Whatever Noah went through in Bangalore, wasn’t that just gods of non-fiction being kind on a comedian!
Trevor Noah performs stand-up in Mumbai on September 30. Pic/X
My favourite Indian stand-up guy, Biswa Kalyan Rath, as he put it at his gig recently, holds a simple ambition for his comic sets. He wants reviews of his shows to be that minor punctuation between people exiting, and deciding where to head next: “That was funny, no? Yeah. Okay, where to go for dinner?”
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Which is fair ROI, for a walk down the neighbourhood for a local gig. Probably not the same if the South African stand-up star, Trevor Noah, is in town?
Noah is Michael Jackson of stand-up comedy—not saying this because he’s both black and white. Like Barack Obama, incidentally—a part Noah could easily play in a biopic. He could also play young Sai Baba, from Puttaparthi. But that’s not something he’s evidently glad about, having googled the name in India!
Unlike Rath, Noah is connoisseur of accents, including ‘Russell Peters’, read: Indian (to western ears). That he’d eventually perform among desis was a given, for India inevitably shows up in his sets. His devotion to Indian food: “Best cuisine in the world.” I agree.
His BFF, growing up, was a desi named Theesan Pillai. And, he says, “South Africa has the largest population of Indians, outside India,” which is probably where his poking fun at Bollywood dance routines comes from.
None of which could prepare him beforehand for spot-on jokes about self-important Delhi-ites, that he delivered to audience’s expected delight, at his gig, in Bombay. Perfect!
Noah, you can tell, is a terrific traveller, gathering observations, interacting with locals, which he always mentions, is the antidote to ignorance.
Travelling is the also reportedly why he quit his desk jockey’s job, anchoring The Daily Show, that made him the global/American star.
Doing political news/commentary, as comedy—a genre that’s made so many stand-ups, Noah’s mentor Jon Stewart onwards, stand in for the most popular intellectuals of our times. Op-Eds get perceived as pompously boring, wordily hammering in the helplessly obvious.
Watching Noah, on stage, felt like a legend checked off a bucket list. One thing he was constantly warned against, before performing in India, he repeated: “Do not comment/joke on Modi!” Did he?
Well, he sees the Prime Minister’s face, literally everywhere in India. Modi shows up under his eye-lids, before he falls off to sleep. What else does he see everywhere? “G20, G20, G20, G20….” The audience is in splits.
Further, as he takes the usual swipe at India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani and his Bombay skyscraper for a “$2 billion home, Antilia, housing five people, and 300-member staff.” I wonder if Noah knew, Ambani is the biggest stakeholder in BookMyShow, organisers of his India gigs too?
Would’ve loved to ask. Although, what’s common between PM Modi and several stand-up comedians, including Noah? They barely do press interviews. In Noah’s case—whatever he says in interviews, as personal experiences/opinions, could well be worth saving as material for his shows, no?
No. It’d be fun to ask Noah what he feels about fellow comedian, Hasan Minhaj, who’s as much a front-runner to host The Daily Show, as potentially getting cancelled over The New Yorker ‘exposé’, on how his stories in a similar show, Patriot Act—about receiving threat-letter, laced with anthrax, or on an undercover FBI informant—turned out to be untrue.
Technically, not untrue—grossly exaggerated, to falsely attributed. Including about Minhaj’s girlfriend, who rejected him for high-school prom, as narrated in his Netflix special, The King’s Jester.
Wait, are we fact-checking jokes now? As it is, dissecting comedy is like deep-cleaning ashtray—what’s the point? Isn’t embellishment in humour essential, even when autobiographical? How exciting could the life of comedians (regular blokes) be, if not sufficiently overstated?
Journalists get judged on fidelity with facts. I know, having done a media roast for a stand-up routine once. Finding it hard to make shit up. Reporter in me going, “Can’t say this!” Me: “Yeah, you can, it’s comedy!”
I bring this up as Noah goes on at the Bombay gig about his previously cancelled Bangalore show, for all that he went through—non-stop jam, off-roading on dirt track, semi-permanent tent for venue, dealing with security, gawking at caged dogs backstage…. He refused to perform. Audiences left dejected. Neither was at fault.
Going through Noah’s Netflix specials (Son of Patricia, Afraid of the Dark, I Wish You Would), you realise, traffic is his staple peeve. Whether he’s picking on LA, NYC, or Delhi, Bombay, at his India tour. A semi-logical problem with cracking traffic jokes is—well, you are the traffic, who’s the joke on!
The cosmic issue is you probably invite bad karma! I asked my Bangalore friends, who’d gone for Noah’s gig, if all that he said was true. Guess what? Nobody saw caged dogs, otherwise, 100 per cent true!
Exaggerations hardly necessary. And they’d faced nothing like this before, either.
For that punctuation between audiences exiting, and deciding where to head after Noah’s show in Bombay, all I could hear around me was: “This is so embarrassing, what he went through in Bangalore!”
Which is why Noah must return to India! As my other favourite desi stand-up guy, Kunal Kamra, says it best, “Kahan milega itna content (Where will you find such free material)?” See you soon, Noah.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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