the doubts which arise. There is also a joke I often make with respect to my parents, where they question why I’m pursuing comedy after they gave up their life in Kashmir to give me a stable life,” he says with a laugh.
Although Raina never saw the exodus in Kashmir in 1990, he can still see the effects it had on the community. He further gave his take on Shikara, the Vidhu Vinod Chopra flick, which aims to depict the happenings of the events in 1990. “I watched the trailer and although I wasn’t born then, it gave me goosebumps. My grandparents were very emotional after watching the trailer because they lived through the events,” he recalls. Samay Raina will perform on January 25 at Mother Tekhla Auditorium, Ashok Nagar.