Stand-up comedy: Laughers' curve

A group of down-and-out professionals manages to find a new direction in life through stand-up comedy

Your dad divorces your mom to marry your male caretaker. Your mum writes erotic novels and has a libidinous appetite. Girls think of you as a closet homosexual. Your only aim in life is to be the funniest guy in the room. Sarcasm is your byword, dry wit your forte. Obviously, I’m talking about Chandler from the popular sitcom FRIENDS.

Now meet Aditi Mittal, 27. Many know her as Dr (Mrs) Lutchuke, a part-Gujarati, part-Maharashtrian sexologist and “psycho-logist” (pun intended) in the stand-up show, Things They Wouldn’t Let You Say. She’s a regular at Mumbai’s Canvas Laugh Factory, India’s first club dedicated to live comedy. When not dressed up as Dr (Mrs) Lutchuke, she can be found doing impromptu acts as part of the country’s first improv troupe — The Cardinal Bengans. She is a typically fat girl with a dire need for attention who loves every minute of being on stage. No, we are not judging, that’s exactly how Mittal describes herself.

What is common to Chandler and Mittal? The answer is their use of humour as a defence mechanism. Both feed off the positive attention they get out of being the funny ‘guy’, something they never received in their regular lives.

Vir Das

  Using laughter to get out of tough situations is something we all do in everyday life. “All humour comes out of a deep, frustrated, dark corner of your mind,” says Maheep Singh, stand-up comic and founder of the New Delhi Comedy Club. His recourse to humour is an echo of the words of TV performer Bill Cosby: “Through humour, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”

Mittal will certainly concur with Cosby. Before getting into the business of comedy, she was working with an Indian media channel in New York. Then the economic downturn hit and she lost her job in 2010. She moved back to India, where stand-up comedy rescued her. Similarly, Singh used humour to come out of depression. Owner of a publishing business before moving to stand-up acts, Singh says, “I was frustrated. The business was failing. I had the option of cribbing about my situation. I chose to write jokes about it instead.”

Singh recalls his unintended first move into comedy. “I was at an open mic event in Greater Kailash in New Delhi. Unaware of what an open mic actually meant, I was told anyone from the audience could come and entertain the others with jokes. I went on stage and started saying things that I found funny in my head and people actually laughed. Six months later, I was offered a gig in a bar and was paid Rs 2,000 for it. I was ecstatic. I felt I had arrived.”

Humour often gets you the public approval you need when you are going through a rough patch in life. But it’s not quite so easy. “Not everybody can remember jokes on the spot or have the guts to be the centre of attention at a party,” says Aruna Broota, clinical psychologist and retired professor of psychology at Delhi University. “You need a certain X-factor for it. And those who have it, use it and over-use it to gain acceptance, popularity and the attention they need.” She explains that humour serves as a good tool to rebuild personalities. That is exactly what Mittal admits, “The fact that my defence mechanism is my full-time job is the best thing that happened to me. Laughter is my survival tool.”

It’s not just those who are jobless or have failed at business who seek a way out in professional humour. Tired of selling colas to teenagers as senior creative director at ad agency JWT in New Delhi, Neeti Palta, 38, struck gold when she volunteered to do on-the-spot sound effects for improv artistes Colin Mocherie and Brad Sherwood of the popular Whose Line Is It Anyway? TV show when they visited the capital five years ago. Not only did she do a great job at the sound effects, she also managed to improvise on the improviser by making Sherwood follow her lead rather than responding to his leads. What followed was an opportunity to work with the renowned duo. A week later, she was at her first open mic event. “I was getting a substantial salary, and my earnings slumped when I decided to leave my job. But my husband and parents were supportive,” says Palta. Fortunately for her, she landed  a corporate gig without having to go through routines at pubs. Today, she is among the top attractions at company events with her comedy outfit, Looney Goons. She earns up to Rs 60,000 per gig and does around five shows a month.

Kanan Gill, one-half of the duo that has taken YouTube by storm with Pretentious Movie Reviews, similarly quit his job at an IT company to pursue a career filled with crackers. Dejected after his application was turned down in 2012 for the Young India Fellowship, an initiative of American and European universities to provide a one-year post-graduate programme in experiential learning, Gill threw everything away and went on stage. Life came full circle three years later, when he became the youngest person in Young India Fellowship’s history to deliver a lecture.

“We all need an escape route from the mundane experiences of everyday life.  Some drink it off, some drug it off, some sex it off. And some use the in-built infrastructure of humour in our personalities to cope,” says Broota. Mittal can’t even remember now what it was like to not look for comedy in everything, while Palta feels laughter has freed her of all the inhibitions and social correctness imposed on her while growing up. “When people walk up to you after a show and express gratitude for making them laugh, it feels your life has a purpose,” adds Singh.

Mittal, Singh and Palta all agree that their brand of humour is observational. “It is from life itself that I get my jokes,” says Palta. Singh agrees: “A joke can be in front of you anywhere. I have told stories about funerals and people battling cancer and people have found them funny. They are not jokes, but stories from our own lives that we narrate.”

The audience sometimes provides the humorists with jokes. Mittal recounts an experience where she walked over to a 10-year-old at one of her shows, thinking of all the Dora the Explorer and Chhota Bheem jokes in her head. She asked the child what his favourite show was. The response left the audience in splits. “Sanskaar,” he said. “There was no need of one-liners from me after that,” laughs Mittal. Singh had a similar experience: “A guy and a girl were sitting in the audience and I asked them if they were seeing each other. The girl immediately nodded her head and said they were on their first date. The guy, on the other hand, seemed a little unsure. It was an extremely funny situation.”

Humour has certainly helped these people find their feet again. But it’s not a sure way out for all the failed and the frustrated. As comic artist Vir Das says, “Being funny among friends is not enough. Being on the stage and making people laugh is a different ball game altogether.” If you have it, however, you could, like these enterprising jokesters, get a fresh grip on life. In the bargain, you could also make some good money, at least Rs 20,000 per show, which is what the top comedians make today.