“I WON’TGET
OFFENDED
IF YOUCALL
MEA FEMALE
COMIC.THE
PROBLEMLIES
INTHECULTURE
THATYOUARE
PUTTINGMY
GENDERFIRST
ANDMYART
LATER.”How do you react when you see the
audience squirming when you touch
upon taboos?
Comedy comes from tension. A typical joke
consists of setting up something, and then the
humour comes putting a flip on it by saying
something so completely unexpected that
the audience laughs. You make the audience
go, ‘Say, what?’ and that breaks the tension.
For instance, women generally squirm on the
topic of sex. But I as a comic need to be patient
because I am prepared that the punch line will
be worth it. The idea with dark, edgy humour
that makes people uncomfortable, is that the
trade off will be worth it. When the joke comes
in the end, there should be no debate in their
heads. It should be universally funny.Where do you look for inspiration?
I remind myself of my privileges, however
small they are. Whatever it is, there is so much
going for me. Most of the times I tell myself
that this is a very first world problem I want
to solve—passion, individual choices—it’s an
evolved stage of life. If I am facing a tough timetoday, it is not necessary I will face it tomorrow.
Secondly, there is immense inspiration around,
if you just know how to look.Which comedians do you admire?
Many. I relate to Allie Wong a lot. When she
talks I go ‘Oh my God!’ I need to sit with her...
(laughs) and cry with her that even I feel angst
over the topic she touches upon. In India, both
Biswa (Kalyan Rath) and Kannan (Gill) do
different stuff, but are genuinely funny.
I would think that these two engineer boys can
do comedy so I can too. Aditi (Mittal) was great
inspiration, because it makes a difference when
you see a woman doing comedy.
More recently, (Abhishek) Upmanyu and
Zakir (Khan) started doing comedy, again
Hindi is what works as well. I come from an
enginnering, MBA background where we
are taught to discard Hindi. Thus, I had to
often talk in a language that I don’t think in
(English). My natural language is Hindi. So
when these boys broke the barrier of talking
in Hindi and articulating their thoughts in
their preferred language, it was a big leap in my
head—that thoughts are more important
than language.We heard you don’t take the term
‘female comedian’ well.
I won’t get offended if you call me a female
comic, since it is true, I am a woman, and
a comic. The problem lies in the culture that
you are putting my gender first and my art
later, whenever you address me as ‘female’.
Barring a very few industries, nobody uses this
term. For example, you are not called
a female strategist or female marketeer or
female software engineer. When you say it
casually, you think you are not seeing much
into it, but subconsciously you are putting the
gender first. It should not be a label, because
you don’t do it for men.What are you working on currently?
On my live comedy, but along with that I am
looking to populate more on YouTube and
preparing myself for hour-long gigs, because
it is not one hour of content, but one hour of
holding the audience’s attention. I recently
started working with digital projects. A couple
of show pitches, fiction and nonfiction, are in
the pipeline. I see myself as a performer and
a writer, and I am keeping my canvas big.REALITY what it takes to be
PHOTOGRAPHS: OML ENTERTAINMENT PVT LTD