Khamba's Blog

Attempting Normal

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:23:00 +0000

I just finished reading Marc Maron’s Attempting Normal. I don’t want to get into book review mode because I’m not capable enough to extrapolate the layers and stories the book delves into for those who aren’t familiar with him. If you’re not a fan of his work, you probably won’t and don’t need to read it. If you’re a comic, even if you don’t like his work there’s an awful lot to learn from him. There are tonnes of stories and passages I want to tweet and talk about but I’ll choose just one – part of his keynote at the Just For Laughs Festival in 2011 – which somewhat fittingly ends this book.

There are very few people who make me spend such an awful amount of time just thinking through my own life and the role of comedy – and he’s right up there. Even if I never get to see, meet or talk to him there already is a connection – like with millions of others – simply through his voice on the podcast. That, in itself is extremely gratifying. 25 years after being a stand-up comic and having been left with nothing - talking to a room full of his peers and other comics whose lives he in some ways was a part of - I found this keynote extremely, extremely touching.

“I love comedians. I respect anyone who goes all in to do what I consider a noble profession and art form. Despite whatever drives us towards this profession i.e. insecurity, need for attention, megalomania, poor parenting, anger, a mixture of all of the above. Whatever it is, we comics are out there on the front lines of our sanity.

We risk all sense of security and the possibility of living stable lives to do comedy. We are out there in B rooms, dive bars, coffee shops, bookstores and comedy clubs trying to find the funny, trying to connect, trying to interpret our problems and the world around us and make it into jokes. We are out there dragging our friends and co-workers to comedy clubs at odd hours so we can get on stage. We are out there desperately tweeting, updating statuses and shooting silly videos. We are out there driving ten hours straight to feature in fill in blank city here. We are out there acting excited on local morning radio programs with hosts whose malignant egos are as big as their regional popularity. We are out there pretending we like club owners and listening to their ‘input’.

We are out there fighting the good fight against our own weaknesses: battling courageously with internet porn, booze, pills, weed, blow, hookers, hangers on, sad angry girls we can’t get out of our room, twitter trolls and broken relationships. We are out there on treadmills at Holiday Inn Expresses and Marriott suite hotels trying to balance out our self-destructive compulsions, sadness and fat. We are up making our own waffles at at 9:58 AM two minutes before the free buffet closes and thrilled about it. Do not underestimate the power of a lobby waffle to change your outlook.

All this for what? For the opportunity to be funny in front of as many people as possible and share our point of view, entertain, tell some jokes, crunch some truths, release some of the tension that builds up in people, in the culture and ourselves.

The amazing thing about being a comedian is that no one can tell us to stop even if we should. Delusion is necessary to do this. Some of you aren't that great. Some of you may get better. Some of you are great…now. Some of you may get opportunities even when you stink. Some of you will get them and they will go nowhere and then you have to figure out how to buffer that disappointment and because of that get funnier or fade away. Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will he heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course all of you think that one describes you….hence the delusion necessary to push on. Occasionally everything will synch up and you will find your place in this racket. There is a good chance it will be completely surprising and not anything like you expected.

I’m not sure if there is one point to this speech or any really. If you are a comic hang in there if you can because you never know what’s going to happen or how it is going to happen and there are a lot more ways and places for it to happen. I know my place in show business now. It’s in my garage. Who knows where yours is but there is truly nothing more important than comedy….well, that may be an overstatement. There are a few things more important than comedy but they aren’t funny……until we make them funny.”

The banker to every Indian who doesn’t have a choice

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Sun, 05 May 2013 00:40:00 +0000

A few months ago I decided to take the UGC NET. The UGC NET, for those not in the know is the exam you need to clear if you don’t have a PhD but still want to teach in central universities. It’s like the IAS except in the end you have no money and people don’t respect you. Now I’m a fantastic teacher when I’m sober so taking the exam was a no brainer. What they don’t tell you however, is that the toughest thing about the exam isn’t the actual exam itself – its having to stand in line at a State Bank of India branch to be able to deposit your fee. Over the years, India has lost many potential teachers simply because they couldn’t handle the intensity and range of emotions that an SBI experience took them through. I’m convinced it is a ploy by the government to weed out the wheat from the chaff in the application process itself – nothing prepares you for a life of dealing with a hopeless bunch of students who do not give a fuck about what you want than dealing with SBI employees who do not give a fuck about what you want.

When you enter an SBI outlet, you will notice a man your grandpas age carrying a double barrel gun. This is called security. Because really, nothing makes me feel more secure than a man needing a cataract operation carrying weapons from the sets of Mangal Pandey. When was the last time you saw dacoits charging in on horses trying to loot a branch in Bandra? Wouldn’t it look fantastic when a bunch of thieves come in with quick loading handguns and shoot the place down and our man is busy trying to find bullets somewhere inside his medicine box? Isn’t it easier to buy a walking stick instead of a double barrel if they’re used for the same purpose? I know! Why don’t we just keep cannons inside the outlet? Seriously, that’ll scare them! Cannons! Even our man will look more authentic standing next to one. Not like anyone is going to museums in India, plus the kids will have fun shoving their heads inside the barrel instead of running around like puppies on crack trying to scratch a tick on their ass.

You will then meet the employees. You know how in superhero movies a mad scientist always inserts a serum inside a human body which goes terribly wrong and creates the villain? That’s what DRDO does with State Bank of India employees. Able-bodied individuals are taken from each state and inserted with a serum that makes them equally shitty no matter which state or branch you have the misfortune of visiting. They’re like human Mig-21s. I’m surprised every employee doesn’t have a serial number (SBI-05-3304/172) written with a chalk on their forehead like every computer desktop, almirah, metal chair and everything else that is classified as government infrastructure. There’s a fun game I like to play when I’m at SBI i.e. spot the employee who’ll keel over and die of diabetes first.

SBI branches operate on a crucial principal i.e. every branch will have multiple counters out of which only ONE will be functional. Other counters will either be empty mocking your existence or have employees sitting around drinking chai refusing to do your work. It’s the governmental equivalent of showing rebellion by wearing a Che t-shirt. You then stand in a “queue” flanked by two people on either side whose only job is to somehow cut in front of you if the opportunity arises. They are usually older, have a big cyst on their scalp and pull every emotional card they know. The first includes not saying a word – just looking at you every three seconds and grinning nonchalantly. The second is the emotional card of having to deposit money into a distant relative’s account who has blood cancer (a trope from 80s Bollywood where for some reason that’s all people got) and won’t be able to recover if a sum of 900 rupees isn’t deposited immediately. The third is when they realise they have an account in Central Bank of India and not SBI and that they just wasted theirs and everyone else’s time. Finally after an hour when your turn finally comes, an employee will emerge from the back bearing prasad from a recent trip to a religious centre which will then lead to a 30 minute conversation between the chai drinking employees about all the religious centres they have ever visited and which offered the best prayer conversion rate so their mother in laws would get herpes and kids wouldn’t have to work in an SBI. There are higher chances of Narendra Modi getting a U.S. visa in one shot than your work getting done at these ironically named “single window” counters. When they say 0% interest, they’re talking about how they feel about their work.

What this waiting period does provide however is a chance to reflect on the deeper, more existential questions in life. For example, why does an SBI poster of a fixed deposit always feature a white baby doing shit like growing a plant? First off its not an Indian baby if it doesn’t have a black circular spot on the forehead atleast 40 cm in diameter that will miraculously save it from ill will. When was the last time you saw a baby who was fond of gardening? An accurate representation would be a baby eating mud and shitting itself crying while the parents pull their hair out trying to access their fixed deposit. Why does Syndicate Bank have a dog as their logo? Why do I know things like Syndicate bank having a dog as their logo? Will Syndicate bank be successful in Korea because people love eating dogs? Am I supposed to be turned on by the aunty counting money in slow motion while constantly licking her finger?

While in that queue, an aunty saw me carrying my NET application receipt and started chatting me up. I say chatting me up because it sounds sexier than using the word conversation.

Beta, you’re applying for the NET?

(Nahi, mujhe shauk hai teen ghante logon ka hair oil smell karne ka) Haanji aunty

My son is also applying. Except he is at home sleeping and I am here. Fourth time he’s filling this form. Waise, uska job lag gaya hai university mein, but NET bhi clear kar lena chahiye. (If you’re a future student of his, I apologise in advance) Waise what do you do?

Aunty journalist (I lied because comedian and Twitter are not socially acceptable answers)

At this point aunty looked at me as if I was Deepak Chaurasia’s testicle and turned away. If there was ever an incentive to clear this goddamn exam in one shot, its never having to step foot in an SBI ever again. I hope you never have to either, unless you have an account in the State Bank of Travancore. You know your bank is shit when the kingdom its named after doesn’t even exist.

Fat

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:02:00 +0000

It’s time I came to terms with it.

I’m fat.

I’m not the “let’s stare at him his ass is so huge he probably shat and doesn’t realise its still stuck in his crack” fat. I’m the “tall so people think it’s a paunch but when I look at my side profile my tits look like heartbeats on an electrocardiogram” fat. This kind of fat, by all accounts, is the worst kind of fat. When you’re Shashi Kapoor fat, you and the world both know that there is no hope and everyone can place bets on when the person will keel over and die in the middle of a meal without any guilt. However when you’re wearing an additional size to cover the paunch and seatbelts accentuate your titlets™ fat, there is always hope that somehow, someday it will become better. People tell you that it’s easy to get rid of. When you bathe you can still see your penis when you look down and tell yourself all is not lost. It is then when you accidentally run your hand to the fat cliff underneath your navel and realise that you didn’t know this area existed till a few weeks ago. You then cry in the shower, realising you need the same mirrors mall security use to check underneath cars for bombs to see portions of your own stomach.

Of course, one does not become fat overnight. On some level, I am almost proud of my titlets because I have seen them grow over time. I imagine this is what women feel like when they’re pregnant. Somewhat glowing, somewhat proud, somewhat indulgent in unnecessary squeez..never mind. However, I have noticed the following changes in my lifestyle ever since I have become aware of my fatness.

Dietary patterns: An essential aspect of being fat but pretending as if you’re working on losing weight are internal dietary compromises one makes with the brain. Old Monk starts being paired with diet coke, which is as good as defiling the grave of all your life’s greatest memories. Sugarless coffee suddenly becomes the norm and one pretends as if they were part of an American sitcom where everyone spends their mornings walking around New York with a coffee cup. Fried food becomes a strict no no, till one realises that the only way to finish an Old Monk with Diet Coke is by supplementing it with fried food.

All of this to satiate the brain into believing that the number of calories being consumed has been reduced even though absolute consumption of food remains the same if not more. My personal favourite has been replacing regular sugar with sugar free, whose tag line might as well be “WE TOLD YOU YOU’D LOSE WEIGHT, WE JUST NEVER SAID IT WOULD BE BECAUSE OF CHEMO!”

Clothes: One of the toughest things about being in India is ~~caste discrimination, female foeticide, poverty, malnutrition~~ not being able to find clothes your size if you’re over 6 feet tall. I already faced this problem before, but becoming fat means that I am forced to look at acquiring a U.S. visa. The problem is that even if you wear a size 44, it isn’t big enough because of the increased shamiana like titlets and paunch pulling up the cloth from its appropriate length. I presume this is why so many old people across India can be seen in the morning wearing tight, ill-fitting vests with their navels exposed while spitting out a blowjob level daatun paste. I am happy to report that I am getting the perfect training for that future. Size 44 is now too small. Very few manufacturers make a 46 and above, and the ones who do seem to have no sense of taste. It’s almost like Indian manufacturers got together and thought “Chal na pehle hi saala itna mota hai who cares what he is wearing he will still look fuckall just give him the leftover drapes”.

It is virtually impossible to pull off the hipster look. While black plastic framed glasses work effectively, bright coloured chinos and other such clothing items that are essential to depict the “I’m a youthful commodity buy me buy me!” look to potential clients in Mumbai is hard to achieve, thus placing one at a disadvantage. Black however, is your amazing best friend. Not because it makes you look slim but because black doesn’t look very dirty in public even if you wear it four times without washing it.

Finally, I realised that I’ve reached the stage where I suck in my stomach around women without even realising it. More than women, the other day I caught myself sucking it in when a delivery guy came over with pizza. First off, what is the point of involuntarily sucking in my stomach if after that I'm still fat? It’s almost like even if I’m not my body is too ashamed to let the delivery boy know that I eat too much. I make a “don’t judge me” face and try and communicate with my eyes that it is infact, thin crust, but they don’t seem to buy it. At my age where people have already starting playing Chinese whispers (Am I the only one who thinks the term Chinese whispers is like a communist sanitary pad that each woman in the village has to share for the greater good?) with the M word, it is especially important that I stay fit so that my future partner does not have to deal with my jelly. Luckily being a comedian means one never has to stress about the M word because no one in their right minds would want to marry their daughter to one. Even though divorce would be fantastic to get some 4-5 good minutes of material.

When I was in school I had a two-year period where I was rather fat and photogenically challenged. I didn’t get bullied or made fun of, except this one time where I tried to bowl in a cricket match after a long time and realised I couldn’t extract any pace from my run up. That for the simple fact that I couldn’t run fast enough and delivered a series of Nehras. I outgrew that phase in a year because of a magical growth in height. I wonder what will happen now, and how ill get out of this jam. Oooo…jam.

Every stand-up interview ever

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:22:00 +0000

Now I’ll admit. Comics love getting press. Infact every time a comic other than us gets press we want to physically track those journalists down and wonder what they saw in those other comics that we didn’t have. I also think journalists have helped develop the English stand-up comedy scene immensely because the more an art form gets mainstream press the more it gets legitimized in the eyes of potential audiences. That said, a lot of us cringe at the kind of interviews we have to do because honestly speaking, unlike say cinema, not many journalists know how to cover stand-up. Most seem to get it as an additional story in an already long list of things to complete, and so I thought – I will take you through every interview around stand-up I have given an Indian journalist, ever.

Journalist: Hi I’m from ________ newspaper and we’re doing a story on stand up is this a good time to talk?

Me: Ummm…actually I’m just a little caught up can I call you back in an hour?

Journalist: Actually I have to file this story within ten minutes so it would be great if you could talk…

Me: Wow you’re really giving this story a lot of importance aren’t you hahaha…

Journalist: Silence at not getting the sarcasm

Me: Okay sure ya ya let’s talk

So what inspired you to get into comedy?

Brain: Dude what is wrong with you. You’re a journalist and you can’t google me that’s the answer I just gave three other journalists c’mon!

Mouth: Oh you know actually it’s a very interesting story…I was lying in bed one day thinking what methods I could possibly employ to make my family disown me from their inheritance. And suddenly I realized that if there was thing I was good at, it was making Rajnikant and all Delhi men are rapists jokes. That’s when I decided stand up comedy was for me!

So how long have you been doing stand-up?

Brain: For fucks sake that’s the first link on Goo…have you even SEEN my webs…you know what…breathe…nevermind

Mouth: Oh I started nearly 3 years back…but that’s a misnomer you know because earlier we just had open mics and so those don’t really count because they were few and far between and professionally we only started about a year ago but wow you lost all interest after jotting down 3 years back on your notepad didn’t you okay nevermind.

What do you feel about Twitter?

Brain: WTF kind of question is that? That’s like asking how do you feel about water. Or hey, what do you really think about bulbs? Must curtains always be hung next to windows? Are you a fan of cotton? You use them everyday so they must be really amazing right?

Mouth: Yes, yes Twitter is amazing you know. It’s a great platform to engage with different people most of whom you’d never otherwise get to meet. I personally love interacting with people and it helps us get closer to people who come watch our shows so its amazing really.

So which comedians have inspired you the most?

Brian: Ab Russell Peters bolna padega because that’s the only comic you’ve seen

Mouth: I actually love Paul Mooney, Steve Harvey…lots of Bill Hicks and more recently Patrice O’ Neal

Brain: This is totally not going to be printed. Thanks for reducing your own column size you idiot

Have you ever gotten in trouble for the jokes you tell on stage?

Brain: Yes, because I will tell you which of my punchlines have got me in trouble in the past so you can print them and get me in more trouble again

Mouth: Oh no no! You know there’s this misconception that Indians don’t know how to laugh at themselves but I think with stand-up we’ve proven that Indians can definitely take a joke. Sometimes with religion and politics it gets tricky but even there we have had absolutely no problem. Indian audiences are great and extremely sporting!

But do you think the Indian audience has evolved enough for stand up?

Brain: Nope. Chutiye abhi bhi all parsis are related and Uday Chopra is a shit actor pe haste hain

Mouth: Oh absolutely. Like I said Indian audiences are very discerning. You need to realize that India has a deep history of humor embedded in our culture. Right from your tales of Akbar and Birbal where wit and intelligence was paramount, to hasya kavi sammellans to Hindi mimicry artists – we’ve seen it all before. So deep within us whether we like it or not we’re already exposed to it and thus that makes us willing subjects to the art of English stand up as well.

Brain: Aaye haaye mere sher kya jawaab diya bai god

So are you looking forward to performing in Delhi / Mumbai / Pune / Chennai / Coimbatore?

Brain: Actually I couldn’t give a less of a fuck I’m tired of my own jokes and all I’m really hoping is that I get my cheque on time and there’s a cute girl who likes my jokes and will be willing to exchange saliva later

Mouth: I CAN’T WAIT! You know everytime I perform here the audience is just so loving and giving and they’re with you on each joke every step of the way so I can’t wait to get on stage tonight!

So what is the best city that you’ve performed in in India?

Brain: Don’t fuck this up …*wait what city am I in?*

Mouth: I LOVE THIS CITY! You know everytime I perform here the audience is so giving and they’re with you on each joke every step of the way so I can’t wait to get on stage tonight!

Thank you so much! I’ll see you after the show!

Brain: Oh god he’ll be at the show meri saari punchlines chaap dega paper mein

Mouth: Haha sure! Just make sure you don’t print all my punchlines in the paper okay!

Journalist: *Silence at not getting the sarcasm*

Me: Okay see you see you bye!

Son of Sardar

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 14:07:00 +0000

One of the privileges of birth I am blessed with is being the token Sikh in most social and professional groups that I’m a part of. What this means is that every time anyone makes a Sikh reference, sings a Punjabi song and most recently, releases a film with Sikh/Punjabi characters, everyone immediately looks at me for approval with a mix of fear and satisfaction. Fear that stems from “Oh god I hope that doesn’t piss him off” and the satisfaction of “Oh look look we’re giving your people space in the mainstream like you’re one of us”. Just like every black person knows every other black person and every Muslim is another Muslim’s cousin, every Sikh is also obviously related! It’s a trait that every minority shares – and all of us at one point have gotten excited about seeing another one of us in an unexpected location (I met a beggar in Poland once who spoke to me in Hindi - his illegal immigration attempt from Russia to England having failed and god knows I wanted to kiss him) However, this also has terrible side effects, like having to watch films like Son of Sardar and being forced to compare notes with others about issues of representation etc – which brings me to this post.

Every time a film releases with a remotely religious slant, minority or otherwise – my first instinct is always to bet how long before the release that film will get sued by one group or another. This happened with films such as Singh is King and more recently with Oh My God! which didn’t go down well with many Hindu groups. Every few months we experience the same litany of events. First, a film poster or trailer is released Second, a question of representation is brought up by religious or socio-cultural institutions and finally, the film is released with or without changes depending on whatever compromise each side is able to achieve. Personally, every time any religious institution talks about films depicting them in a negative light I laugh because nothing depicts a religion in a negative light more than religion itself. In the last month alone, we’ve had a woman die in Ireland because of laws that prevent an abortion, swords being drawn inside a gurdwara compound by rival factions in Delhi and a girl shot in the head by extremists in Pakistan. However, what I do feel has happened is the medium of film becoming an even more crucial space for negotiation and contestation between economics and religious depiction. For that, I want to work with the example of the film “Son of Sardar”.

First, why even call it Son or Sardar? (Son of Sharma, Son of Sequiera and Son of Saddam don’t have that great a ring to them) Like we saw during Singh is King, nothing draws crowds up North quite like having a lead character who is Punjabi/Sikh. While purchasing power is a definite factor, I also think films like Son of Sardar fill that political gap of having virtually no Sikh representation on the big screen. As much as Bollywood can use the characteristics that the Punjabi/Sikh community feeds on in terms of their own representation i.e. being strong, jovial, taking things into their own hands (something Honey Singh made a career out of) it provides as much as sense of legitimacy and mainstream acceptance to the community when an Akshay Kumar or Ajay Devgn don the turban and become more than just a comedic track occupied mostly by Johnny Lever.

But what about representation? I always wondered why groups who get offended didn’t object much to Jonny Lever’s depictions of being Sikh/Punjabi in the early 90s. I’m going to go out on and limb and say that during the 90s the collective consciousness of the community also saw itself as a mere sidekick to the Indian nation, especially after the traumas of the 1980s and early 90s. With time, the community’s conception of itself and its own importance has grown tremendously – and this has also shifted from remaining a sidekick character into not just expecting, but demanding a lead representation on the big screen. However, with that have come complications that creep up during films like Singh is King and Son of Sardar.

One of the objections raised about Son of Sardar’s opening monologue was the burden of inventing the maa and bhen ki gaali being placed on the Sikh community. This becomes an immediate area of contestation not just on screen but within the community itself, who at many times not only take pride in the same fact but also see a Honey Singh legitimizing that word as a means of expression (That push and pull within the Punjabi music industry is already visible with folk artists now distancing themselves from him). But what other representations fall under the horrible venn diagram of mass-commercial entertainer and adequate religious representation? Language? Where Ajay Devgn and everyone else use a few Punjabi words and switch entirely to Hindi for the remainder of the film? Or how about places of worship? Where an Ajay Devgn lands in a village and enquires about a gurdwara but Sanjay Dutt, another Sikh character goes straight to the mandir? Or the kid inside the house whose only gag is to run around making the “Papa ki karaan petrol khatam hi nahi hunda” sound over and over?

As much as I found Son of Sardar intolerable because of the bad music, tired jokes and rubbish script – as a film it remains important – and we will see that through its box office success that will, I suspect be powered more by a community still hungry to see itself in the lead, despite the kind of slippages in representation that I wrote about earlier. Bollywood has caught on to the formula of the Sikh/Punjabi lead with gags; action sequences and a shoddy UK produced remix becoming a success with enough of a marketing push. I believe this formula will continue to remain successful till the time the community manages to negotiate its own areas of contestation when it comes to representation, and when the thirst of being accepted as mainstream subsides. Till then, the jovial, well meaning but somewhat slow Punjabi/Sikh stereotype will keep getting the laughs and make its money – but one of those slippages will offend someone, somewhere.

Bhatti Sir

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 03:48:00 +0000

I’m not one to get emotional when someone dies, so here goes.

Last year I sat across one of my professors discussing my idea for a Masters thesis. Ever since I could remember, I had wanted to trace Jaspal Bhatti’s career and understand the dynamics of a Punjabi comedians journey from state run television to the idiotic entertainment machinery we are now surrounded by. A few months ago, after summoning enough courage, sharpening my ideas and stalking people to somehow get access to him, I finally made contact. I was supposed to meet him in the coming weeks, after the release of his son’s debut film Power Cut, and now this. It feels surreal writing this today, a year and few months after we lost another underrated and under-celebrated star – Vivek Shauq. But that’s the similarity between death and comedy – the element of surprise.

I’ve often stated that Bhatti was one of my comedic influences, but he remains something more. As a child, he was “my” guy. The televisual space, which seemed oddly removed from reality because it never seemed to show people who looked like my elders and me saw him come along and change all of that. He was the smartest, funniest and kindest person in the room, and he legitimized my identity that was hit everyday in the playground by other kids who were fed a diet of sardars being stupid. And while today I’m a non-believer and my cultural identity remains an afterthought, I would in all likelihood have been a different person had it not been for re-runs of Ulta Pulta and Flop Show. It breaks my heart that I couldn’t tell him this in person, but I hope he knows what he did for my generation growing up in Punjab and beyond.

While many will remember Flop Show (to my mind the funniest show on Indian television – one whose stories were so strong that they remain relevant today) and his various Bollywood cameos, I hope they also remember him for his street theatre. While many would laugh and scoff at his tactics, few comedians and satirists have had the gall to consistently venture into the public domain to inaugurate faux foundation stone factories, press for legalizing corruption and other absurdities - much to the amusement of passers by. The fact that he was forced to apologise to a Chandigarh Shiv Sena branch in 2011 who took offence at his statements against corruption tell us how increasingly intolerant we’re becoming to humor, but he stayed at it without fuss.

Bhatti sir remained subtle, understated and effective. He has a lot to teach young comics, if only they care to watch. Sadly however, not many of us go back our roots. And maybe our lot doesn’t deserve to have someone like him around us.

I said this when I wrote about Vivek Shauq’s demise, and I feel it needs to be said again.

“India does not respect its artists. That comedians languish at the bottom of the artistic pile is an even bigger statement on our society. Maybe it’s because Indian comics aren’t like they used to be. Maybe society hammers us into delivering what it wants and doesn’t leave us with any other options. But the one thing we can do is honour some of our unsung heroes who deserve a lot more respect and recognition than they are accorded.”

I will miss him terribly, but before that I’d probably go watch Mahaul Theek Hai once more and laugh like an idiot. I presume that’s how he’d want it.

Comedians on Twitter

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 17:48:00 +0000

This post is Twitter centric. So if you’re not on it, you can shut this page down right about now. I often used to have conversations with fellow comedians about comedians getting more “hate” on Twitter. I’d usually laugh it off, but over time I’ve come to see what they were getting at. As members of the Indian Twitter community, I believe comics should be as much, if not more accustomed to snide remarks, attempts at trolling and “hate” – but what I find fascinating is how this transition has happened over time.

The hate I’m talking about is not with regards to the jokes one makes and them being offensive. I’m talking about an increasing number of voices talking about how “These comedians are totally unfunny”, ”All comedians do is pimp their shows”, “I’m so much funnier than all of them” etc.

First off, the very notion of being a comic in Twitter is somewhat problematic. For one, everyone thinks of themselves as comedians. This I believe is a manifestation of real life, where most people have atleast one funny guy within their social group and/or have been told that they’re hilarious. Also, most people like to think they’re funny, and most people like to think they’re better than other people. So combining the two has obvious implications.

Second, people don’t seem to realize the difference between tweeting jokes and being a comedian. There are some people who are extremely funny on Twitter, but that doesn’t make them comedians simply because they’re not doing it day in and day out on stage, making a living out of doing just that. One might be great at tweeting jokes, but that doesn’t make them a comedian. And someone might be a great comedian, but that doesn’t mean their tweets will be mind-blowingly funny.

And here is where I feel the difference between the Indian and, say, Western Twittersphere. Most Indian comedians now were (very recently) just guys making funny tweets without their lives depending on them. The current crop of comedians (again, not people who tweet funny things) within the country all emerged from the same bunch a lot of people have been following since the time they were non-entities on Twitter. I for example would personally not have gotten into stand-up if it wasn’t for the triad of Russell Peters’ Youtube videos making more Indians want to try it, enough public spaces willing to experiment with the form and networks like Twitter enabling the entire exercise to happen and provide a ready audience through people’s followers.

And because an individual’s original and present identities often get blurred on the medium, I feel there is always a conflict between the comedian and the audience.

The act of calling oneself a comedian – in itself a highly political statement – creates lines between the comedian and the audience which did not and do not exist when one remains a handle that tweets funny things. And yes, there is a difference between being funny on Twitter and being funny, but making that transition i.e. of calling oneself a comedian on a medium that has seen you as the handle that tweets funny things leads to an instant change in the relationship with that audience. Even more so when it comes to plugging one’s shows or experimenting with mediums like podcasts – where one too many suddenly becomes an annoyance for the very audience that should ideally be pushing for that art to grow. Every stand-up, improv, variety show being plugged on Twitter is a part of history being created. It might be annoying, but it is crucial.

At this point, I also want to point out the dichotomy of being a comedian in the Twitter space wherein as much as there is hate, one usually also becomes a highly followed persona. Thus, as much as people don’t seem to like comedians, there is still an expectation of making them laugh (for free) as part of their assumed profiles. Live shows in general remain sold out, and with content like All India Bakchod, which is now the most heard podcast in India, there is even an added expectation of being subversive. And more and more of the same people who tweet funny things, if courageous enough, want to try giving stand-up a shot because everyone seems to be doing it.

These last two years alone, Mumbai has gone from 2 public shows a month to over 16 (excluding The Comedy Store – which would mean a minimum of 20 more) besides corporate events. Open mic nights are on the rise. The internet is alive with experimentation. Young people are finally being able to take the plunge and make a career out of comedy if they’re good enough. The art is finally becoming increasingly acceptable in the mainstream and it is perhaps the only place left where you can say what you want and how you want it. And all of this has been made possible by the same bunch that started out tweeting funny things on Twitter and decided to become Twitter unfunny. Or as they say on Twitter – comedians.

Should one really be bothered then about the “hate” as a social group? Does addressing this existing thought process on Twitter legitimize it even further? Perhaps it does. But if the comedic space in India is going to continue to grow at the pace it has recently, public spaces like Twitter will also be re-negotiated in terms of how individuals attach and respond to labels such as “comedian” (or photographer, or social media analyst) I for one, can’t wait.

Come and watch my show.

The Rape Joke

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:20:00 +0000

There are few jokes more divisive than rape jokes. For (some) audiences, a rape joke instantly devalues the struggle against sexual violence and dehumanization of that term while for comedians, unless the usage is utterly original, becomes a lazy throwaway stereotype used against Delhi. I’m talking about this because for Indian stand-up, this is a point of rupture brought forth only when something like the Daniel Tosh controversy happens. And it is something that needs more thought.

For those not in the know, Daniel Tosh, famous provocative comic in a recent performance at The Laugh Factory started a bit with “I think rape jokes are funny”. An offended audience member decided to cut short his joke setup by responding with “Actually, rape jokes are never funny”. Tosh then cashed in on the comedic license against heckling and let fly a “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if like five people came and raped her right now?” You get the idea. Read more here.

The next day, Guwahati. I’m not even going to spend any time outraging about this incident because internet outrage doesn’t solve anything beyond turning everyone into participants of a “who has a superior moral compass” contest. The only feeling I was overcome with after hearing of the incident – I didn’t feel inclined towards looking at the footage – was that of helplessness. It is something one encounters in everyday life and is powerless to do anything about. I know when I’m out with friends my brain is constantly scanning for douchebag(s) who’ll make lewd remarks, attempt to grope or stare down cleavage. They’re always there. Mocking your vulnerability if you’re alone. Gurgaon. Bombay. Goa. There seems to be no escape beyond looking the other way and feeling powerless. And that brings me to my question.

Should the existence of incidents like Guwahati lead to a different moral code for comedians in India? Does it carry more “weight”?

I have always been an absolutist in my support for free speech. In the case of Daniel Tosh, while I did not find Tosh’s takedown of the heckler very funny, I completely support him saying it. Comedy is one of the few industries left that has license to break social code – but does it in countries like India need another look in?

We all know comedy is subjective and what one person finds funny might not apply to another at all. For example, there are some absolutely hilarious rape jokes that subvert the very notion of what the word connotes. Examples include Dave Chappelle’s bit about “Man rape” and the ever so awesome Louis C.K. Do comedians need to draw their own lines in a country where they’re already being forced and told to do so on every second issue?

I also wonder why in the Indian context the division is limited to jokes on rape and perhaps cancer. Why do people still laugh at the every Delhi is a rapist joke? Why does no one in an audience get offended at “Mayawati is a man” jokes? Is it because the threat of sexual assault is levied at one of our kind while the latter doesn’t concern us? Because the English stand-up industry only caters to a certain castes and class profiles? And what about religion? Where it is perfectly normal to make fun of Islam and Sikhism but not of Hindus? I don’t really have the answers, but if there’s one thing the Daniel Tosh incident teaches us is that comedic lines are being drawn and shifting almost instantaneously – and while for me no issue is too offensive to joke about – these lines within Indian audiences need a look in by fellow comics. The weight of the issues we joke about perhaps is a lot heavier.

Except Bollywood. Fuck that shit.

Satyamev Jayate

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:35:00 +0000

Nazar Suraksha Kavach

I’ll be honest – I’m a little tired of Aamir Khan looking down at me from every hoarding in Mumbai as if I’m a pathetic human being. So annoyed infact that I’ll consider doing the exact opposite of what he tells me to do on the show just to spite the guy. If he talks about drunken driving – I’ll down a bottle of Old Monk and run over people in an auto-rickshaw. If he talks about pesticide dependency across farmlands being linked to cancer, I’ll drink bottles of Coke he endorsed a couple of years ago. If he talks about abor…well one doesn’t need to when its so easy to abuse OTC pills being sold in happy Shilpa Shetty packaging.

It’s like he’s the only one concerned with what’s happening around the country and pardon my French…like hum sab bas ch***ye bethe hain… as if staring at someone with keen intensity accentuated by soft lighting and adequate depth of field is going to solve the poverty of people’s backs. I understand one needs to play the emotional card, because without it Indians ko kuch samajh nahi aata, but I have enough people preaching their moral superiority to me everyday and I can do without another one.

But before I move on to talking about how the show told me more about us as people than it did about the issue it chose to address, I want to get some stuff out of the way.

Aamir Khan: Contrary to how annoyed I am with the marketing blitz; I actually have no beef against Aamir Khan doing the show. The intention is noble, and props to him for even trying something like this on Indian television. He’s using his star power to “raise awareness”, and while personally I will always skeptical of that terms intangibility, I hope some good will come of it. What and how? I don’t know, and I don’t even think anyone cares. People are just happy that Aamir Khan is “doing something”! And we as a people seem so starved of role models and hope that even “doing something” is enough to get them on your side.

One of the biggest challenges within the development sector always remains impact assessment – so while I don’t expect massive “societal change” (the term rich people use to say we hope poor people reach our level someday before making sure they never do) to happen through the show, it’ll definitely get rich people to think about the issues it raises through its run. (I like how rich people keep saying the show is meant for a “DD Audience” – our of saying poor bastards – because for us everything that is wrong with society only happens amidst these poor fuckers who dirty our streets and have no civic sense and have the audacity to ask for something more than minimum wage and more than one holiday a year while they clean our houses)

Again, parts of the show made me cringe (Aamir’s opening monologue – and the song in the end interspersed with pictures of helpless kids that we as society have wronged – straight out of the aao videshi tourists se gareebi ki numaish ke zariye paisa nikaalte hain playbook) but let’s face it – shots of people crying and a painful story are what work to get people’s attention and there the producers got their desired results.

The show: I don’t know why people are bothered about Aamir charging 3 crores per episode. Like any other professional he’s spending his time and effort making the show and will/should be compensated for it. I know for a fact that some of my friends who have been working their assess off on the ground for a pittance will be irked at so much attention being showered on issues they’ve been crying hoarse about for years and years purely because Aamir Khan has said it – but that’s just how we’ve become. We can’t eradicate polio till Amitabh Bachchan tells us its fucked up, so I don’t know why we’re surprised now. I am curious to see how sensitively issues are treated and whether the research is accurate – and I hope I won’t be disappointed given how television is forced to stick to broad strokes. I’m looking forward to the piles of academic literature that will flood JSTOR and the likes once the show is done, and how friends working on the ground and on campus react to it. On many levels, it is and can be a critical show.

The people’s reaction: The best thing that Satyamev Jayete did for me however was providing an insight into how people (using Twitter as a sample) thought. It immediately became taboo to even make jokes about Aamir Khan simply because “he was doing something and all we were doing was tweeting”. It’s almost as if you had to qualify yourself as having good karma before being able to comment on the show incase you didn’t like it. So what is it then? Does one have to had donated a certain amount of money to charity, spent x number of years working with an organisation, personally saved 8 kids from a fire? Why must one be chastised for not liking the show or joking about it?

It’s amazing how by just watching the show – people thought that they had done something amazing which made them morally superior beings. And while my first instinct was to mock it, I realized it became taboo to mock the show simply because Satyamev Jayete - for that moment - became a beacon of change. For that brief period, it became more than just a television show – and cheesy as it sounds - Aamir became the crusader who gave voice to people’s hope. We’ve become so disappointed and disgusted with our political and social representatives, that Aamir Khan became that one guy we could look up to because he seemed to have no personal agenda and was using his influence for something other than selling biscuits.

Here’s what made me uncomfortable however. The issue dealt with yesterday was one of female feticide and there really is no conflict within it. No one would willingly (I would imagine) admit to not wanting a girl, especially amongst the educated elite. So the sheer number of people who seemed aghast at the existence of this practice across the country was on some level – hilarious. How isolated does one have to be from the country one is living in to not have a clue about how widespread a problem this is? It was even funnier when rich people expressed shock at other rich people following this practice. “YOU MEAN EDUCATED PEOPLE ALSO DON’T WANT GIRLS?” I doubt if the upper caste farmer in Punjab who is crushed with debt and needs more male hands to help till the land will give a shit about the show, but that it hit some people on Twitter like a ton of bricks was very amusing.

What happens however, when Aamir talks about an issue that is conflicted? What when an Aamir Khan talks about caste based discrimination across religions and takes a side? What if Aamir says he is pro-reservation in educational institutions? What if Aamir Khan is against nuclear energy? What if Aamir Khan supports the ban on beef? These are all hypothetical questions – and we will likely not have these answered simply because it is a television show and Aamir cannot afford to get into so much trouble. But how will we as people react? Will we again give him the same wholehearted support we do so now when it offends our own sensibilities? In their heads people seem to have already made Satyamev Jayete more than a television show – but I don’t think we’re ready to be confronted by actual truths of our societal order. We are happy as long as we’re making a noise about issues we’re all against – but that’s not even a real debate. We will also avoid the real debate because we’re not ready for it – and instead of worrying about governance deficits we will like to be distracted by Aamir Khan for atleast he’s talking about some things we can all agree on. And that is where the massive support we’re giving Aamir right now seems to ring a little hollow. And that’s not Aamir’s fault at all – he’s doing what he can with his talent and influence and that’s a good thing – I just don’t know how much we as people are willing to be taken down that road of societal change, especially when it offends what we believe in.

I’m going to be watching the show keenly – simply because it has and can have so many implications. I’m sure everyone else will to, but maybe lets keep our shit together while we watch it?

Outlook on Twitter

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:58:00 +0000

My highly tuned social media sensibility tells me that I probably should have written about the Outlook cover story on Twitter’s social media stars back when it was still hot. Then, even if this post were a flaming pile of Manu Singhvi doo doo it would still have mustered some RTs and Firstpost would have published it. Now however I’m forced to use platitudes like “distance allows us an unbiased and more objective vantage point from which to talk about an issue” to cover for what was essentially my inherent laziness.

For those living under a rock however (or those who have better taste in magazines here goes any chance I might have had to write for Outlook. Hey India Today, I’m waiting naked underneath my silk sheets hoping you come and take me)) Outlook decided to do a blindingly original cover story on “The real stars of Twitter”. This story was so spectacular the Columbia School of Journalism has already deputed faculty to create a case study on how the media can destroy the façade of a nations elite intellectualism in four pages. Once the story broke people did the usual pimping on every social network while maintaining an air of humility, bitching out nutritionists and crying as if Rajeev Shukla finally wore a suit that fit.

But here’s the conundrum while talking about a story such as this. If someone like me, who gets put on a lot of Twitter lists (including this one) says anything even remotely bad about pieces like this we come across as ungrateful hacks. On the other hand, if someone who hasn’t been featured on the list says anything negative about these lists, they’re automatically classified as jealous for not having been made part of the list. Even if one genuinely believes that these lists aren’t important – and they aren’t - they’re branded as trying to fake humility because they don’t want to come across as douchebags. There is really no other way to react than by ignoring it and moving on.

Why am I not a big fan of these Twitter lists? Again, no hatred towards Outlook who devised a great way to be relevant again by writing this story in a week we discovered our Army ran out of tank shells – but every publication has done it. So much so that Twitter itself seems to have become an uninspired story idea that every new intern that joins a publication seems to suggest. The result is the same 20 names being perpetuated over and over again – so much so that an individual’s entire identity seems to be shaped by a handle. Personally speaking, Twitter has been great for me in terms of connecting with people I would never have met otherwise and being able to sell shows and ideas such as All India Bakchod (Flipside of having a lot of followers is you can’t follow random cute women just because they’re cute and have to justify their inclusion in your follow list by terms such as “interesting worldview”). However, the appropriation of an individual’s digital identity into a constantly perpetuating one-dimensional three-line bio is why I don’t like these lists. In true Twitter fashion, it allows no scope for depth – and you realize that you’re just another name helping fulfill the journalist’s word count. In one of the recent interviews I gave for another publication’s Twitter power list, the journalist was just happy that I said Twitter doesn’t matter in the long run because 20,000 people tracking your opinion in a country of 1.2 billion people is pointless. Again, happy purely to find a “different” peg to a Twitter story beyond the usual “How does it feel to be a Twitter celebrity?”

The reason I think the Outlook story was blown out of proportion compared to other Twitter lists is mostly because they put individuals on the cover. Everyone seems to be okay with Twitter lists filling the inside pages but the cover seems to have pissed people off. Again, I see no reason why. If people were angry because someone didn’t deserve to be put on a magazine cover, remember when Time magazine nominated “You” as person of the year and shoved a mirror on the cover? From a mere ambition point of view, if I was to make it to a magazine cover the last thing I would want as a reason would be “popular tweeter”. However, the hate against those who were on the cover seemed rather unjustified. Or maybe that’s just how Indians are – because it is similar to the hate one gets as a stand-up comedian for “taking over Twitter”. One would imagine people would celebrate the growth of an entirely new art from in front of their eyes and work with people who are forging it, but not so.

I’m sure Outlook will not be the last magazine to do a story on the real stars of Twitter. Another social network will come along and the news media will get their readymade story ideas and daily opinion fix from there too. In the meanwhile, if you still want to get onto one of these Twitter lists, follow these instructions.

On All India Bakchod

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 06:35:00 +0000

Some of you would have heard of my new project with fellow comedian Tanmay Bhat called All India Bakchod. I’ve been pimping it furiously on my Twitter page over the last few weeks and the response has been incredibly heartening. Some of you have loved it, some of you have hated it and some of you are still complaining about our girly giggles – but even if you gave us two minutes of your time and listening to it we’re both very grateful.

What I would like to do in this post however is talk about the podcast – where it came from and what we might do with it because I feel its important for me to put it out there. Some of you who have been regular visitors to the blog would remember me trying the podcast medium to conduct interviews with Rahul Roushan of Faking News and Saad from Fly You Fools. After those two episodes I asked for sponsorship and a lot of folks came forward willing to invest in a venture whose only goal was to bring out voices you otherwise don’t really get to hear. I decided not to and stopped recording because I felt I wasn’t ready – and that there needed to be another individual to add something to it. Enter All India Bakchod – and though it might not be the most complete product – I feel its time had come. With Tanmay, a comic I respect and admire and someone I get along with – I feel if there’s ever a chance to give a full-blown comedy podcast a shot in India – this is it.

The show is entirely unscripted – mostly because both of us don’t have enough time in a day to sit and plan out the subtle nuances. It literally is deciding a time to sit in one room, turn the mic on, discuss which were the stories we found absurd during the last week and start talking. As much as it is an exercise in making all of you laugh, on some level it is also something we do for ourselves. We’ve gotten many messages over the last few episodes about how even if a certain segment wasn’t very funny – but that they were glad somebody said it. It’s not exactly something we’re very conscious of, but I’m glad we’re being able to do that. The internet is perhaps the last refuge of any notion of free speech we have left in this country and on some level I feel even if each of our episodes is absolutely shit, as long as it can be a tool for subversion against the despotic regulations being brought forth by the powers to be – it will have done its job.

That said, the agenda isn’t one to fight the power. The agenda is to make you laugh and to try and give a medium that is so successful abroad some presence within India. We’re not pros at how to do this so there will be a lot of experimentation. Some episodes will be great, some will be rubbish and I hope you all can stand through that. Like with stand up (and again a big thanks to whoever has come out to see us perform over the last few years) we feel this can be a mode of artistic expression that we can perhaps build with the audience in tow. We still get nervous including a few minutes of just us talking about something without jokes – given how through Twitter we’re used to punch lines every few seconds; but we’re hoping that in the long run, we will build enough of a rapport for that to be interesting enough and acceptable.

This has potential to become big – as a tool of laughter, subversion, saying things you wouldn’t say otherwise and if nothing else – time pass for five minutes while you jump from one gadget to another looking for your fix.

Thank you for tuning in to All India Bakchod. We promise to keep making it better, and to some day be able to pay our editor.

All India Bakchod

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

I didn't do a traditional look back at 2011 or a let's welcome the new year with a bang sort of post because I wanted to kick off with an exciting new project I'm working on. Over the past year, I've moved somewhat away from blogging to also explore other mediums such as podcasts (as you're aware already) and ofcourse, stand up, which has now become bread and butter. I've set some goals, academic and professional for 2012 and I'm hoping this year will turn out as great as the last one. Just want to say thank you for all the continuous support and for coming out for shows!

Will finally hit Bangalore in February for some stand up and hopefully Chennai in March besides Delhi and Mumbai.

Till then, check out the pilot of my new comedy podcast "All India Bakchod" with friend and fellow comic Tanmay Bhat. We're going to be bringing this out once every week - ten days and discussing the news of the day, have special guests and other fun stuff. Feedback would be appreciated, and if you have any ideas or people you'd want to hear let me know!

Pilot Episode by AllIndiaBakchod

Oye Kapil Kapil Oye

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Dear Kapil,

I heard that you recently called executives from companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook and asked them to set up a pre-screening mechanism to monitor user content on the internet. Pre-screen this: Fuck you.

Here’s the thing. Contrary to your belief Indians on the Internet have better things to do than sitting on our asses all day talking trash about the government. Sure there are some trolls, but then you have the National Advisory Council. But you know why we are mad? Because everything your government has gotten its hands on has turned into shit faster than Advani can install alloys on his rath. The thing with the Indian voter is that s/he is very tolerant. If each of you come out every six months and publicly slap yourself we will forgive you and let you continue the loot and plunder that you’ve been going about within your ministries while we enjoy that slap on loop on Youtube and making “Who slapped themselves the best” quizzes on Facebook. We can tolerate anything - the CWG, the 2G Scam, the farmer suicides, even your alliance partners treating the country like Shakti Kapoor; but with curbing our right to speech and expression on the internet you’re taking away the only thing we have left. The emergency was never lifted – it just got enshrined in our heads where we stopped ourselves from saying what we want before you even had a chance to lift a finger. Congratulations on successfully creating a system where one is considered a rebel for saying and doing things they’re constitutionally supposed to be fucking able to anyway.

You know why that fan fell on Sharad Pawar’s head? Because your government hit it with so much shit that it couldn’t take it anymore. You should know there’s a problem when your own fucking furniture starts rebelling against you. The Internet is not the Congress where everything needs to get approval from high command before it can be said. It has its own checks and balances – something you might not be able to comprehend with that miracle of technology you call the Akash tablet. The mainstream media has already turned into Bella Swan, taking turns to fuck corporate advertisers and your Department of Audio Visual Publicity depending on its convenience, and now you’re taking away this too? How the fuck are you going to protect the country from external threats when you don’t even have the balls to face up to your own people? You might think your legalese will help smooth the issue over citizens, but all you’re doing is acting like an average Delhi thug who can’t stand it if someone says anything to hurt their ego and gets 10 people to beat the crap out of that person.

Your arguments are the same. All of this will be in the name of “national security”, because our nation is so insecure that it can’t stand people having a contrarian opinion. Because despite having survived hundreds and hundreds of years through many invaders and dynasties it isn’t capable enough to handle a few haters who say things that piss you off. You’ll say this is to “prevent sentiments getting hurt”; which I think is high time you declare our national sport. I don’t buy the bullshit about India being the world’s largest democracy when the only options we have are a family that barely produced graduates, a party that tolerates genocidal maniacs and the communists who – well, fuck, I don’t want to say bad things about intellectually bankrupt poor people. I generally don’t expect much from you, but I didn’t think when you said you wanted to compete with China you meant copying their draconian internet regime wholesale. It’s not like there isn’t enough censorship by ISPs, technology giants and institutions like ICANN anyway that you want to create armies of unilateralist clowns whose only exposure to any issue will heed the line you want to follow. Says a lot about the country when a Harvard educated minister and an IIPM educated pseudo-intellectual management guru have the same opinion on a 21^st century issue dictated purely by the politics of fear.

What you are sir are a bunch of pussies who pretend to be forward thinking but really are stuck in a bygone era where you’re probably still trying using Netscape to read this shitty blog post. If you think young people got pissed off with you about corruption – wait till you take away their porn and Facebook. More and more are waking up to your self-serving policy making - and my hope till then is that your government’s stellar record of being unable to execute anything except Rahul’s temporary encroachments over Dalit households extends to this regime.

In the meanwhile, might want to pre-screen for dementia. Happens with age.

Waiting for you to classify me as a foreign stooge as per your political playbook,

Khamba

P.S: I wrote a paper comparing India's latest internet regulations vis a vis the United States and China. While the scope was limited, I think i'll upload it on Scribe. In the meanwhile I urge everyone to took at www.cis-india.org and www.medianama.com who have been working on this

Vedi: The Review

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:40:00 +0000

You want a piece of this?

Question: What do you call a weekend in Chennai?

Answer: Fucked up.

Not very funny, I know – but it kills when you’re sitting with racist friends in a shady Defence Colony market bar drinking and polishing off morsels of onion from your plate of Chicken Manchurian. This view however, as I have stated before, was based on previous experiences of having visited Chennai – one which involved toilets in multiple restaurants malfunctioning and spewing water upwards upon flushing after taking a dump and the other that was sprinkled with constant harassment by security at Chepauk Stadium as a part of the Cricket World Cup’s cultural integration segment. The last weekend however, changed all that as my trip to speak at the Youth to Business Forum 2011 went off without a single glitch. Everything except the folks at Marry Brown not understanding my request for a “Full Enjoy” burger for which I was willing to pay up to 500 rupees instead of the “Ho Touch” which they sold for about a 100. I imagine they didn’t like my mocking authentic local cuisine. That or they weren’t familiar with Delhi hooker pickup parlance. Probably both.

What I do want to talk about however, is my first ever experience of watching a Tamil movie on the big screen - and for that we shall skip to the part where I reached Sathyam Cinemas - a place for the swish set till having recently been overtaken by something called Escape Cinemas. Sort of like what happened to PVR Saket after another PVR opened in Select Citywalk. I have always felt that my height, bouncy follicle equipped moustache and mild paunch could be the ticket to a career in Southern movie industries – and I needed to see whether I could cut the Padiyappa. I bought tickets to “Vedi” starring Vishal (I think that’s what his name was. Couldn’t be bothered to check. Yeah, I’m badass like that) the newest, hottest star to make women’s love handles squirm with his rustic looks, muscular frame and International Molester Council certified full-teethed smile. The experience was nothing short of amazing.

The infrastructure: I must start by talking about Sathyam Cinemas who I believe have devised a brilliant financial sustainability strategy by completely eliminating air conditioning ducts and any form of seating in the waiting lounges. This combined with lovely Chennai weather ensures one has no option but to load up on Coke and a baguette like concoction referred to as a Sugar Bun. I only realized it was a sugar bun after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding where I thought the moustached man behind the counter (mine is better, so fuck him) was calling me sugar buns. I wanted to be offended, but the earnestness with which he said it and the realization that even my better halves have never referred to me as that made me sad. This is probably the only multiplex I’ve been to where the entire first row had cheaper crappy wooden plates as seats unlike the leather ass massagers everyone else paid for. This is a perfect way of combining the two India’s movie going experience and something Rahul Gandhi should make part of his manifesto. I have personally enjoyed watching movies from this row – including Rules: Pyaar Ka Superhit Formula where a fellow watcher commented on Milind Soman’s make out scene saying “Bhai muuh hai uska ice cream nahi ki itna chaatoge”.

So bright it hurts: I want to take a moment to personally apologise to Christopher Nolan on behalf of the people of India who put The Dark Knight Rises trailer in between Madhavan selling smartphones and women in thick sofa upholstery and jewelry waiting around a man-made lily pond for their husbands to bring the necklaces ripped from inside Bappi Lahiri’s pancreas.

WHY IS EVERY PRE-MOVIE ADVERTISEMENT A JEWELLERY AD? AND WY IS EVERY GOD DAMN JEWELLERY AD THE SAME? ITS AS IF ALL EVERY WOMAN DOES IS SIT AROUND WAITING FOR THEIR HUSBANDS TO BRING THEM GOLD, GOTO MALLS TO BUY GOLD, STARE AT THE MOON IMAGINING THEIR HUSBANDS RUBBING KOKUM ON ONE OF THEIR BREASTS WHILE CHECKING GOLD PRICES ON THE LATEST ANDROID SMARTPHONE BOUGHT AT THE CHEAPEST PRICE FROM VIVEKS WHICH WAS ON THE WAY TO A LATEST TOWNSHIP BEING DEVELOPED NEAR MYSORE THE PURCHASE OF WHICH WOULD INCLUDE CELEBRATING WITH GOLD. Batman probably said fuck it I’m ending it with this movie because I can’t stand being shown amidst all this shit.

Movie watching: I had a friend of mine at hand who would translate bits I didn’t understand – but it wasn’t really required.

Sameera Reddy (holy shit she still acts?!) checked off the traditional yet modern box with aplomb through the customary dancing with prison inmate posing as a rapper song, falling into a water body while a wearing tight white shirt with 10% love handle visibility temptation and doing pooja in front of the family. She was also friends with this desi chick (and when I say desi I mean ugly little shit. I mean for the movies, not in real life. Ok actually both. Whatevs) who was getting an unusually high amount of screen time and I figured ki koi bhen vagera ka chakkar hoga – which is what it turned out to be. Long story short – smouldering dude who nobody knows anything about is running from goons who are after him because he killed some of their folk, turns out he was also looking for his sister who he gave up as a kid when his father got shot by the cops because he was a bad guy – and of course because of that he became an honest upright policeman.

This revolves around this Vishal chap trying to be Ajay Devgan, which means he is fine as long as he does the “look at me I’m so intense I’m gritting my teeth and semi-closing my eyes to look pissed” thing – but him smiling is qualification enough for him to star in the next Paranormal Activity franchise. I’m also told that he’s big on fitness – which is visible given that he has construction worker cuts on his arms. Lovely. Big props to the designer who thought giving him a purple jacket and orange pants while dancing with Sameera Reddy in what seemed like Leh would add to his sex appeal. I’m sure clowns and vaastu consultants across the country wet their panties just looking at him. I know I did.

Action: I’m in 100% agreement with anyone who says Bollywood action sequences aren’t a patch on movies from down south. What they won’t tell you is that every bad guy in these movies is a certifiable Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. How you ask? Simple. Who else do you know with the ability to carry swords inside the back of their shirts that can be quickly whipped out and used to charge a potential enemy? It’s like the hair on their back acts as a shell from which lovely tools emerge and a veshti that can be rolled up for action before shouting Cowabunga. I love how wave after wave of cronies with swords inside their back get their ass whooped – accompanied by that one dude whose only job is to make wisecracks at the failure of their attempts before the main baddie can’t handle his annoying character and shoots him in the face. So much for a sense of humor.

Also, while we’re at it – how are these powerful industrialists that have the system in their pocket such openly murderous bad guys in every bloody movie? I mean I know I’m not supposed to look for logic in these things and I don’t – but can you imagine a Ratan Tata sitting alone plotting some shit like that? I must develop a plan that eliminates all my competition from the face of the earth! Hello, Vaishnavi Communications?

The movie ends with construction cut man beating the shit out of the bad guy and saving dear sister and it is revealed that it a Sun Movies production. At this point I start laughing again wondering if anyone from the family would go and save one of its members whose name I can’t pronounce but is currently chilling with her homies in Tihar. Nothing that can’t be solved by smuggling a few swords inside stuck under the hair on your back I guess – Anil Kapoor used to smuggle a lot of products through customs like that I hear.

Now if you excuse me, I need to figure the logic of having 9 different types of pillows in one hotel room when millions of Indians have no roof over their heads. It’s the least one can do now that we’ve hosted an F1 race despite our poverty.

India mourns Steve Jobs

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:49:00 +0000

NEW DELHI: India lost its collective shit on hearing the news of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers, Pixar Studios and the bald reincarnation of Jesus having passed on. Jobs, usually looked at with disdain by Indians for not giving a rats ass about their market had long been battling with cancer that also recently led him to resign as CEO. Doctors admitted what finally pushed him over the edge was seeing Kapil Sibal launch the 47$ Akash tablet, and that his final words were “Oh for fucks sake”.

Mactards across the country, most of whom had sold their mothers kidneys to buy their first Apple product rushed to post condolence messages on Twitter and link Jobs’ Stanford commencement address on Facebook. Raghu, a self confessed Mactard had this to say. “Jobs was a genius. Everything he created beautiful, unique and out of the box. But most importantly, he used Gandhi in the Think Different ad, and you gotta love folks that love Gandhi. Heck, when Jobs got skinny he even looked like him”.

Jobs, who took Apple to being the World’s most valuable technology company under his leadership is also credited for being the first man since Lenin to successfully convince millions of people into thinking they were part of a hep, alternative counter-culture while being slaves to a hegemonic controlled ecosystem built on the backs of underpaid labourers.

Other immediate consequences of his passing included thousands making horrendous “Job” puns in jokes they thought had never been cracked before, and mistakingly buying Rashmi Bansal’s Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish thinking it was Jobs’ biography. Some political activists in Mumbai also started beating up auto-drivers citing Job’s advice to “never settle” and always “follow your dreams before it’s too late” while proudly proclaiming that they too, were college dropouts.

Condolences also poured in from celebrities. Former Indian cricketer Nayan Mongia said, “While I am sorry to hear about the loss, I hope perhaps now the App Store might approve my iGo app”. Dev Anand also announced plans of writing, directing, producing and starring in a biopic on Jobs’ life where he would essay the role of an Apple TV – which like him was pointless, but still around because of its cheap asking price.

Thank you Mr. Jobs, your life will always be an inspiration to those of us who live to create and fight to do it, hoping someday, if we're worth it, it would pay off.

This post was written on a Macbook Pro.

Open letter to Delhi Boy: A Response

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:53:00 +0000

I'm not that vella. Just thought I'd get some hits on my website too.

Relationship Limbo

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 21:07:00 +0000

I started writing thinking I’d talk about my recent experiences of judging some events at Mumbai’s Malhar (St. Xavier’s) and Kaleidoscope (Sophia College) and how college festivals here are so different from Delhi – I mean how can you call yourself the city’s best student festival without a DJ night with Jasbir Jassi? - but I’m somewhat emotionally distraught right now after having eaten a dirty bowl of Gobhi Manchurian from a restaurant called “Shree Krishna Veg”; and whenever I think of Gobhi Manchurian, I think of love. So that’s what I’ll talk about in this post.

I’ve been exposed to a new kind of sentiment recently which I don’t know how to respond to. Scouring through the relationship section of this blog didn’t reveal any answers or historical context in how to grapple with this (social scientists call this act of dissecting existing text on an issue a “literature review” – but I’m so awesome my review only consisted of my own damn blog) So what I’ll do is talk about how it makes me feel and hopefully get your opinion on it in the name of audience interaction.

The situation:

This situation is what one calls the relationship limbo.

Scientific definition: Relationship limbo is when two people, usually friends, attracted to each other with variable intensities (one wanting it more than the other) are left in a constant state of flux and reassessment of underlying power structures after an official declaration of affection disrupts this equation by attempting to expand to a higher emotional terrain inorganically.

Relationship limbo is exactly like limbo in the movie Inception i.e. your heart is absolutely spellbound by what is unraveling in front of you and you want to continue watching because it’s all so intriguing, you can’t really figure whether your world is real or fake and in both cases there is no sex involved.

In layman’s terms:

Person X: Hey I just wanted to tell you I really like you

Person Y: I like you too…I just don’t know what it means though…also..I don’t like you as much as you like me…but I want to be friends because you’re awesome and who knows something might happen because we have something

Person X: #FFFFFUUUUUUUU

Why relationship limbo sucks:

You can’t be an asshole: I’m a firm believer in the fact that the best way to deal with most situations in life is by being an asshole. In this situation however, you’re fucked because you can’t be an asshole to people if you genuinely care about them. I know this is paradoxical, because the people you care about the most at one point of time in your life (including friends, family or lovers) invariably end up being the maximum recipents from your Flipkart shit dispenser – but this is where you open iTunes and play George Michael’s Faith and hope that this time would be different.

Being an asshole in this situation for example would be suddenly starting to hate the person for not responding to your advances or devaluing the basis for your friendship. And here is where one needs to make a clear distinction about not being an asshole. If you’re not being one simply because you’re hoping something might happen in the future in which case you want to play your cards right like it’s a game – you’re doing it wrong. I think that is perhaps my only learning from all my flaming piles of relationships – people are more important than the labels to ascribe to them and that if you really care about them you wouldn’t let them go. I imagine when you’re 21 you think you have your whole life ahead of you and that makes you reckless with the people you meet and your intentions, but at 25, probably not.

There are no right answers to the question of space: In conventional relationships, when people need space there are clear demarcations of things that you can and cannot do. It is understood that you shouldn’t call or text or email and generally get in someone’s face if they don’t want to. Requests for space in relationship limbo however are totally different because the fact that you’re friends and within the same workplace/social group/university etc always keeps you in proximity. This makes it next to impossible to know when to bring up or not bring up an issue, reading signs given that in the back of your head they’re somewhat attracted to you too and how much is too much. So if you don’t know how to tip toe around this – there are massive chances of you being classified as an asshole which is something you absolutely do not want.

You’ve to be alright all the bloody time: Relationship limbo leaves you emotionally exhausted as you swing from utter elation over something as random as a sweet text message to OMG IM GOING TO STAB SOMEONE IN THE MOUTH at realizing that it probably means nothing at all within a space of 49 seconds. This is then supplemented by joy at seeing things work out between people in movies and imagining yourself in that situation to feeling like shit like you just discovered the diamond you got studded in your tooth was actually a piece of glass that the dentist conned you into buying – again within the space of the same hour. These PMS worthy swings happen everyday – and despite how good you think you are you cannot control them from screwing up your system. This is when you realise that the only time you are sane is when you’re around him/her, which is pathetic because it can turn into a notion of dependency which is dangerous for your ego and sense of being. Did I mention how all of this only happens AFTER you’ve managed to stop feeling that life is unfair? Fun stuff.

You can’t fault anyone or anything: Relationship limbo, although enmating from a state of uneven levels of attraction between friends also amalgamates every other fear into one big massive ball of doubt that forms a lump in your throat even if part of your heart is starting to melt (Fuck, that was awesome prose. Someone offer me a book deal) This includes, like I mentioned already – fear of ruining the existing relationship, its implications on one’s circle at large and how they would perceive that decision, fear of making the wrong decisions or rushing in too quick etc etc. The problem is that these are all valid concerns for anyone to have and thus cannot be brushed under the carpet as easily as beating up a third guy who decides to hit on your chick. This fearball moves in to disrupt whatever fleeting moments of courage one might have to want to give in to their gut or try something new – thus controlling the individual and their actions in its entirety.

You need to give it time: Because the situation isn't as easy as one person not being attracted to other at all and feels some connection that they can't describe - they go with the obvious choice of waiting and giving it time to be able to determine what it means for them. Time however, can be a piece of shit because it turns the other into an insecure mess living off Oprah and Alanis Morissette. This is because notions of time in relationships are usually associated (in my age group) with healing and moving on rather than focussing on it as a positive associated with growth and understanding each other in depth. Time also kills spontaneity in conjunction with the fearball because you're too busy trying to place relationship limbo in context with your existence instead of living in that moment and enjoying what it has brought to you. And not living in that moment is perhaps the biggest tragedy of it all. But all you can do is suck it up, because if you're willing to wait, and if it is worth it you will, you have no other option. It is, I imagine, much much sweeter though.

Have you ever been in limbo? How did you get out of it? What’s your story? Discuss.

Image courtesy Wikipedia

Mumbai: The Day After

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:37:00 +0000

I was watching Delhi Belly at the cinema when my phone started flashing with texts from strangers asking if I was alright. It was like I was the last man on the planet that hadn’t been immunized against polio and they were all Amitabh Bachchan. Something was wrong. Either Sikhs had turned into hated minority number 1 again and I was to run for my life or the city was under attack - again. Sadly, as Twitter quickly told me, the latter. If you don’t sense sadness in this opening paragraph, it is because I’m not. I’m not even angry. Numb is only a Linkin Park song and helplessness is what I’d ascribe to a South Block staffer being forced to write a thank you note to South Sudan for condemning the bombings. All I am right now – is indifferent. Not to the plight of the families that suffered, the under-equipped cops trying to gather whatever evidence they could in the downpour or the thousands struck down by fear – but to our state of being. To who we are. To noise. It felt like I wasn’t the only one.

I’ve never seen people on Twitter collectively hunker down and focus on just getting the facts out about people who were missing, were stuck and needed help, willing to offer a place to stay, donate blood or support whichever way they could with such composure ever before. All one could do, it seemed, was sit down, shut up, parse information as best as one could and get the information out to as many people as possible. And yet, despite how noble, creative and positive Twitter was last night – it seemed to mask a sense of despair. Of the knowledge that beyond this perhaps one could not really do anything. Of being in auto-pilot simply because it had become all too familiar. A digital safety drill, if you please, being directed by a few instructors who would gently tap incase you veered too far off the line. A habit. And for all the great work everyone was doing, I’d wonder about people who weren’t online – whether anyone was being able to reach out to them – if they knew that such help was at hand. Whether it did not just become a circular game of tweets with us patting ourselves on the back for a job well has done while assuaging the socially responsible citizens within us.

For all that we talk about politicians hijacking the air-waves to push their own agendas at times like these – how different are we really? The journalist will use the event to craft a story for the morning paper hailing a Twitter revolution. The right winger will get another chance to demonise a community. The left liberal will hit out at Pakistan and call the right winger crazy. The comedian will use dark humor, get clobbered for being insensitive, claim the right to free speech and humors role as being cathartic. The celebrity will express outrage and sympathy (and in some cases propose conversion to Israel). For all that we blame our politicians and media moguls for sticking to the same roles and talking points after every tragedy – we all seem to do the exact same thing. We all have our roles based on our Twitter hierarchies and we all cater to our audiences. Why do we expect others to do any better?

Don’t you love it when at times like these strangers send text messages to show as if they’re concerned but you know they’re faking it? Or when people who care about you message saying they’re not calling because they don’t want to jam the lines – and right then you get a call offering you a home loan at extremely low interest rates? Tragedies bring a lot of people closer, but they also bring a lot of people to talk about how they bring people closer so they can show off their bleeding hearts. There is no need.

As of now, the machine has restarted. Twitter is back to jokes and normal life. Political pundits will analyse and dissect the event and hopefully contribute to policies that will inflict positive change. Journalists will try and draw connections based on their political leanings to bring us a bigger perspective. Manmohan Singh will say things like “terrorists have the element of surprise” while we stay surprised that he is still Prime Minister. Raj Thackeray will blame immigrants while his detractors pound him for never coming forward in times of crisis. Youth groups will urge young people to vote and be responsible. Rahul Gandhi will, I’m 99% sure, stay more stupid shit in the coming months while using his kurta and sneakers as a metaphor for an India that it at once traditional and modern.

The Mumbai Police will do the best it can.

Me? I’m going to buy a faster internet connection – because there’d be a lot more people to try and help incase it happens again - and log on the next day to see people wish each other a Happy Birthday on Facebook with a "Hope you had a blast".

And Delhi Belly is way too overrated.

Back to School

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:22:00 +0000

Its sort of depressing that the only place I could think of to come and “clear my head” was the local Barista. I wish I had the patience to goto the park but I’m somehow not impressed by strolling on a walkway underneath a flyover or one prefixed by car. Also, I would probably not have come here had it not been for my apartment’s loo which has decided to fail the third time in one month. And when I say fail – I mean a cascade of our day’s droppings rushing out the top of your commode as if it’s the Niagara. You probably didn’t want to picture that. As it stands it’s a 4 feet wide hole in the ground and wall which I assume will be used by pigs to store nests stolen from the local pigeon population that likes to fly into the apartment, take a shit and fly out as soon as I open the windows. I can only conclude that my body odour makes them think they’re in Dharavi.

A major chunk of the cultural sensitivity training modules I used to conduct at my previous work (I know I know, you can go grab a tissue and wipe the coffee off your monitor) was the various stages of culture shock one goes through while moving to a new country. That ofcourse applies in toto when it comes to moving to new cities within India as well. I for example have never understood why the same goddamn part of Bombay that was dug up in 2006 is in the exact same condition in 2011. Are people from Kerala secretly digging holes in various parts of the city in hopes to find treasure? Is Akash Ambani eating bags of cement every night that there is none left to complete any project? Are the streets purposely littered with trash so that citizens become mentally tougher to handle the next eventual terror attack? What is it about Bombay can that you sit in the same chair for 10 hours doing absolutely nothing but still tire like you were running with hyenas in the Serengeti? Why does every landlord think that all you want to do with women in a house is have wild, back breaking sex? (Pro tip: Check for faint distemper signs on the back of a persons garment as they walk out of an apartment building to check if they did) The perpetuated romanticism of rain drops that mix with sewage that you float through as they ravage all that is holy along the way. AND WHAT THE FUCK IS UP THE CHILEAN MINE SHAFT LIFTS IN BUILDINGS?

I love this city, I really do. But it is exhausting. Bombay life by every author that has ever written a book on Bombay i.e. 4 million every week while using words such as study in contrasts, indomitable spirit, energy etc)

I’ve also become a student again after a gap of 5 years. I noticed having written in an earlier post about how it was an incredibly tough decision to make between academics and pushing the stand up career but I realise now how ridiculous that sounded. How many people in our country even have the option of being able to choose either? So far I’m rather happy with the decision but I don’t think I’ve managed to integrate as well as I should have. There are a couple of reasons for this:

First, when you step back into class after working for a while there is a nagging “this is completely useless to me in real life” voice that keeps forcing you to secretly play Angry Birds in class. I don’t think this voice is healthy given the emotional and financial investment one has already made – but it’s hard to get rid of. This sense of wanting to rebel gets even more pronounced when one is surrounded by students who have just graduated from their Bachelors are rote theory geniuses. In m first media studies class my professor spoke about 5 theories which I had absolutely no idea even existed. I must confess, a couple of times I survived class purely by logging into Twitter, checking the RT count and telling myself I’ve still got it. I then decided that it was the lowest point in my 25 years of existence.

Second, I’m convinced theoretical concepts serve no greater purpose than to convince Masters students that what they’re doing is worth it. Let me quote on of the readings I’m currently going through on the concept of Mass Society.

“Nietzsche, fearful of the inflammability of the mob in the presence of a heated demagogue – that demagogue was Napoleon – came to envisage modern society, particularly modern democratic society, as tending towards an inert formless mass, lying in brutish torpor most of the time and occasionally aroused to plebiscitary acclamation by a “great simplifier”.

HOLY FUCK.

This statement basically translates to the philosopher who everyone quotes on their Facebook page to sound intellectual thought of modern society as a bigass bunch of people who stayed chilled out but could come together and vote on issues when shit hit the fan.

But no – we must learn the system of language that is prescribed even if it means spending 6 hours not being able to understand what the fuck people are talking about and gouging ones eyes while one is at it.

This language is also mandatory when it comes to discussions in class. For example, if you want to win an argument in Sociology class – you should use the line “but that’s very patriarchal”. There is NO proper response as a man but to hang ones head in shame and bow out with whatever little respect you have left. Also handy are using the words “construct, de-construct, it’s all contextual and problematise” amongst others which I’m sure I’ll discover with time.

Third, I’ve rediscovered a flaw that I thought I’d never have to deal with again - I keep losing pens. So far I’ve already pissed off 3 people with my inability to carry my own pens (which I buy almost every morning at a stationary but seem to disappear by the time I reach class – I suspect Sai Baba is conjouring some up in heaven so his followers can take his autograph). Every morning starts with poha, coffee and an embarrassing “Boss extra pen hai kya?” And even if you do manage to get a pen and do the best you can to make notes in class you’re always made to feel like shit by one girl who keeps a fluorescent marker and post it notes that she keeps attaching to every page of her notebook. Is there anything more humiliating? I think not.

Fourth, this is a peculiar problem with some social science students I bumped into – the problem of allocating thought and resources. What happens when you see a documentary and read about issues on a day to day basis is beyond a certain point you almost become numb to the very ideas and notions you’re supposed to be sensitive about. It’s the same as everywhere else – give too much attention to something and you’ll automatically get labeled clingy and get people to run away from you. It’s a sort of fatigue that is a lot more visible amongst those who have been around longer – and I hope some of the enthusiasm amongst the younglings including the likes of me doesn’t really wear off.

Fifth, in social science institutes when someone says “it’s a class issue”, I realised one is talking about caste and class instead of “there is something wrong with the projector and we must get more markers for the whiteboard”.

Sixth, being identified as "the comedian" in class can have its pitfalls. These include being asked to perform in front of your faculty where you get into your element, drop a couple of F-bombs and Sai Baba sex jokes for which you have to overcompensate by sitting in the front bench and nodding profusely at everything they have to say in class for the next week. That said, I have learnt one thing. NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING beats the feeling of making people you like spending time with laugh. Nothing as pure or satisfying, and the same goes for my classmates.

And finally, and this was by far the most interesting – I found out someone I’ve dated before almost joined the same programme. Not only would it have been the most awkward first day of class in history, I realised I wouldn’t have been able to use any of my lines to flatter the opposite sex. I’m planning a visit to Siddhivinayak on the weekend to thank the lord for his/her mercy.

Now if you excuse me, I’ve to go sleep because I have class tomorrow morning.

Mainstream Me

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:32:00 +0000

It’s George Carlin’s birthday today, and while this is a mere coincidence it provides an interesting backdrop to what this post is about. A couple of months back, when the Commonwealth Games were on – a website approached me to pen a guest post for them as part of their weekly showcase. Given my general regard towards them, I agreed and wrote a piece about stupid sports that are part of the Commonwealth Games in my usual style – though somewhat toned down given that it wasn’t for my personal blog – and sent it across. After initially approving it however, the editors decided it wasn’t suitable enough for everyone given the diversity of their audience and asked me to tone it down. I refused, citing that I was sure they knew my voice before asking me to guest post and it was ridiculous for them to ask me to after having approved it once already. Either way, the decision was theirs and it is something I can understand given that for them, their stakeholders come much before the cause of free speech and highlighting individual voices they seem to espouse.

Here is what I wrote for them – verbatim – for you to decide whether it is offensive:

"As the Commonwealth Games draw nearer, the focus must shift from the controversies and blame games to what really matters – the sports. In order to bring them into the forefront, here is a brief introduction to some of the lesser publicized sporting events that will make up the Commonwealth Games.

Lawn Bowls: Lawn Bowls is a traditional British sport that finds its origins in the 13th

century. It is played on a small rectangular surface where athletes throw small balls one by one – with the winner managing to get his first ball closest to the second ball without touching it. The fact that the last sentence sounded like something Michael Jackson would do to kids is completely unavoidable. Indians have shown a great interest in this because it requires no physical exercise to play and involves checking out a lot of hot female asses while they bend down and try and get one ball to touch the other. If you’re not an ass man, you can also go and stand on the opposite end of the lawn and try and sneak a peek at the hanging cleavage – made especially possible by the Delhi heat. The game is especially suited to those with arthritis and can’t afford/lift actually 10 pen bowling bowls – and the Indian govt. has launched a major campaign to promote the sport in Uttar Pradesh where its land acquisition policy has left farmers with land enough for only this particular sport.

Wrestling: Not only is wrestling excellent entertainment for the average sports fan – it

provides great insights for sociologists keen on exploring the issue of rape across the

NCR region. Many top Indian wrestlers, who hail from the state of Haryana, are routinely observed and copied by a lot of young rapists as they provide fool proof, unblockable and technical correct methods of pinning and decapitating an opponent. It is apt perhaps, that our success in the global wrestling area and the number of rapes in the NCR region have grown hand in hand over the last few years. Young people from the NCR region interested in learning such holds are advised to watch the event – as are men who are unsure of their sexual disposition. Inadvertent penile movement on watching men grappling wearing tight spandex is one of the many tried and tested techniques that can help clear your mind.

Shooting: Shooting is of India’s biggest sporting strengths – the credit for which goes to its colonial legacy and pioneers through the ages such as Udham Singh, The Maharajas of Rajasthan, Salman Khan and Manu Sharma etc. Since Independence, youngsters have been training in the art of air rifle shooting at every Diwali and Dusshera Mela – where they decimate balloons and plastic animals such as deers, goats, lions and elephants – leading to immense and equal interest in the sport amongst rich and poor alike. The current generation has also grown up training and honing their skills on world class technological systems such as the Media / Samurai Systems offering intense experiences such as Duck Hunt – which have now been upgraded to the Call of Duty series on the Nintendo Wii.

The sport is inclusive and has low cost barriers of entry – and those interested can easily start training after attending a weekly induction camp at Azamgarh or other parts of Uttar Pradesh/Bihar.

Tennis: While a lot of people believe the game of Squash to have originated in France

as a counter to tennis (a notion that became popular thanks to common knowledge of

the French having much smaller balls) it is actually the other way round. Tennis was

developed as a counter to squash – that too in India – when a freshly built squash court wall collapsed, and construction workers started playing catch with the ball on either side of the rubble. This later led to the development of a bigger ball, bigger racquets, bigger prize money and a bigger ego on court.

The event will be conducted on the Rebound Ace surface, imported from Australia –

which gets extremely sticky in the summer sun. This has been done to prevent female

tennis stars to fly all over court and give Indian perverts a chance for peek-a-boos. Sania Mirza fans can save money by only buying tickets till the 2nd round.

Netball: Netball is a discipline for those too poor to afford plywood for a basketball

board. This sport, another British invention, is especially suited to African and other

Commonwealth Nations where lack of nutrition leads to stunted growth as there is

no need to take more than one step before passing the ball or having to try and dunk.

Another predominantly female sport – it has seen great ups and downs in Africa as nets were earlier stolen by athletes and used to prevent their children from getting malaria.

These were then replaced by dustbins, which these women were used to working with – however this led to a crisis as no one was tall enough to be able to take the ball out. At present, nets are back in favour but with holes wide enough to remind one of Paris Hilton.

Cycling: The eco-friendly version of NASCAR for poor people. Enough said."

As you can see, it’s quite harmless. And now that I read it again after a few months my only reaction is “OMFG! What the fuck is this shit? I can’t believe I wrote this!”

Which brings me to Bill Hicks. Most of you will be familiar with the 1992 David Letterman incident where at the peak of his career, Bill Hicks’ set at the Late Show was cut at the last minute because the network was afraid of pissing off the pro-lifers. The exact lines that scared them were “If you're so pro-life, do me a favour: don't lock arms and block medical clinics. If you're so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries”. This after producers of the show, and Letterman, who was beating Leno black and blue in the ratings because he was so edgy approved his material. Again, remember, this is 1992, and the stakes, because it is television, a relatively controlled medium, are much higher.

Then you have Carlin – whose seven words you can never say on television is the first set you know by heart. This is how the set begins:

"I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion.

Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words. I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal; it is a matter of how you pick them. There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you 7, Bad Words. That's what they told us they were, remember?

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits" Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."

Except we can’t even use those words anywhere, forget television, lest we be judged for being morally inferior and uncouth. That brings me to the two points I want to make:

First, although I am in no way comparing my incident with that website with that of Hicks and Carlin, notice that here it occurred on the internet, the last supposed bastion where we can still be free and speak our minds without having to confine ourselves to the diktats of mainstream media. I don’t know whether we do it knowingly, but if our websites that are meant to highlight bloggers and individual voices and provide them platforms shirk from doing the same just because it might offend a few people, then what hope do we really have of ever reaching the promised land which for everyone seems to be an Indian version of The Daily Show or Bill Maher? Where you can talk about religion, belief systems, politicians and god men without offending loonies whose business card says “defenders of the faith”? And while I have only given one example, this hasn’t happened to only me, and not with only them – but seems to be a pattern across the board. We get offended so easily ourselves that there’s no way we can be fearless enough to not offend someone because it leads to violence instead of civilized discourse.

And while we might be outraged at the new IT regulations the Indian government wants to pass that will effectively shut down the internet on pretexts such as annoyance, blasphemy and defamation and a million others (atleast it will my website) just because ONE person doesn’t agree with your point of view – the truth is even without these regulations we have sold out and surrendered. If a vagina reference is too “out there”, then let us not complain about how our comics are not as good as the Oatmeal, about how our news is not as incisive or cutting across the bullshit and about how our jokes are confined to Santa Banta and Bollywood – because you are already only being exposed to a reality controlled by a few suits in a boardroom who want you to talk, feel and think a certain way without having the opportunity to say what you really feel and talk like you really do.

The second point I want to make is connected to this censorship – and that is the power we attach to words. I get asked about why I seem to cuss so much on the blog and the answer is because that is how I talk. But the difference is that I don’t attach as much power to the word as a lot of people do – and that is, a lot of times, the basis for them getting offended. I’m reminded of Lenny Bruce’s statement (and his entire life is something we can learn from when it comes to censorship and taking offence) "The word’s suppression is, what gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness."

Something he demonstrated in this set - whose transcript I post here:

“Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? “Are there any niggers here tonight?” I know there’s one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let’s see, there’s two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there’s another kike— that’s two kikes and three niggers. And there’s a spic. Right? Hmm? There’s another spic. Ooh, there’s a wop; there’s a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there’s three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there’s one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, “I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet,” and if he’d just say “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” to every nigger he saw, “boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie,” “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” ‘til nigger didn’t mean didn’t mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.”

Or another one of his bits on obscenity.

They are only words, and how much power you ascribe them is entirely upto you. No more, no less. How I treat my words, on my space on the other hand is entirely up to me, and that right can’t be taken away.

This brings to the title of this post. I recently did my first show in Bombay and as expected it was a lot of fun. There was no major difference in the audience because you’re practically exposed to the same set of middle/upper-middle class rich people whose values are, to a certain extent, homogenized. (Except Delhi women are hotter. Actually I can’t be certain because I didn’t focus on the women in the audience in Bombay because right before my name was called I was in the loo and I had to rush out in the middle of my business and try and look all cool and prepared even though in my head all I wanted to do was get it over with so I could go back to the loo. I blame you, Fil Fil restaurant Andheri West)

And there I did my set which talks a little bit about hypocrisy that creeps into our religious practices. I usually like doing that bit mostly to see how far the audience is willing to go with me on it even if they don’t laugh – but it invariably gets labeled “not mainstream enough”.

This is a curious condition given the baggage the word mainstream brings with it. The first is obviously whether what you say is acceptable to be put on air and in the paper so that when you get treated like a property/commodity by a corporate hack supposedly with your best interest at heart you don’t get them into political and legal shit. The second works on a more subjective, even moral level. Which makes me wonder what would have happened if any of the comics I’ve mentioned above would be in India right now – because the word instead of subscribing to the idea of bringing forth a point of view to a larger audience seems to take away from it the very things that would make it worthwhile to do so in the first place. It’s an inherent dichotomy. You want to take a comic mainstream but take his voice away in the process.

Let’s look at how we define a professional comic in our country. Given that there is no official definition, how do we classify this? One who has built enough of a reputation at open mics? One who has the credentials of saying they’ve performed outside the country? Is it having opened for senior comics or being in their company? Is it being seen at the Comedy Store, which is the only official ticket to legitimacy as compared to performing at pubs? Because there isn’t a system where you’re slumming it in comedy clubs day in day out – the lack of that infrastructure basically means you HAVE to get into these soft gigs I ranted about in my last post if you want to make a living, having to live with the fact that you’ve sold a little bit of your soul because that is the only way to get somewhere. And now that I think about this more – I am beginning to believe this might be damaging simply because if you’re even remotely good you’ll start thinking about making the switch and making big money and getting comfortable, leaving a vacuum inside whatever cultural push that you’ve tried to make.

This is also where that question of what is more important – getting the laughs or talking about things you want to talk about - comes in. I know comics can balance tackling real issues and ideas in their stand up while continuing to cater to that different “mainstream” audience, but does that change anything? Isn’t the entire grudge, (again what I was ranting about in my last post) that our mainstream is the one devoid of ideas, creativity, fearlessness and with the license and ability to talk about real issues and affect real change in terms of how people think? Isn’t the battle about changing that very narrative? Shouldn’t what we consider edgy now be acceptable and an accepted part of what we call mainstream discourse? Shouldn’t we be working towards that? Somehow I feel comedy and satire is the only tool we have to inflict that change in mindset and it is a powerful tool to capture people’s imagination. And we’ve seen it happen – through history we have seen that happen. And it is why we revere this same bunch of comics like Fox, Bruce, Mooney, Pryor, Carlin, Hicks, Kinnison who pushed and pushed and pushed a style of comedy, a way of being and ideas till they became acceptable.

To keep talking about subjects again and again and again till people realise there’s nothing wrong in doing so. That it’s okay to take a stand and call a spade a spade. To us the N word over and over again till it becomes devoid of power.

There is something to learn from the movie industry perhaps. Even though it is pre-dominantly driven commercially and by the need to be different, atleast you’re seeing subjects and talking points that aren’t happy existing in their own parallel world. Willing to appreciate the audience’s intelligence and maturity and not dumbing down or shying away because of it.

So what do we do? More comedy clubs? More writers? Writing being considered a legitimate occupation? Agitating against censorship? Being honest with ourselves and expressing our ideas without fear on the domains we have left? Getting investors to see things the same way? Maybe it’s true that people aren’t ready for it given how small a minority we are. But then again it’s always a few influencers who end up re-writing the rules so that everyone falls in line. We need all of the above, and so much more.

When you’re on stage and have hundreds of people look at you, all that is in your head at that moment is getting them to engage and laugh. When you’re an Indian comic you’re doing that AND battling perception, on some level society and your own instincts while trying to make a living. But then there’s what I spoke about – the need for a greater purpose. Somewhere, I wish we find it, because we have a long way to go.

P.S. I know Carlin's birthday is on the 12th - but Blogger was down and I could only upload this post today. Sushma Reddy's image courtesy www.nowrunning.com and there because she was the only Indian whose image showed up when I googled Mainstream Me. Imagine.

Making change

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:08:00 +0000

I’m finally moving to Bombay in June. To study. I’ve been waiting for this for the last two years now and my hunger to get back into a classroom scares me. This I realise is ridiculous because I know I’ll be bitching about everything that’s wrong with studying around a week into my programme - but for now, I can’t wait. In my head, the only place I wanted to be if I had to stay in India was TISS. I’m glad I’m going to be there. So if you’re around, drop by and say hi if security lets you.

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is to rant about things that have been stifling me when it comes to stand up comedy, how I view it, how I feel about it, my place within the “industry”, its role within our social structures and how we view it. And it’s also the reason I’m stopping myself from blogging somewhat because I can’t seem to move ahead with it till I have this resolved in my head.

I’m pissed off that we don’t have an original voice in India - anywhere. We don’t have anyone who speaks truth to power. All we delve in is safe stereotypes about things we know the audience we like. We know saying bhenchod will make people laugh. We know every comic in Bombay will diss Delhi and make a rape reference and everyone will lap it up. We know no one will make a Muslim joke because they’re afraid of how it might be perceived. We will makes jokes about bra sizes and how Bengalis read and Punjabis abuse and spend money and the same old clusterfuck of template based mediocrity that has permeated the entire system while we crib about what we see on TV is even worse. There is no Bruce or Hicks. Everyone’s running around in circles making the same old pointless jokes which don’t break any new ground but we do them because we’re safe and tried and tested because the audience always has to be right when infact they don’t because they don’t have as much of an academic understanding of shape or form or technique. We tell jokes to get into the public eye so someone offers us a TV writing gig where we end up peddling the same shit we claim to not be able to stand. Maybe we just don’t have the ability, or maybe we’re just too comfortable knowing we work not because we’re great but because everyone else around us sucks even worse. There is no revolution. With everything going on around us, there is no push back. No counter culture. Fuck, no culture. And on top of that we have idiots peddling morality and what is humane and what should be spoken about and what shouldn’t because that is what we’re bloody best at – preaching morality, resisting change and then going back to cribbing about status quo for it being shit.

Comics are insecure beings. They forget to laugh at other comics because all they’re doing is analyzing what is making a joke and audience tick. They say shit like they’re in it for the laughter but that is mostly not true. There might be nothing wrong in peddling jokes that make people laugh but have no soul to them – but they make no difference, influence no behaviour and eventually you die a miserable death with no one to bloody remember you. And I am starting to feel that I am falling into similar traps. Where has the ruthlessness gone? Why can’t comics be angry at things around them because they’re afraid of pissing off an audience? Where are audiences willing to be open to facing adversaries on stage instead of punchline inducing slot machines? Where is the lack of fear that allows people to cut loose without giving a shit about whether the audience laughs or not? Why are lameass puns and shitty wordplays considered comic genius? Why do people still do voices when they’ve been done to death 20 years ago? Why are comics not discussing ideas instead of plying SMS barbs? Why does there have to be a choice between going mainstream and talking about things you want to talk about? Why do people bring 3 year old kids to open mic nights knowing full well they’ll start crying and the comic not allowed to tell the kid to fuck off and grow up with some character? Why do comics keep a water bottle next to them and pretend to drink from it in a 10 minute set when talking to people on the phone for 40 minutes invokes no such reaction?

I know I’m being judgemental and I know our scene hasn’t evolved as much – but I’m pissed at having fallen for all if not most of everything I have stated above and that to my conscience is just not acceptable. None of us is a goddamn comic. We’re just a bunch of punchline peddlers hoping to run away from our inner voices hoping the gleaming lights of acceptability where our desire to always be loved by everyone distracts us from listening to it. We talk about change and influence and making people think hard about issues but we do nothing. What we do now is not what comedy is about. Or maybe it is – but I’m not comfortable with how it defines itself and where it seems to be stuck.

Today I chose to not get eaten up by this shit – and god help me if I don’t do everything within my power to bloody break it.

Rant over. Thanks.

Notes from the Cricket World Cup 2011

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:01:00 +0000

Introduction

Two months ago I was lazing around in my room going over a contract which would have me write a cricket column for a website I’m not particularly fond of and doesn’t respond in time when it comes to making payments. Like everything else, I had to give my “unique, fun and out of the box” (that’s what EVERY magazine or newspaper representative I’ve ever spoken to wants. Sort of like Bollywood producers who want the script to be thoda “hatke”) perspective on the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 – and despite never having seriously written about cricket before, I figured this would be a great opportunity to test myself and get a couple hundred additional Twitter followers. Because really, that’s what it is about isn’t it? It doesn’t matter who wins or loses as long as the follower count keeps increasing. And frankly the Commonwealth Games did a world of good to my follower count so I was looking forward to another sporting event in the country.

This is me making my Bhajji face.

Now I’m not a HUGE cricket fan – the kinds who can rattle all off statistics from a series in 76 where the only camera angle you saw was the batsman’s ass – but a fan nonetheless who enjoys watching Test and One Day cricket, hates the T20 format and would devour many pints of beer while discussing the intricacies of the game on a big screen with air conditioning and masala peanuts. So needless to say, when I got the chance to follow the Indian team through the entire World Cup and watch all their group matches, quarters, semi and final live - whether they made it or not for free; (this especially appealed to my Indian sensibility) I took prompt notice. There was a catch however. Because this was part of Pepsi’s Change the Game campaign – it would involve shooting vignettes with MTV that would air throughout the World Cup between mind-blowingly awesome shows such as Roadies, Splitsvilla and my personal favourite, Roadies. Nonetheless, after thinking about it for a few days I made a quick assessment in my head that no one in the intellectual circle I hang out in watches those shows and I shall thus be saved from peer group embarrassment and being labeled a sell out. Thus, after deciding that this would be great opportunity to burn those people on Facebook who keep talking about how cool their lives are, and making peace with the opportunity cost of cutting down on stand up, writing and Twitter followers, I decided I would go all out and submit myself to this once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean it’s not like India is going to win or anything right? Might as well see Sachin one last time.

I can tell you right now – I’m lucky to get a chance to work on a lot of cool projects thanks to blogging, tweeting and other things that classify one as unemployed – but this was the best decision I ever made in my life (And not just because some girls in Ludhiana who I grew up with saw me on MTV and are now willing to offer me their bodies and a BMW X5) I was thinking long and hard if I wanted to do a post on this – or how to do one if I did decide to – and I’ve come to the conclusion instead of writing about the matches I’m just going to talk about my own experiences and things that stood out for me and share some pictures from all the matches.

Stylists make me miserable:

Before we even get to the matches, I should talk to you about my first ever shoot at MTV Studios and dealing with stylists. You will instantly realise how wrong that statement is because it involves 1) Shooting 2) MTV 3) Stylists and 4) Me. But ok, if Libya could be on the UN Human Rights Council I guess it wasn’t that bad. Now I was incredibly curious as to how the process works and being the studio all day and being able to observe was a great learning experience – but holy fuck what is wrong with stylists?! It’s like they have a singular set perception of youth and what it means to be hep and stylish nowadays and anything to the contrary is just unacceptable. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it is stylish to wear jeans that choke a mans testicles so much that his face turns pale and thus requires four more layers of foundation. Luckily I managed to save my testicles at the cost of dignity by finding a shiny spandex pair of stretch jeans which allowed my ballsack to breathe when I made a Sachin movement. And can someone tell me why the fuck do these ugly ass designer clothes that no one would wear in real life cost as much as a kidney on eBay? Who are these people who buy this shit? When did tramp wear become Haute Couture? Maybe I’m too middle class to understand this shit – but I don’t get how people spend 10 grand on a transparent white party shirt. Bhen cho 25 rupaye aur leke thoda kapda hi lagaa dete. And if you want to show your nipples to the world why spend 10 grand instead of going bare chested anyway?

Dhoni's got nothing on me. Except painted nipples.

And I didn’t know before that day that a VJ never repeats clothes on TV. So channels have warehouses where all these clothes are kept and maybe given to extras in some later shoot. But for all practical purposes they’re useless. For some strange reason I kept thinking what would happen if a channel donated their post-shooting warehouse clothes to a community after a natural disaster. There would be page 3 reports on the most stylish post-tsunami community in Sri Lanka or something with kids wearing arm sleeves, spiking their hair and wearing sleeveless bomber jackets with shorts in the bloody summer the next day hailing it as a great CSR initiative that boosted a community’s self esteem.

And why are make-up men the ugliest people in the world? Why can’t they ever put foundation on their own faces? 15 minutes and they turned my face into Peach Melba. All you had to do was put some fruit on my head and I’d look like Tooti Frooti. I wonder if VJs look at their stylists and go – Are you fucking kidding me? Or do they have no option but to get used to it after a while till they become big enough to wear whatever the hell they want. But shooting at the MTV Studios was great fun and most importantly for me a great learning experience – including the fact that I will likely never strip for a stylist again. This brings me to my next point:

New respect for the act of VJing:

Another aspect of the MTV association was to get to meet VJs like Jose, Gaelyn and Anusha who were with us through the matches. Now personally, I’ve never really felt anything towards VJs. I mean I’ve felt I’m funnier than some of them, I’ve admired some of them (back when Cyrus Broacha did Bakra for example) but mostly I’ve just not cared because it has been outside my purview. And maybe it’s just me – but I don’t feel in awe of “celebrities”; (a word thrown around rather loosely nowadays) instead preferring to sit back and observe. It’s also the reason why throughout the World Cup while I’ve seen and met almost every ex and current Indian/foreign player imaginable, I’m the only one who doesn’t have a single picture with any of them while my team mates do. Maybe it’s just me – but I find it wrong to violate their space especially when they look hassled and need time to themselves. Much the same way, it was interesting to see how VJs work up close and personal.

VJ Jose getting his ass whooped by Dhoni.

Generate fake/real enthusiasm about something you might not give a fuck about in life, dealing with people like me who are like logs and indifferent towards being on MTV and the “fame” it brings and thus should make us be excitable, the deliberate exaggeration, being present and applying oneself to make things look better than they are and be completely uninhibited about people hounding you for pictures and autographs and what not. I always knew it wasn’t easy, but the multiple layers of a seemingly minor shoot as they unraveled were interesting to observe. Credit to Rahul Sarangi who entertained all my daft and intelligent questions about the process, but to do it day in day out looking and feeling good - saying great stuff about rival brands within 24 hours and making people believe you totally mean it – I would just be an ethical and emotional mess. This is not a job for angry people.

The funniest moment was when during the semi-final in Mohali, full blooded Punjabi boys started taking off their sweaty shirts and giving them to me so I could give them to Anusha for signing / keeps. She literally got hounded by some 40 guys who all wanted to take a picture – almost intimidating – and to see someone handle it with poise was very cool. The most fun however by far was Jose whose brains I picked on everything from radio to the TV industry and how they handle it. Again, great learning.

Mirpur - Bangladesh:

My first few hours in Dhaka were probably some of the scariest of my life. Not because they mistook me for a BSF jawan or started talking to me in English – but because as one of the 50 odd people who were inside Mirpur Stadium the night before the opening match of the World Cup 2011, I had to walk through a crowd of approximately 1 lakh Bangladeshi supporters who had surrounded the entire stadium in hopes to catch a glimpse of what was going inside. The only difference was however that this wasn’t Rio or New Orleans – these were incredibly aggressive fans doing stunts on motorbikes, breathing fire through their nostrils (literally!), blowing their vuvuzelas in passer by’s ears, running around carrying large national flags and randomly taking off their sweaty vests like Ganguly and flinging them over their head in an attempt to start a twister. Did I mention how I was the ONLY person in this crowd wearing an India jersey and the special attention I got because of it? I have never seen a crowd as charged and in such numbers ever before – like Kumbh Mela on crack only at night with Dhaka looking like it had been decorated by a local tent house that didn’t get a cheque on time. The passion, excitement and quite frankly madness was pee in your pants worthy. So much so that after being in the stadium for an hour, us and Pepsi officials had to come out in police vans with escorts so that the crowd didn’t kill them for tickets or turn their cars over.

The view from inside an auto-rickshaw in Dhaka

Did I tell you btw that autorickshaws in Bangladesh are sort of like chicken coups and completely caged in the back? The driver locks you inside that cage from the outside and you mostly can’t do shit till the driver decides it is time for you to go. Can you imagine what auto drivers in Delhi would do to get their hands on those?

In our hotel we wanted to try out some "authentic Bangladeshi cuisine". The head chef responded, "Sir kya khaaoge, sab Indian hi toh hai".

Match day however was even more fun. Not only did Sehwag absolutely demolish the Bangladesh attack – I realised how lovely it felt to watch cricket without Ravi Shastri’s voice blaring in your ears – though for some strange reason everytime he hit a four the words tracer bullet would ring through my ear drums subconsciously. The crowd was mostly friendly, though by mid-innings when we finished at 375, it started getting hostile. Apparently a solitary Indian in the next stand got into fisticuffs with Bangladesh fans and got his ass kicked – so we moved into the ICC Hospitality box. This was a unique experience since ICC Hospitality boxes usually feature corporate honchos, politicians and old cricket experts – half of whom need a pacemaker to even lift their arms – let alone applaud a six. Sitting in front of us was Boria Majumdar – who my colleague mistook for being Mihir Bose and took out his book called the History of Indian Cricket to get it signed – only to realise and retract it later. His face = priceless.

Bangalore - England:

What is it about an India – England cricket encounter that leaves us so conflicted?

The Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Because let’s be honest – despite Ganguly’s taking his shirt off like it was colonial baggage – our nations quite like each other. We gave them the Kohinoor, they gave us the chance to host the Commonwealth Games. We gave them Bhangra and Bally Sagoo, they gave us Boyzone, Spice Girls and A.R. Rahman a chance to win an Oscar in one of their movies. We gave them raw materials, cotton, spices and steel – they gave us Pakistan – thus creating the greatest ever cricketing and potentially nuclear armed conflict. We gave them Chicken Tikka Masala – they gave us – the realization that we have much better taste. But at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore – both teams gave us something special – one of those rare moments in history when you step outside your boundaries as a national supporter and truly appreciate the game in all its glory. And what a beautiful moment it was. For me it is still the best and most tense game this World Cup. While the batting collapse was utterly disgusting and the team showed signs of complacency, it was the game where I saw what a huge difference home support makes. We had all but given up hope when Zaheer scalped two quick wickets and the momentum suddenly shifted towards India. By the end it seemed no one wanted to win and were saying “Pehle aap, nahi, pehle aap”. But a tie was bloody fantastic.

The India – England match was also the one where I did my first post match interview with Gautam Bhimani. I had just pre recorded the shoot while India was struggling having spoken about both possibilities but quickly had to run back onto the pitch given that the match was a tie and the whole equation changed.

Sachin's superfan in Chinnaswamy getting the crowd pumped up.

Bangalore - Ireland:

I’ve always felt that associate nations got treated somewhat like office interns by the ICC. A meager stipend and high expectations without much training that inevitably led to disappointment because of the lack of results. I could almost imagine an administrator meeting officials from associate nations and saying “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. Except that one team that pulls off an upset every four years against all odds – which in this years tournament was Ireland.

I knew absolutely nothing about the Irish cricket team except that it had defeated England (made sweeter because like everything else in history, the British kept poaching the Irish team’s Kohinoors and make them part of their own – case and point Eoin Morgan) and that they wore a green jersey – which as a cricket fan automatically incited feeling of mass rage and the need to win big.

The match was a bit boring so people started entertaining themselves by practicing mating calls.

Before I continue to talk about my match experience, I would like to clarify a few things:

- North Indians are not tanned descendants of the Irish people. While Irish names may include surnames like O’Keefe and O’Brien, they have nothing to do with commonly used words like O’Ben Cho, O’Terimaaki and O’Saaletujaantahaimeinkaunhoon

- Contrary to popular Indian belief, just because Irish cricketers colour their hair red and pink doesn’t mean they are “not serious” in life. If anything, colouring their head of hair in entirely shows conviction unlike our TV soap actors who show maturity and old age through two perfectly coloured streaks of grey hair. Infact Zaheer Khan, who has only coloured the front side of his head blonde is a great example of being nervous and unsure of one self

- If you mix the Irish accent with the English speaking ability of some Pakistani cricketers, you can create a new language that if taught to our youngsters will destroy our call centre industry and make our GDP growth rate plummet

- When you exit Delhi’s domestic airport terminal – you are greeted by a big hoarding of a basmati rice brand “Welcoming Madhuri Dixit to the city”. This had absolutely nothing to do with the India and Ireland match – but it is to prove how interesting the match really was

India won the toss and decided to field – much to the crowd’s chagrin who had to spend time posing for pictures with Irish women instead of focusing on the only thing they are taught to care about since gali cricket – batting. Luckily, Virat Kohli and Dhoni affected a critical run out while Yuvraj showed how through skilful flight and boredom inducing pace one could hypnotise batsmen into falling asleep and roll over a team’s entire line up. We luckily managed to chase them down through Yuvraj and Pathan’s heroics, but the match was sort of boring.

A bunch of Irish supporters behind us in the stands.

Pity the ICC didn’t convert that internship into a permanent contract and fired them instead. Those Irish airlines that started special tourism packages for English citizens titled Ireland: Home of cricket must be mighty pissed.

Nagpur - South Africa:

I should have known the match would be a train wreck for India when a Nagpur Municipal Corporation truck slammed into the artificially constructed gates outside the stadium before the match started – but for me it wasn’t all bad. Why? Because I got to meet the whole South African team post match on the field when they went to congratulate their supporters. I can tell you right now, Hashim Amla looks so shareef and innocent that it reminds you of the boy in the library whose ass you kicked only because you could. You would never do that with anyone else in the team because they’re three times my size. If you put a toothpick to one of the South African team players, they’d probably spit out a Rajesh Chauhan.

Nagpur reminded me of the Commonwealth Games all over again.

But Jamtha is a fantastic stadium – built on the backs of thousands of starving farmers in the middle of nowhere – but with some of the best facilities a stadium could offer. I instantly liked it for the simple reason you could carry food inside the stands unlike Bangalore (which I also liked. I hated Chepauk which I will come to later) The game itself was fun to watch because I was sitting on top of the Pepsi can. Now for those of you who don’t know, this was a 20 foot high structure in the shape of a can placed in between two stands. I’ll be honest – I was more than a little skeptical about watching the game from on top of a can – but I can assure you – by fat the best bloody seat in the house. Not only do you have enough personal space and a great viewing angle despite being a part of the overall atmosphere, you don’t have to stick in between hundreds of other people sweating and crying and babies shitting all over themselves like in a regular stand. And because the structure is so imposing, every cricketer who fields at the boundary in front of you looks up at you with a “WTF is this” expression. I don’t even remember how much I bitched out Morne Morkel while our openers were taking him to the cleaners – and thankfully he didn’t completely recognize me at the end of the match.

It was a sad loss for India – one which led to a massive spike in traffic on the I hate Ashish Nehra Facebook page – but for me it wasn’t his fault. The fault was most definitely in the batting and inability to negotiate the batting Powerplay – but atleast they got a kick up their bum at the right time.

For me, I blame Bollywood. I hate it when Bollywood lands up to promote their shit at every god damn event in the country – and Abhishek/Deepika promoting their movie mid innings is probably the reason why we lost. Notice how we tied the game in England when Deepika came to watch. Coincidence? I think not.

Chennai - West Indies:

Chepauk was the worst experience during the entire World Cup – purely because the stadium administration was on a massive ego trip. When you get your ICC accreditation, it has the levels of access mentioned on the side. For example, 1 = General Venue Access throughout the stadium | 2 = Hospitality | 4 = Media and Press Centres | 6 = Pitch Access and my accreditation was till number 2, which is the same as any event sponsor and allows you to move around and access every facility with ease.

Chepauk. Nice stadium, hated the staff.

However, stadium administration is also given accreditation cards a few days before the match which only have Level 1 but mention “All Gates” below. For some reason the stadium staff wouldn’t let me out of my stand simply because it didn’t say All Gates. Did I mention how like autorickshaws in Chennai they refused to talk to me in English despite doing the same with foreigners and other locals? Not only did I miss a lot of overs trying to get them to communicate, my stand also ran out of food and coffee (how do you run out of filter coffee in Chennai?) – because of which I figured I would go eat at hospitality like at every other stadium – except ofcourse I couldn’t thanks to the highly efficient and alert stadium administration not letting me out. But the worst bit again – was them willingly not talking to me despite talking to other people in English.

Thankfully the West Indian team stayed true to their reputation and rolled over quickly, otherwise I would have slapped someone. The same happened at our hotel – where reception called me at 6 in the morning post match telling me about an outstanding bill for Chili Chicken and Bissi Bhel Bhath which I apparently ordered at 3 in the morning. I was half asleep so I don’t really remember what I said – but it was something along the lines of “WTFBHENISTHISATIMETOCALLLSOMEONETELLINGTHEMTOPAYTHEIRBILLWTFISBISSIBHELBHATHANYWAYIDONTEVENKNOWWHATTHATISSHOVESOMERICEUPYOURASS”.

I was happy to get out.

Ahmedabad - Australia:

Stumpy - the worst job in the world - got his ass whooped in Motera.

For all the talk about Gujarat’s development – I really thought they would have pumped some money into Motera. I walked into the stadium and got jarred because it looked like god had photoshopped one side of the stadium which had no upper stand! I might also add that I was sad that with all that investment coming in they couldn’t build atleast one toilet that flushed. The quality of toilets at every stadium had been uniformally rubbish (except Mohali and Wankhede) but Motera really took the dung cake. What am I supposed to do after all that Vadilal? The match itself was incredibly intense – I walked away once Dhoni walked into the pavilion because I thought we were going to lose – only to reach the dinner area where everyone on the serving staff was busy watching the match on the telly and basically told me to shove it when I asked for a freshly made tandoori roti. Bringing Raina in turned out to be a masterstroke as even he could handle the Aussie bounce on that slow, low dustbowl of a track and watching Yuvraj in flow is even more breathtaking than a vintage Sachin straight drive. The highlights of the Motera match for me:

The constant asshole reminders by people around me in the stadium that this might be Sachin’s last World Cup match and the rage that followed

Ricky Ponting getting booed at the stadium everytime was rather sad. A man of his class and caliber – one of the true legends of the game whether you like him or not – deserves better

The loud boo Dhoni got after he got out trying to cut the ball. The same crowd would then cheer Dhoni at the presentation ceremony as if he was their favourite son. Fickle

A naked Gujrati man in the stands who I was observing from the boundary rope trying to cuss out Brett Lee. After struggling for 15 minutes he could only come up with “Aeee…yo..you…you lose…remember….you loose”. Brett Lee had changed ends and was fielding on the other side by the time that gentleman finished. Ofcourse, Brett Lee injured his forehead a few minutes later and naked man was convinced it was because of his prayers to Maa Durga that it had happened

The reaction Narendra Modi got inside the stadium. Every politician so far had stuck to the usual behind the glass panel where every BCCI official came to seek their blessing approach. Modi came and walked right in and sat with the crowd without a care in the world. I’m not a fan boy, but I can see how he makes it work

There were a lot of Indians wearing Australia jerseys before the start of the match – I figured they were kids to went there to study and wanted to look different. (You might ask me how I know, but I know because many were Sikh) I noticed by the time Yuvraj and Raina were batting they had changed into India jerseys after having purchased some from the ICC merchandise store

Finding Sabeer Bhatia flying SpiceJet out of Ahmedabad. Blew that Microsoft money rather quickly

Discussing Yuvraj's batting performance behind the boundary rope while being protected by Gujarat cops.

Mohali - Pakistan:

I would like to believe I broke the news about rainfall in Mohali the night before the match. I tweeted it before NDTV so you can give me credit – but I was freaking out once the rain started. Partly because it might postpone the match – but mostly because I was afraid at the manic swing the likes of Akhtar and Gul might get in those conditions. There was also the statistic of India never having beaten Pakistan in Mohali to counter our unbeaten World Cup record – so the rainfall was starting to fuck with my head. Thankfully the whisky in our hotel was only 40 rs so I had my moment of clarity soon enough.

Getting my face painted before the start of the match. I felt like Aishwarya Rai.

Maybe I’m biased here, but Mohali had the prettiest women and best DJ of all the World Cup matches. I mean what better way to pump up the Indian team than by playing “Chakk lo revolver, kabzaa lena hai”?

Only in Mohali will fans come to the stadium wearing Barcelona t-shirts. Even spotted one guy wearing a Respol Honda SBK Championship jersey. These were the only neutral spectators in the audience

That after the national anthem and boundaries the camera kept switching to Rahul Gandhi instead of Manmohan Singh on the big screen – almost like it was a Psy Ops operation aimed at preparing the junta for the next twenty year

There was 4^th grader sitting next to me while at the point boundary for a bit and he was the biggest trash talker I have ever met in my life. The Pakistani team was practicing in front of us and he was saying stuff like “Oye Akmal, 500 doonga party badal le abhi bhi time hai”. This while his father looked on proudly

Wahab Riaz kissing the ground after taking five wickets and not being declared a traitor in Pakistan. HOW CAN YOU KISS INDIAN SOIL LIKE THAT?!

Vijay Mallya asking Anusha who was with us on the Pepsi Can whether he could jump from his balcony to come watch. Had to bite me tongue and not let one rip. Though later Siddhartha Mallya and Rahul Bose came over to watch with us for a bit. So much money, so little time for Mallya Jr. to get his teeth cleaned.

Two friends getting their picture taken with Rajeev Laxman from MTV and one asking the other “Arre Lekin yeh kaunse waala ganja tha?”

The general bonhomie between the crowd and spirit of friendship between fans of both countries. From where I was all that I saw was friendly banter in Punjabi. Despite the child trash talker and some random fans, the environment was very positive. People were giving up their seats willingly, getting tonnes of pictures clicked

The guy behind me when Sachin got out “Thank god he didn’t make a hundred nahi toh haar jaate”

Peace brothers.

I got to watch the first 15 overs of the Pakistan run chase from next to the Pakistan dugout since I was supposed to go on the pitch during the first drinks break. The team looked quite jovial, especially Misbah Ul Haq – who alongwith Umar Akmal seemed very relaxed with how the game was shaping up. I was unfortunately not allowed to click pictures – probably because my entire face was painted in India colours and I started looking somewhat monstrous as the paint dried up. The crowd was still on edge till the time Afridi walked into bat but once his wicket fell the whole stadium erupted into renditions of Vande Mataram – possibly the most bone chillingly patriotic moment in the entire WC given how emotions had peaked before this match and this was the be-all end-all for every fan at the stadium.

Though I could still not get over the irony of how Chak De India, a hockey song was played everytime the team did something worth applauding. And this was through every game.

Look who's standing in front of me while I chill next to the Pakistan dugout.

Mumbai - The Finals:

I’ll be honest – there is no other team in the world I detest more than the Sri Lankan team. I don’t know why – maybe it is because of what happened in the 96 semi finals, because of the orgasm face Murali makes while bowling, the radioactive pubic hair passing off as a dead animal hairdo on Lasith Malinga’s head or because it is painful to lose to a country most people forget to add in a world map. I don’t know. I envy them for the kind of talented cricketers they’ve produced – I absolutely loved watching Jayasuriya and Kalu on song – but not this lot. Cocky that I am, my brain was also going “How DARE they come in the way of Sachin holding the World Cup”. Basically, I was being a complete jingoistic douchebag except this time it was allowed. Encouraged even.

After Dhoni hit the winning runs and the presentation ceremony started to get underway.

Now I had been told by many people that the Wankhede crowd is the most partisan in the entire country and that the stadium is shit. I found that to be far from the truth. The renovated stadium looked quite nice and the crowd wasn’t even 1/4^th of the kind of booing one saw in Motera. Except the collective Teri Maa Ki which reverberated across the stadium when people saw Sreesanth’s name on the playing eleven. I also found out later that Vivian Richards’ daughter was sitting in front of me. Had I known earlier I would have made some Kamzor Kadi Kaun jokes. Ah well.

The match started, and to be honest I was very worried after the Sri Lankans pounded Zaheer in the last five. 275 seemed somewhat impossible on that pitch – and when the illegal slinger took Sehwag out on the second delivery, I was about to cry. Ok not really, but about to hit the man in the stands walking around with a poster thanking Sharad Pawar. And then the resurgence. I don’t want to get into how we won it because everyone has written about it already – but wow what a feeling. I was standing watching Dhoni clobber the bowling with his punchy shots of yore and reminding myself of how I almost never got involved with this project. And here we were, a couple of runs away from winning the World Cup. (Which in my head Ofcourse was all thanks to the same boxers, t shirt and shorts I’ve been wearing to every game since Chepauk).

Sachin's victory lap from in front of us.

I then made my way to the boundary rope in front of the Garware pavilion. Again, how does one describe the feeling of being amongst the handful of 30-40 people who were on the field of play watching M.S. Dhoni hit the winning six? I really, truly cannot explain the feeling in words –the shot and our reaction is etched in my head. It was the collective release of a nation waiting for 28 years to see this spectacular sight having to deal with nothing but shit all day from our mundane lives. And what a feeling.

But you know an even better feeling? Running next to the team from the Garware to the Divecha Pavillion while they took the lap of honour carrying Sachin on their shoulders. It was, without a doubt, the best moment of my entire life. To be able to see the joy on the players faces and everyone around us – till the time I kissed a security guard on the cheek who didn’t take it kindly – knowing everything they had worked for for years and years finally bearing fruit. Priceless.

Everything from then on is just a blur. Shouting, screaming, squealing – watching the team lift the cup. Watching the team invite Sachin’s superfan into the dressing room so that he could lift the trophy for the world to see, Piyush Chawla coming out and signing my India cap, watching policemen go insane trying to control the pitch invasion that had taken place, final goodbyes to Gautam Bhimani and the crowd that awaited the team outside the stadium. NSG commandos wanting to celebrate and party with the crowd but having to stay focused and serious. Holy shit we won. It still hasn’t sunk in.

I’ve lived in Mumbai before and visited many, many times – but I have never seen Marine Drive like it was that night. Men with traffic cones pretending as if it was the World Cup and doing a parade inside the truck, boys running naked (yes!) with the India flag down the entire stretch, people standing on top of their cars and hanging outside their windows waiting for an accident, motorcyclists, people with dhols – blocking the entire route because they didn’t want to let the team go without being able to see them. It was – well – Sparta. And perhaps one of those few occasions in history when people’s socio-economic distinction all came crashing down with everyone rallying behind one cause – Team India.

The crowd blocking the route of our bus on Marine Drive - as far as the eye can see. Pardon the hazy image quality.

What a glorious, glorious night.

Overheard at the World Cup:

Bangladeshi fans. Pre Windies bus stoning.

Here’s some of the best things I overheard through the World Cup.

Guy to Sachin’s superfan: Toh aap kaunsi team ko support karte ho?

A woman in front of me after getting her picture taking with Kris Srikanth: Waise who is he? Some anchor na? Kaafi crowd tha so meine bhi photo le li

Me: Kris Srikanth. He’s not an anchor – was in the 83 WC winning squad and is chief BCCI selector.

A woman in front of me 2 hours later talking to friends at Nagpur: Guess who I just met at the airport! Srikanth Maurya!

Two guys talking to each other in the stands at Mohali. One asks the other – Yaar yeh bowled aur stumped mein kya difference hota hai?

Watching the matches in style:

The view from on top of the can.

I had ICC access through the World Cup which meant I could pretty much goto any part of the stadium and its hospitality boxes. Out of the 9 matches I saw I went on the pitch 6 times because I had pitch access (Post match and mid innings for in-stadium activities). Watching from behind the boundary ropes or through specific boxes is such a unique thrill that I’m wondering if I will ever be able to watch a cricket fan from a regular seat up high in the stands ever again. How can it ever be the same when you’ve seen a match with Tendulkar standing 4 steps away from you?

The Pepsi Bus:

The way we traveled to all the matches, including the first one in Bangladesh was in the Pepsi Bus. The reason I’m dedicating this space specifically for the bus is because of the hilarious situations it put us in.

First, in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi fans thought it was the Indian team bus as we made our way inside Mirpur Stadium. This led to a lathi charge on the fans who wanted to get a glimpse of Sachin and Dhoni. These lathi charged fans then had to see the sight of the likes of me and 10 other random people getting off then got even more enraged leading to another mild lathi charge. I would hereby like to apologise to the fans who came out for the opening match – it was not intended.

And that's a wrap.

And in the final, after Dhoni hitting the winning six and twirled his bat for the world to see – Marine Drive went totally beserk with fans blocking every possible exit hoping to somehow catch a glimpse of the Indian team on their way out. Again, as expected, while the team was stuck inside Wankhede, we walked a kilometer to get on the bus and make our way back to the hotel only to have fans lie down in front of the bus and thinking they could stop it with their bare hands thinking that the Indian team was inside. Now that I think about it – this is not funny at all and we might just have gotten killed – but there was always a moment of whoa – who are these guys when we got off the bus. Quite cool.

Khamba's Podcasts - Saad Akhtar from Fly! You Fools

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:22:00 +0000

Khamba's Podcasts - Saad Akhtar FYF by G Khamba

Hey guys,

Here's the second episode of the podcast series with Saad Akhtar from Fly! You Fools!

Another person I'd like to thank for offering to support the series is Mr. Gaurav Sharma. (I forgot to while recording. His Twitter handle is @dandiwakh)

Enjoy and don't forget to share.

Khamba's podcasts - Rahul Roushan from Faking News

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:26:00 +0000

Khamba's Podcast - Faking News by G Khamba

Hello!

Here's the first episode of Khamba's podcasts - a brand new 30 minute internet chat show on the lives of some of India's prominent and up and coming bloggers and stand up comics! We'll delve into the lives of those who spend theirs making you laugh and give them a platform to share their stories with the world besides the usual newspaper quote or TV byte.

My first guest - Rahul Roushan from Faking News! Just click play to listen! (18+)

A couple of disclaimers:

- It's completely unscripted show. The idea is to engage in a conversation and not turn it into an interview. Also frankly, I'm too lazy to actually frame any real questions
- It is intended for 18+ audiences only. Do not hit listen if you're below 18.

- It's not intended to be funny i.e. it's not a comedy special where people will be exchanging jokes for 30 mins. The idea is more to expand the platform for comics and comedy writers.

- With time the style might change and new segments added etc.

Please feel free to give feedback!

For Vivek Shauq

editor@gkhamba.com (Khamba) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:07:00 +0000

If it took you 5 minutes to realise who Vivek Shauq is – don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Pretty much every staff writer in newspapers across the country didn’t either; and thus copy pasted his Wikipedia entry and called it a “tribute”.

I’m learning more and more with each passing day about comedy, its history and the people who helped shape it. I’ve read pretty much every biography and/or autobiography of the comics I’ve admired and wasted hours watching their videos. (Pryor, Bruce, Martin, Mooney, Carlin, Hicks etc) And like others of my generation and socio-economic type, I’ve never really looked beyond them for my moments of inspiration and aspiration. And that perhaps, is one of the reasons legends like Vivek Shauq are overlooked - because we forget. Because while we lament the lack of comedy clubs in India or the comedy revolutions that took place in other cultures – we forget the kind of comedy we grew up with and the imprint it left on our subconscious.

I don’t have the academic depth to be able to compare the pairing of Jaspal Bhatti and Shauq with that of Western comics as is the norm in pieces like these. Nor am I able to reference old Hindi comedies or the 60s and 70s because that is not what I grew up with. I grew up with Flop Show. Looking back, those 10 episodes where this duo knocked governmental institutions, cultural beliefs, value systems and inherent ways of being and screenings of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron on Doordarshan were what defined satire for people of my age. I have the DVD set of Flop Show. 20 years later the writing and stories still hold up and make me laugh. I’ll be glad if the shows presently on air (and the kinds I write for) hold up for even a year. And for that show alone – Shauq will be for me, a comedy legend. Without him – there would be no Flop Show, and that is the end of that.

I am reminded of a conversation with my friend Rahul from Faking News from a couple of months ago – where we were trying to hook up a meeting with Jaspal Bhatti at his MAD Arts school in Mohali – where I was hoping to get to meet him, Shauq and the rest of the crew (or perhaps even join a couple of classes). We never pushed it very seriously. I wish I had.

Shauq also associated with Bhatti for shows like Ulta Pulta (another classic) and Full Tension. He also did a handful of movies in Punjabi (Mahaul Theek Hai being the most popular of the recent lot) and Hindi where his role was usually that of the crummy sidekick with a couple of lines here and there. To a lot of people his movie career took the shine off his glorious past – to me it was just part of the ballgame when you’re a small fish in the pond. Either way, his contribution – which I fear will be overlooked because of being a mere sidekick – towards Indian comedy has been immense and something we shouldn’t forget.

People always point out how great comics and musicians seem to die young. I don’t agree with that thesis at all. But if that were true, and there is some sort of a god – then I imagine he needs all these folks to humor him/her looking at the clusterfuck he created in the form of Earth. Shauq would do a stellar job.

India does not respect its artists. That comedians languish at the bottom of the artistic pile is an even bigger statement on our society. Maybe it’s because Indian comics aren’t like they used to be. (One only needs to turn on the Great Indian Laughter Challenge or watch any Bollywood flick to see the state of what sells) Maybe society hammers us into delivering what it wants and doesn’t leave us with any other options. But the one thing we can do is honour some of our unsung heroes who deserve a lot more respect and recognition than they are accorded.

To Vivek Shauq – one of the first guys who made me laugh – thank you for all the entertainment.

R.I.P