Young stand-up comic Papa CJ is willing to trudge miles to give a free five-minute performance for four men and a dog.
By the time we are in the middle of Papa CJ’s stand-up act on a winter night in Delhi’s Lodhi Garden restaurant, I notice people holding their bellies and rolling in the aisles. I also notice, after Papa CJ’s cracked one of his many “uncensored jokes” that my mother-in-law takes off the red bindi on her forehead. The bindi has been the butt of a recent joke, a “totally non-veg joke yaar” (as a drunk man in the front proclaimed), one that cannot be printed here.
For an event which was to have audience capacity of 150 people but had a turnout of 450, stand-up comedian Papa CJ had a tough task ahead. The event, organised by Jack Daniels (“they don’t even pay me, look I’ve had to wear torn jeans,” the stand-up comedian wise-cracked), which was to begin at 8.30 pm, had people drinking till 10 pm, after which Papa CJ took over.
By his own admission, as we chat the next day, CJ says, “A lot depends on the way shows are organised.” In his view, comedy is not like music which you can listen to in the background. “People need to pay attention and listen. I’m glad this time round I succeeded,” he says happily.
He has been succeeding in getting people to laugh, but who is Papa CJ? Born in Delhi, CJ lived in Kolkata for 20 years and studied in Lawrence School, Sanawar. “Don’t go into the kitchen when you go to a restaurant. It’s like going to Coca-Cola and asking the brand drinks’ secret formula,” he laughs.
Strangely, he’s unwilling to even reveal his real name. I spot his name in a newspaper report (in the Telegraph, India, to be precise) and wonder if he would be willing to reveal it. “Papa CJ is the name that I have taken. As a teenager, I witnessed a brutal assassination and since then I’ve been under a witness protection programme by the International Court of Justice in The Hague,” he explains mock-seriously, refusing to talk any further on the issue.
For someone who started doing stand-up comedy four years ago, CJ, as he calls himself, completed his MBA at Oxford after which he started working as a management consultant for five years in London. After three years of a professional career, he convinced his company to give him a year off. “In that year,” says CJ, “I set up some schools on the Indo-Bangladesh border, went backpacking in Kerala, learnt to fly paragliders, played poker in Vegas and trekked to the Everest Base Camp and to the Phantom Ranch in the Grand Canyon.”
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During this period he also attended the Edinburgh Fringe festival where he saw people doing stand-up comedy for the first time. A germ of an idea was planted then and three months later, CJ was on stage doing his first stand-up gig. “I haven’t looked back since,” he says. The initial years, he says, were difficult, and though CJ did a record 250 shows in the initial 10 months, the real story is far from glamorous. “It meant waking up at 11 am every day, having a meal at 2 pm and hitting the road at 4 pm to some town, in the middle of nowhere,” he says.
Why, this 30-year-old comedian says that he even trudged miles to give free performances for just five minutes in front of four men and a dog. “I’d get back to London by 2 am from many such performances and spend another two hours taking three different night buses to get home because one was too poor to afford even a taxi,” he laughs. By the end, confesses CJ, he had no friends, no money and no relationships. “In short, no life,” he says.
But that was then. At the event where we saw Papa CJ’s performance, for instance, his fan following was huge. He agrees: “It can be a good life but you have to have tenacity, perseverance and self-belief. And you should love what you do.” Small wonder, then, that today he travels all over the world simply because of his profession.
There’s also a minor pitfall. He says that many times when he’s been out partying, people have simply walked up to him and asked him to crack jokes. “You don’t meet a boxer and say, ‘Oh, you’re a boxer, punch me a bit then.’” What he also detests are photographers who insist that he make a funny face for their photo-shoot. “I’m a stand-up comedian, not a clown. You want a clown, then go to the circus.”
Despite television reality shows promoting comedy in India, CJ feels that stand-up comedy is just kicking off here. “It is our responsibility to ensure that one of the toughest art forms in the world is established at the right level and gets the respect it deserves,” he says, clearly not sounding the comedian that he was at the Delhi show.
Even as CJ takes issues with the manner in which comedy is perceived by the general public, as an artiste, he says, he’s preparing new material for gigs all the time. “I tell my father, who occasionally accuses me of being lazy, ‘If my eyes are open, I am working,’” he laughs.
There are times when, he claims, jokes also come to him in his dreams. Predictably, he’s always observing things and makes mental notes of surroundings and people and even events that get published in newspapers. “Your jokes are not a hit till you’ve worked it at least three times in front of an audience. And that doesn’t mean six friends in the living room. Also, you can’t get on stage and do five minutes of new stuff at a go,” he says.
For now, he’s wishing that more shows from India were offered to him. Currently based in New Delhi, CJ travels at least nine months in a year for gigs in different parts of the world. He has forthcoming performances in London, Singapore, New York, Italy and Edinburgh, and there will be shows in the US too. Not bad for a youngster who would’ve otherwise been caught in the throes of recession, had he still been a management consultant. “Now’s the time to laugh,” he philosophises. “What better than to make everyone laugh,” he says.