Second to all

Mornings in most Tamilian homes revolve around two cylindrical steel vessels, available in various sizes, placed one above the other. As hot water percolates through the coffee-powder filled porus top, and collects at the bottom, a wave of relief passes through the house. The day can begin. It's probably why most Tamilians refer to themselves as coffee addicts and not coffee lovers. You can't know if you love something or not if you've always lived your life with it.

But, the filter is also the centre of a power dynamic. "The first round of decoction - the strongest one - is reserved for the breadwinner. Earlier, it was my grandfather, later, it was my father," says Karthik Kumar. "The women would have the second decoction, because they felt they didn't deserve the first round. The servants of the home, who were lower down the rung of priority, would get the third round," adds the 38-year-old stand-up comic, whose new show Second Decoction helps give him a cathartic release to the anger against the country's middle-class collectively treating itself to second best. The 90-minute act which first premiered in Mumbai at the NCPA Cheer Fest earlier this year, will have its first public show in the city later this month.

"If you go to a theatre and make the entire first row empty, the middle-class audience will not come to the front row. Because we fear that if they go to the first row, someone will ask us to leave. We seem to think that we deserve second best. I don't know if it's modesty or humility," he adds.

The inspiration for Second Decoction, says Karthik who went to school in Chennai, came during the December 2015 floods that hit the Tamil Nadu capital. "The rich Ubered a helicopter and got airlifted to drier lands. The poor suffered due to lack of choice. However, the middle-class stayed in their homes even as water rose to seven feet, because they couldn't imagine leaving their house because of 'what will happen to the sofa and TV?'"

Karthik, who took the oft-taken engineering-plus-MBA degree path, laughs "middle-class parents can't give you an inheritance, so they give you an education as a punishment." After working for three years in the corporate world, he figured he had saved up enough to pursue his calling. Stand-up comedy came six years ago. The platform, he says, allows him to vent about anything as long as it passes through a comedic channel.

Are you tempted to let him vent?

Where: Canvas Laugh Club, Palladium Mall, High Street Phoenix Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel
When: 10.30 pm, July 30
Entry: Rs 600
Call: 9004603115