Bangalore comic Kritarth Srinivasana's is about the desi parent trap

The best thing about being raised by Indian parents is all the jokes you get to crack about them for the rest of your life. After all, if you don't like gags about desi parents, are you even Indian?

"At some point, we've all had the same stories at home, like how your mum saves all the takeaway dabbas from restaurants, and how dads always insist on investing in fixed deposits," says Bangalore comedian Kritarth Srinivasan, 26, who is bringing his own humorous and oh-so-relatable take on the subject to Mumbai and Thane next weekend with his new show, Product of Indian Parenting.

The show focuses on how Indian kids are always listening to their parents and do as they say, no matter how funny it is. "The hardest thing my mum has ever asked me to do is to count the pressure cooker's whistles. Everybody's had that moment where they're confused, 'Oh, is this [whistle] three or four?'" says the stand-up comic.

Had Srinivasan blindly listened to his parents, though, he'd have been a pilot or an engineer today. "My dad is a pilot and he wanted me to be one, too. He taught me how to fly a Cessna at a very young age. When I was 17, I went on a Microlight flight with him, and he wanted me to join flying school after Std XII."

"But then my parents slowly started brainwashing me against it. My dad would say, 'Do you really want to be a glorified driver?' Then I joined engineering college and lost interest in flying as a career," he recalls. Unfortunately, engineering wasn't for him either. "I am terrible at maths, and I talk about it in my show as well, about what it was like to be a student at Kendriya Vidyalaya and not be able to spell or do maths," he says.

Srinivasan dropped out of the course but, luckily, he already had a budding comedy career to fall back on. "I started stand-up seven years ago, when I was 19 and in the first year of engineering college. My parents were not very supportive in the beginning, but got on board when I started making money from it. To this day, though, there's some confusion about what I do. When anyone asks my parents, they say I'm a writer, but they don't know how to explain beyond that," chuckles the funnyman.

October 13 (Thane) and 14 (Mumbai) will mark the first time Srinivasan will do an hour-long show here, although he has performed here plenty of times at comedy events. His act was well-received in the US last year as well, and he is a well-known name in the Bangalore comic circuit. "I was one of the first few and the youngest in the Bangalore circuit. Half the comedians in Mumbai started in Bangalore - Biswa [Kalyan Rath], Kanan [Gill]… All of these guys doing shows on Amazon now, I've known them for years."

"I think that if you can make your jokes work in Bangalore, you can make it work anywhere else; it's a tough crowd there. The Mumbai audience is very welcoming. They come out to have fun and laugh," says Srinivasan.

Where: Backspace, Thane and Independence Brewery, Andheri
When: October 13, 14
Entry: Rs 250
Call: 9920493191

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