From Mera Naam Joker to stand-up comedy – How India laughs

Kolkata: At Kolkata’s tony Saturday Club, the much-loved Atul Khatri performed his Stand-Up comedy routine to a sellout crowd. That this show came under the Art & Culture wing is a charming indicator of a one-time niche craft becoming a mainstream indulgence. The way we laugh, evolving, in tune with the way we live.

In Nehruvian India, with roaring class divisions, the comedian was pretty much one of  ‘them’, commissioned to entertain many of ‘us’. The joke, invariably, was on the performer or a hapless victim, whether in the circus ring or the silver screen. Mehmood, Mukri, Rajendra Nath, Tun Tun, Robi Ghosh and talented compatriots were destined for a subsidiary existence. Only Kishore Kumar, the actor, managed to break the pattern, but he was admittedly in the maverick zone.

That was also the age when we were conditioned to take ourselves very seriously. A sense of humour was clearly a leisure narrative, unlike the West, and we need to look no further than James Bond or Yes Minister, for a live contradiction. Quite like an ice cream cone or a restaurant meal, a session of mirth was a scheduled activity and usually, a mood-lightener in meaningful tidings, whether romantic or sinister.

Stand-up comedy actually originated in the late 19th century. The French Vaudeville, Stump-Speech monologues, American Burlesque and English Music Halls are some of the notable hubs. In the 1960s, Pu La Deshpande, a Marathi humorist, perhaps became the first Indian public performer of this genre, in the early days of Doordarshan. While Vir Das and his cronies, including megastar Kapil Sharma, accelerated the new-age version. The Comedy Store, Palladium Mumbai, with its theatre-like structured acts, helped forge a sustainable affection for this risque innovation.

The stand-out feedback from the early days was the uneasy culture of public humiliation, sacrilegious to our behind-closed-doors mindset. First row, high ticket size South Mumbai snoots were targeted with Nazi precision and roasted in public, with no concession for the dangling diamonds. This became the signature pattern and surprisingly enough, the victims found their comfort zone. It helped them relax, smile and be comfortable with forgiven vulnerabilities, studiously cloaked by IIM diplomas and German automobiles.

Stand-up comedy over time, achieved the seemingly impossible, for a nation obsessed with Competition Success Review and its stoic flight path. Like the British imperialists, we were actually learning to laugh at our own lives, lifestyles and attitudes. Instead of ‘taking offence’, a popular national pastime that still haunts social exchanges. No small matter this, although confessedly, it will take time to meaningfully escalate, like smartphones or UPI.

Soon enough, Stand-Up comedians became a preferred poison for corporate gigs, social events and even marriage bashes. A considered infusion of Johnnie Walker ( not the comedian), helping dilute inhibitions even further. The utter truth that even Narayan Murthy’s fantasy work regime can co-exist with indigenous frivolities, is now well recognised. Inarguably, an enabler of work-life or cork-wife balance, whatever be your chosen lens.

At Saturday Club, Khatri embraced the continuum of ‘touchiness’, with much elan. This, being a thinking person’s craft, as contexts have to be successfully nuanced. On the right side of browbeating law and the wrong end of the Cold War Berlin Wall. The attendees, suitably lubricated, were itching for more, quite like Yash Jaiswal on a flattening Perth strip. Rather valuably, the one-hour gig was an inspiring foundation for a four-hour party, the DJ enthused by the pre-fabricated levity of the evening. Yet another underrated contribution of this genre is the ability to set a socio-conversational agenda with a happy backlash on peace of mind.

For too long, arrived Indians have lived in convenient  ‘Sympathy’ mode, distanced from challenging ‘ Empathy’. Raju, Mera Naam Joker, was a poster boy of the earlier era, the climactic reunion more pathos than exuberance. Stand-up comedy has surely played a happy role in transforming our mindsets, that all of ‘us’ are indeed all of ‘them’, by destiny and deed. In cahoots with mainstream cinema, where heroes are nowadays delighted to perform full-time comic roles, that too with multiple sequels.

Stand-up comedy is indeed a form of Art that is now part of Culture, not just as a club sub-committee but as a societal adhesive. May the best act win but thankfully, there is room for every act.