Picking brains of the best known, proper Indian, travelling funnyman. Because, why not!
A still from comedian Vir Das’s 2017 Netflix special Abroad Understanding
What does success mean [to you],” I ask stand-up star, Vir Das, 43, for a couple of reasons. For one, we are before a massive young audience at the India Film Project cine-mela of sorts, at Mehboob Studios, Bandra, which makes for a perfect location to extract such life gyans, aka TED talk.
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Two, Vir is the most successful artiste I know from growing up. In the sense that we were in the same town, at the same time. Some of us used to take the world really seriously as ‘debatee’ type kids in school/college tend to—jotting down ‘pertinent points’, thrashing down global problems, in four minutes flat.
The first time I saw Vir was at one such debate in Delhi. Ideally, as champions of the circuit, we should have breezed through. In comes a kid, who cracks a few jokes, one after another. The trophy is his. Who’s this rando from Delhi Public School, Noida, we thought. Never seen. Rest is chemistry.
Vir was new to Delhi, having moved from Lagos, Nigeria, I remember. As is common with desi expats in Africa, he got sent to study in India, namely, Lawrence School, Sanawar, that he got kicked out of, because he was found delivering a love-note/card to a girl, for a senior. He was the Abdulla in a begaani shaadi.
Love is actively forbidden in boarding schools. That brought him to Delhi, and he studied in the US, thereafter. Throughout his life, Vir reckons, he’s been the classical outsider—“African kid in India, Indian kid in the US, American boy in India….” Is that where the funny bone emanates from?
Surely, he says, the comedian is never the life of the party. He’s that “loser”—“ugly, relatable, crack human being”—looking into that life of the party, making a joke of it. Usually, stand-ups start with short sets, at open mic nights, gradually fleshing them out into longer pieces. YouTube has made this process simple, in the sense of getting noticed thus.
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What follows is you: “There’s never been a better time—audiences only care for authenticity and your artistry, rather than your CV, family. Celebs are a thing of the past,” Vir points out, to a suitably nodding audience, as we speak.
And yet, for an Indian, English stand-up comic, I don’t think there was any North Star, for when he started out in Bombay, circa 2005. Making Vir, in many ways, the pioneer of his profession, as we know it now: “There was a minor scene in South Bombay, with Bharat Dabholkar, Boman (Irani), doing some of it.” None Vir’s stage/age, talking life, sex, etc.
What did he do? He put together an amateur night at Blue Frog (fancy gig venue/bar), in the late noughties. Nobody had a clue who would show up, in terms of performers, let alone audience. Both did.
Over the years, this stand-up comedy contest of sorts delivered stars/winners, in their own right, like Rohan Joshi, Abish Mathew, Tanmay Bhat… “I think, one of the years, Varun Grover won,” Vir recalls.
Unlike several stand-ups I know, Vir doesn’t suffer from a real-life pressure of the punchline. He’s actually a very serious guy, when he’s not performing. Acting would have been his natural gig—that’s what he studied in college.
Which is also why the first time he did stand-up was actually a 90-minute monologue before 600 people, as part of his drama course. He stank, he says. As with getting “booed off stage, 17 nights in a row, making generic jokes about cockroaches, etc, at open mic nights in Chicago.”
He first found his voice, he clearly remembers, as an Indian man yelling into the mic once: “You Americans don’t value us—we’re your gynaecs, driving your taxis, selling you condoms, newspapers, food… Without us, you’d just be starving, stranded, sexless, sterile, and stupid!”
The joke landed.
But that’s not how careers take off. What career could he opt for, anyway? Vir says after skipping a VJ job for Zoom TV, he saw jocks auditioning for movie roles in Aaram Nagar, Bollywood—he felt like a golden retriever among Alsatians, may as well, hence, be the best golden retriever.
He then hired a camera crew, lights, shot his own stand-up special, edited it at “Kapil Media Pro in Lokhandwala Market”—cased them into jackets, to feel like they were international videos, passing on 10 free copies to every DVD library, between Bandra and Andheri, where the entertainment industry lives.
This is actually how he got a call from Yash Raj and Aamir Khan Productions, for films. We’ve seen him touring on stage for years.
But it’s really Netflix that sealed the deal. He’s done four specials for the global platform—I don’t know anyone else, maybe Dave Chappelle, has that many? Two of which earned him an Emmy nom.
“There is that space for a proper Indian guy, from India, talking about the chudail from Andheria Mor, in Norway,” he says. Vir fills that gap sufficiently. He’s a travelling funnyman.
So, yeah, what does success mean (to him), I ask: It’s that time between what you dream (in terms of an idea), and when you execute it, he says. That’s it. If it nears zero, you’re successful. Couldn’t agree more.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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