No, this is not borrowed from one of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not files. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court asked the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee to suggest how a ban on Sardar jokes could be implemented. It paints a striking paradox: while the apex court is contemplating axing Sardar jokes, comedy in India—be it on television, digital platforms or live stand-up shows—has grown by leaps and bounds,with comedians poking fun at anything and everything.
“If you want to know about the political system of any country, you should watch their stand-up comedy,” says Chennai-based stand-up comedian Rajiv Rajaram.Professional stand-up comedienne Vasu Primlani from Delhi says Sardar jokes do cultural profiling and are a celebration of the Sikh community being the most fun-loving one in India, which can crack a joke and take a joke. Vasu has developed a Sikh boy character called Tinda Badal, who teaches children gender equality and civic sense, among others, through comedy. “I am a Sindhi and I don’t mind Sindhi jokes. The ability to take a joke reflects positively on you,” she says.
Humour rests in India’s soul. It finds its way in public speeches, Hasya Kavi Sammelans (humour conclaves) and in cinema, of which comedy is such an integral part. For centuries, comedy has been the panacea for all ills, as borne by court jesters whose only job was to make people laugh. In this age and time, it is stand-up comedy that has replaced the Birbals and the Tenali Ramas of yore.
India seems to be caught up in a giant laugh emanating from Mumbai to Gurgaon to Kolkata to Kochi. Last year saw a 300 per cent rise in comedy venues across the country. “In Bengaluru, there are 20 places for stand-up comedy,” says Perry Menzies, owner of Urban Solace in Bengaluru, which hosts open mics every Wednesday. English stand-up comedy has taken a good bite out of the entertainment pie, with its inclusion in the entertainment fare in restaurants, pubs and diners.
How is stand-up comedy jostling for space among theatre, music and films? The answer, my friend, is not blowing in the wind. Says Dhruv Sheth of media enterprise Only Much Louder (OML): “Stand-up comedy is an art that everybody believes they can do. It’s just somebody on a stage talking big. Everyone has that one friend in their circle who is always talking and making people laugh. In stand-up comedy, it’s addressing a larger audience of 300 to 3,000 people, it’s very relatable.”
Perry says online comedy content had a major role to play in popularising stand-up comedy through the Internet. “Many comedians such as Kenneth Sebastian, Kanan Gill and Biswa Kalyan Rath started their careers at Urban Solace. Every Wednesday they would be here writing scripts, trying it out among themselves. Once they started posting their comedy sketches on the Internet, it caught the attention of thousands of people who then started to attend live shows.”
Says Delhi-based stand-up comedian Atul Khatri: “At a private show, you can reach out to 300-400 people. My online video about the India-Wagah border garnered 1.4 million views in a year.”
Stand-up comedy in India has established itself in the entertainment space, thanks to young comedians coming up with fresh content, highly entertaining and informative, unafraid to slaughter a few sacred cows on the altar of comedy.
Be it the All India Bakchod (AIB) boys who are famous for their ‘roasting’, the East India Comedy gang who threaten with their ‘outrage’, the Pretentious Movie Reviews duo or others such as Varun Grover, Kenny Sebastian, Neeti Palta, Aditi Mittal, Naveen Richards, Abish Mathew, Zakir Khan (Hindi) etc., stand-up comedy has never been this funny, edgy, brutally honest or over the top.
Vir Das and Papa CJ paved the way for such comedy in India. “I started the English stand-up comedy circuit in Delhi in early 2009, and I’m thrilled to see how it has grown over the last seven years. It is booming and there is a lot of good talent,” says Delhi-based Papa CJ, who was voted the ‘global face of Indian stand-up’.
While Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru are the stand-up comedy hotspots, other places are fast catching up. Kerala, with its roots of comedy running through forms ranging from chakyarkoothu to mimicry by the Cochin Kalabhavan, the state’s first organised mimicry performance group, is one such place. “Unlike other regions, Kerala is very open to satire on religion, politics and feminism. Stand-up comedy can’t fail here,” says George Vivian Paul, a corporate professional-turned-comedian who heads Kochin Komedians, a 15-member ensemble. “The idea is to make Kochi a vibrant and accessible open mic platform so that aspiring comedians from the city wouldn’t have to hop on a bus and ride to Bengaluru or Chennai while trying to land a gig,” says George.
The presence of many comedy management companies implies English stand-up comedy has come of age. They manage careers of artistes, getting them gigs, promoting them and helping them produce and edit videos. OML, which was largely into music, diversified into stand-up comedy in 2013. “A Twitter conversation between our founder Vijay Nair and AIB’s Tanmay Bhat led to OML’s entry’s into stand-up. We produced AIB’s first YouTube video and then produced their next live show in Mumbai and went on to do 36 shows in cities,” says Dhruv.
Music clubs and pubs are also introducing stand-up comedy into their programming. “Since its inception, Hard Rock Café had live music on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but now Tuesday nights are devoted entirely to comedy. Digital media should get the credit for the increasing demand for comedy. Comedy clips can be shared easily and if you share anything funny, you are automatically labelled cool,” says Dhruv.
Stand-up comedy represents big bucks. “For a 15-30 minute spot in Bengaluru, a comedian earns roughly `5,000. The popular ones charge a few lakh rupees,” says Perry.
Prashant Reddy of OML, who manages Bengaluru-based artiste Kenneth Sebastian, says charges depend on whether it is a corporate or a ticketed show. “We charge around `2.25 lakh, exclusive of taxes,” he says.
Bengaluru-based stand-up comedian Kenneth, 24, has the right idea about comedy. “To survive in comedy, you have to treat it like a full-time job. Making people laugh takes years and years of experience and social rejectio
n over and over again,” says Kenneth, who combines his comic persona talents of a painter, musician and film-maker.
Mumbai-based Atul, part of the East India Comedy group who transited from being a CEO of a company to the comedy business, believes the latter is a tough business. “It’s difficult to make people laugh. There are 40 jokes on WhatsApp every morning. I’ve been to comedy clubs in Mumbai where clients say a certain comedian was not funny and they want a refund,” says the 48-year-old.
Bengaluru comedienne Sumukhi Suresh aka Anu Aunty and that cool customer Behti, who graduated from improvisational comedy to writing sketches and performing comedy, finds stand-up a tough nut to crack. “I’ll probably be learning it for the next 10-15 years,” she jokes. “Stand-up has an advantage; you are in total control, but you have to make sure your opinion on a certain topic is strong. It’s nice that everyone’s views are different, which is why we don’t like comedy on TV where they have the same old wife, girlfriend jokes. Maybe we are being elitist because the lower middle-class still loves that,” says Sumukhi. She’s glad the void of female comedians has been filled. “It’s good that many girls are entering this field. If you look at it selfishly, we have more work. Organisers will no longer focus only on men. Also, we would not get called only on Women’s Day,” she says cheekily.
Mumbai funnyman Sorabh Pant, voted one of the top 10 comedians in India by a newspaper poll, has one thing going good for him—his face. While performing at a corporate event in Udaipur, his act did not elicit much laughter, except for an old lady who was laughing her head off. When Sorabh went to thank her, she told him that she did not understand English, but found his face funny.
“Most comedians start with open mics, and of 35 people in the audience, 34 are their friends,” says Sorabh. He busts the myth about Indians finding it hard to laugh at themselves. “At an event for cricket team Rising Pune Supergiants, I was making fun of all the cricketers, and the ones who were laughing the most were Ravichandran Ashwin and Ishant Sharma. The organisers were not sure whether to laugh or not,” he says. He recalls how during a show he made fun of politicians, only to be met backstage by a neta who complained that he had been ignored.
Under the guise of comedy, serious issues are highlighted, and that is probably why change-makers are seeking the comedy route. Says Vasu, who is also a triathlete, environmentalist and rock climber: “A good comedian touches people’s hearts. Comedy is a mirror to hold up to society, a powerful communication tool. Everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Barrack Obama use humour to convey a message. I was part of a panel once and a journalist asked me how dare I joke about rape? I told her it should be discussed in the open and I could guarantee the jokes would make her laugh.” Vasu is the winner of the Nari Shakti Award (2016) by the President.
Like Vasu, Chennai’s Rajiv Rajaram is an early entrant on the scene and is creator of the Put Chutney series. He is conscious of comedy being an instigator of social change. “Comedy is truth to power, a small guy talking to a big guy. Great comedy is when you talk to power and say you have the right to talk about these things although you need to be safe in the era of thought crimes,” he says.
Radhika Vaz, who started out by performing in the US and then in India, has piggybacked on humour to vent her frustrations about societal mores. In Unladylike, Gurgaon and New York-based Radhika’s first show that was performed in character, which is a little different from traditional stand-up, she spoke about the double standards of sexuality. In her recent show Older, Angrier and Hairier, her humour becomes more piercing. “I like looking at the double standards that men and women have to deal with.
How come we do housework? Why do we have to get married? I also like looking at little things, Uber, people’s lack of aircraft etiquette, why did Angie leave Brad? I am all over the map,” says Radhika.
Veteran Papa CJ has progressed from stand-up comedy to happiness coach, revealing that introspection made him realise the motivation behind what he does is his desire to spread happiness. In his new show Naked, his audience laughs and cries. “While it takes courage to put oneself out like that in front of thousands of people, I was more concerned with the gut that would be on display while I got naked, as opposed to the guts it would take to pour my heart out,” he says. Naked has been invited to multiple venues and festivals all over the world.
While English stand-up comedy is conquering India one gag at a time, comedy in regional languages has been flourishing for long. Says Rajiv, “In Tamil Nadu, we have had pattimandrams (debate shows) focusing on humour. In the 80s and 90s, Gnanasambandam had released audio cassettes with such content. I perform in English and Tamil; the latter is an integral part of me.”
Hindi comedian Johnny Lever is a household name, as was the late actor-satirist Jaspal Bhatti, who touched upon pressing issues in a humorous vein on his TV show Flop Show. Bengaluru’s Kannada stand-up artiste Mimicry Dayanand’s fame has touched foreign shores, where he performs regularly before the Kannada Diaspora. “Whatever I have got today is through comedy. Comedy does not only pose a question mark, it provides answers as well,” says Dayanand, who jokes often about the establishment as well as focuses on the daily routines of people.
“I used to perform in Hindi and then shifted to Kannada. What you can do in the local language, you can never replicate it in English. Johnny Lever is fantastic, he moves with effortless ease between Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Punjabi.” Atul throws light on a tribal community in Punjab which rewards anyone with a few rupees if they crack a joke during a marriage.
English stand-up comedy has grown monumentally over the last seven years. Many have chucked their careers to become full-time comedians. With the open mic sessions across cities attracting talent, comedy has become a serious business in India, and most of the exponents of stand-up are laughing their way to the bank.
(With inputs from Arya P Dinesh)