Jaspal Bhatti's funny agenda

For a change, funnyman Jaspal Bhatti is serious. Perturbed by the way rampant corruption has plagued the Indian society, Bhatti is all set launch largescale operations to weed out this perennial problem.
“The mission is on, all restructured and refurbished,” said Bhatti, who has been organizing several road shows, nukkad nataks to lampoon the corruptionistas. “It’s been 30 years our ‘Nonsense club’ has been taking up issues like this.We prepare a script and then hold a play to engage the masses. But now, I feel we need to have them back to back
because so many scams are happening.”
With an aim to nail swindlers through this unique method, he said, “People have a very short term memory. That’s why we introduce several ingredients in our satires.” Thirty years into this, and 2000 plays later, Bhatti is still not content. “I have a team of around 100 people who are not actors. I’d rather call them crusaders,” he says. And though Bhatti’s lampooning drive has landed him in soup because it makes political groups angry more than once, but he’s not planning to give up. Bhatti and his gang, which includes his close friends and wife Savita, not only raise the issue of corruption but also script plays that highlight the issues like price rise.
“The basic idea is to make the authorities work. I remember we did a play in Mumbai where all the members of club went to the commissioner of police demanding police
protection because we were going to purchase onions at that time. It helped us apprise the authorities about the sky-rocketing onion prices.”
Recently, Bhatti along with Swami Agnivesh and RTI activist Arviind Kejriwal travelled to Sultanpur, Lucknow and Varanasi to identify the issues there. “We are planning to do a maha natak there as well,” he said.