Vir Das on agreeing to disagree about India

I couldn’t but notice that your material about India is centred in urban Hindi-speaking centres like Mumbai and Delhi.
Variety named Vir Das in the ‘10 Comics to Watch’ (Photo | Express)
Variety named Vir Das in the ‘10 Comics to Watch’ (Photo | Express)

Vir Das is never out of work. The actor has started 2020 with another Netflix stand-up comedy special, Vir Das: For India. Later this year, he will begin shooting for the much-awaited zombie apocalypse action comedy sequel, Go Goa Gone 2, while he awaits the launch of the comedy thriller series Hasmukh, penned by him, and in which he also stars. Excerpts:  

You are joining an elite group of standup comics to have done three specials for Netflix. What do you make of this?
I’m a fan of everybody else in that group. My first standup was Abroad Understanding, and the show was cut from performances in two cities, New York and New Delhi. 

My next show, Losing It, was a proper American special that was shot in San Francisco. When I was approached for a third and given the freedom to come up with something, it seemed like a good time to do an Indian special. I wanted all three to be different.

This is the first time you are directing as well. 
Well, one can’t just go ‘story, story, story’. Some have to touch you, some have to make you silent, some have to allow you to breathe… In this special called For India, the country is the star, not me. It’s a humble take. Visually, you may have noticed that there’s no fancy set. I’m sitting, and there’s just a blue door behind me. Netflix wasn’t sure what I was going for when I told them about the blue door idea. They trusted me though. With this show, I knew that it wouldn’t work if I went really big or small. I had to start from something like Chyawanprash and gradually scale up.

Given your stature as an Indian standup comedian, and the possibility that audiences from across the globe could take away information about the country through your show, would you agree to have responsibility over portrayal of the country?
I don’t think I am bound by such responsibility. In this show, I set the format right at the beginning when I tell the audience about the ‘three for you, one for me’ idea.

I cover different aspects of India, of course, and I’m also constantly explaining some of them to foreigners, who are a part of the audience. It’s quite hard to write this three-to-one format, and I can’t suddenly change it for just one portion. I can’t, for instance, remove the Taj or the Buland Darwaza portions. I acknowledge that my shows have a bit of messaging, but that’s not the primary intention. I talk about aspects like the Jungle Book in this show, and if the material somehow organically lends itself to, say, jokes about Modi, then I do that too. 

I couldn’t help but notice that your material about India is centred in urban Hindi-speaking centres like Mumbai and Delhi.
I’m an Indian who grew up in Nigeria. I’m thought to be too Western for Indian audiences and too Indian for Western audiences. I’m too Indie for Bollywood, too Bollywood for Indie cinema. At some point, it became clear that it would be futile to try and cater to everyone. It’s all right that my India is different from yours. That’s the beauty of this country.

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