Standups speak local to go global

My goose is bumping…. My flabber is gasting.” Those were the sounds diehard A R Rahman fans in Chennai allegedly made last year while reacting to a teaser of a Tamil song composed by the legend. Or at least, that’s how they sounded to IT professional Jagan Krishnan. Every time 29-year-old Krishnan, a guitar-slinging standup comic by night, performs this joke in his hometown, it’s a hit, chiefly because the entire routine is in Tamil. “It would not be as effective in English,” says Krishnan, who loves performing in Tamil because of the unique rhythm and punch it affords his standup routine.
It’s this allure of the native tongue — which accentuates punch lines and embraces slang — that has spawned a nationwide rash of urbane regional language standup comedy. Tired of sounding faraway in English, many millennial standup comics in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh have taken to performing shows in their local tongue. In hipster breweries and comedy clubs in Mumbai, it’s no longer uncommon to hear grimy Marathi words like ‘bhandiwala’.

“English works well for comedians in England and the US because it is their native language,” explains BhaDiPa’s Omkar Rege. Marathi standup is an attempt at revival of the pun-strewn oral humour legacy of legendary writers such as PL Deshpande. After comedy bigwigs AIB dedicated their Pune show to PL Deshpande last year, actor Sarang Sathaye, founder of Marathi digital content platform BhaDiPa (

Bharatiya Digital Party

), launched SMS (Secret Marathi Standup), a jamming session for comics. Today, with 60 comics — teens who’ve become sensations with their takes on bad sex education and armchair activism — BhaDiPa tickles family audiences across Maharashtra and even the Netherlands. Sathaye finds himself fielding requests for shows at munj (thread) ceremonies.

Other regions have had to break the grammar on their own. Punjab’s Maheep Singh, who has performed 29 shows of his Punjabi standup special ‘Saanu Ki’ with Amit Tandon, had to script a subtle routine to offset the crude, blingy, song-and-dance fare of indigenous comedy.

Just like the local music industry, which peddled aspirational tropes such as Canada and cars, comedy too was geared towards rural areas, says Singh. He riffs on things Punjabis say such as ‘mera naam de diyo’. “It’s like selling Hyderabadi biriyani to Hyderabad,” says Singh, who finds that Punjabis in other cities lap up the caricature more easily than locals.

That explains the ascending global fame of standup in Tanglish (Tamil and English), whose best-known comic is S A Aravind. The diaspora loves him for his accented take on lungi dance, baggy pants and everything in between.

“Indians outside India are starved for entertainment in their mother tongue,” says Praveen Kumar, who was astonished by how well a Dubai audience kept up with current affairs minutiae such as Tamil Bigg boss, actor Simbu’s movies and politician Vaiko. Relatability sells best in Tamil Nadu, unused to the bawdy, roast comedy style of the West, he says.

“At a time when we all wear the same brands and eat the same food, it’s my language and culture that set me apart,” explains Mala, who founded Tanglish Comedy after he realised his routine on the quirks of Tamil middle-class families got laughs in elite bars. The platform has seven comics, including female comic Shyama Harini, who perform only in Tamil.

However, the audience is more likely to be grandfathers than kids. Marathi comic Trupti Khamkar is now used to audience members blessing her after shows while

Rohan Parekh

, 23, who has been hosting Gujarati open-mics in Mumbai, is still trying to figure out how to make uncles and aunties laugh. Alien to standup, this family crowd soaks in his cuss-word-filled takes on garba, drugs and sex as they would a satsang gone rogue. “They nod, say ‘barabar che’ and even pitch in with their own anecdotes. I tell them ‘thank you but please laugh’,” says Parekh.

There are many things a regional audience frowns at. In Andhra Pradesh, “you can’t make jokes about superstars such as Pawan Kalyan,” says comic Rajashekar Mamidhana. At a recent Nagpur gig, Marathi comic Rege’s take on jingoism drew jeers. “I was heckled into taking the train home,” says Rege, who has decided to stick to talking about why he hates pigeons till the standup scene matures in smaller cities.

Ahmedabad’s Manan Desai, who founded The

Comedy Factory

, recalls receiving death threats during the Patel reservation movement when he joked about the controversy. “Sarcasm is something the community hasn’t experienced,” explains Desai.

The colonial hangover is hard shake off. “We tend to look down on our own languages,” says Hyderabad’s Mamidhana, adding that pubs in posh areas refuse to host Telugu acts.

Apart from corporates, “no one wants to pay us,” says Anup Maiya of Bengaluru-based Lolbagh, a one-year-old collective promoting Kannada standup. As a Kannada comic who once performed to a circle of eight people at a house party, he wants to tell clients who ask them to “perform for a cause”, “Maga (friend), we don’t need an opportunity. We need money.”