A compliment that stayed with a students’ favourite teacher was, “Your class is chilli pickle”. When the curious teacher asked what the student meant, the student said, “The way you teach, everything opens up.” That metaphoric compliment was one of the best gifts for stand up comedian Amruta Bendre, who says it opened up a new perspective for her.
Humour and metaphor has a special place in her heart. While it has become a way of coping, it has also paved a path to pursue what she loves. “Jokes show you the crack in the wall, and the light coming through it,” says Amruta, who has been into teaching language, music, and theatre. With that motto she is now going places, giving people the gift of laughter. At the age of 41, this ‘MOMic’ is writing new scripts on how to view life differently. With perfect amounts of humour, music, and relevant themes, she has weaved a new career for herself. And in Chennai, a city known to appreciate the art and craft of music alike, she is keen on touching people’s hearts with her melodious amusement.
For Amruta who learned music for 15 years, and stopped it 15 years ago, her stand up comedy, fondly known as ‘Musical MOMedy’ is a concoction of songs, parody, womanhood, life, and jokes. She instinctively knew that music would strike a chord with Indians who breathed and lived music. “It’s our love language.” Sometimes the song comes first and sometimes the topic; and either ways, it strikes the right note.
In a male-centric platform, what changed when a mom started cracking jokes? She answers, “Moms came out to watch comedy. That’s the biggest difference. Ninety per cent of my audience is mothers. They still tell me it’s the first stand-up show they’ve ever watched.” Mothers, she claims, have watched the same show three to four times. They say, “We came to see other women laugh unapologetically.” Her audiences seem to love it when she talks about how a mother’s body changes — losing bladder control, breasts getting saggy. From perimenopause, mother-in-law to the chaos of raising a teenage daughter, Amruta’s allegorical ways of narration appears to keep the show both honest and hysterical.
Pun and parody are undoubtedly her strong points and the musical stand-up she is bringing to Chennai titled ‘Phulka Dots’ is a play on ‘polka dot’. She elaborates on the origin of the name. Her first set was about being a plus-size person who struggled with fashion. She gives a reality check, “The problem was not really my body. It was the fashion that pretended we didn’t exist.” She mocks the fashion industry while also attempting one of her favourite opening lines: “Your small and medium shirts have cute polka dots. My double XL shirts get polka in all the wrong places.” She almost self-deprecates but says it unabashedly — “I was so crazy about that joke. When I bombed it, I felt like I’d failed my first baby. So I named the whole show after it.”
She vividly remembers her first opening line: “Welcome to this night with Tanmay Bhat Lite.” While this punchline killed it on zoom, a loud silence echoed from her audience on her first comedy night in a tiny bar in Bengaluru. From online shows to offline open mic, from some flops and hits, Amruta only kept getting better. From forgetting everything that she had prepared to giving belly laughs and howls, her journey has been transformative.
‘You just had to hold the stage’ — this piece of advice from her first host also nudged her to give herself the permission to be herself. Being a school teacher for 20 years, her personal reminder is “I don’t have to be funny. I just have to hold a class for 60 minutes.”
Amruta, who has performed once earlier in Chennai, says all the tickets were sold out despite her fear that “Chennai doesn’t like Hindi”. She admits to yearning for loud bursts of laughter, while recalling a friend’s comment, “When someone is singing so beautifully, it feels insulting to laugh.” The “fun challenge” for her is to bring out that inner voice, and to make people laugh.
