When you get talking with Mumbai-based stand-up comic Amogh Ranadive, he won’t leave you umipressed. His impish tone, that feels like it is supressing a laugh instead of making you uncomfortable, will make you laugh along with him. Ready to surprise Hyderabadi audience this weekend, Amogh says he is going do his usual, take a plunge. “I am going get surprised with what the audience have in store for me. I am going to have fun myself,” says the 25-year-old who lives off making jokes.
“Comedy writing is what I do. I am either writing for someone else or for my own shows,” says Amogh who works for Vir Das’s Weird Ass Comedy that is the country’s first comedy consulting company provinding comic relief services to corporates, television shows, hosts, award functions – basically anyone who wants to have a good laugh.
Ask him where he gets the inspiration to be creative and funny all the time, he laughs and says, “The situations that we find ourselves in, inspire me. It is only a matter of looking around us, because most things around us do seem like a joke to me.” He quickly adds, “We live in a country where someone or the other goes up and says something totally stupid and also becomes our source of inspiration,” and muffles a grin. Amogh likes to call himself and observational comic.
On the same note, point out to all the hoopla surrounding the AIB Roast and he shows us his serious side. “It is really annoying and frustrating when people pick on entertainment when there are so many other issues that need to be addressed in this country,” opines Amogh and shares that he is bothered by the way it has affected his friends in the group. “I have worked with them and they are close friends. It is sad that they have to face this.”
Though incidents like these do impact the work of artists, Amogh says that it will only bring them back stronger.
Amogh who has been in the business for four and a half years now admits that Mumbai has the best comedy audience.
“They are so warm and so inviting, they spoil you. But Delhi is a lot more challenging. Pune is however, my favourite,” shares the comic who picks on his audience, asks them questions deliberately and then makes fun of their answers.
How does he know if what he says is going to work? “I write it, run it through my comic friends, share it with other friends, who tell me crap is crap and then I get on the stage. On stage improvisations happen anyway,” he explains.
He has no clue what Hyderabad audience are like and is ready for to surprise himself.
Details: Saturday February 28, 8 to 10 pm at Tease, Vivanta by Taj - Begumpet