How did you develop interest in comedy?

Raised in a family that enjoyed watching comedy serials and sitcoms, inclination towards comedy had to happen. Also, TV was not really an idiot box before K serials appeared and took over. We used to watch every comedy serial broadcasted back then; like, Flop Show, Shrimaan Shrimati, Dekh Bhai Dekh, Hum Paanch, Tu Tu Main Main, Hadd Kar Di, Family No. 1, Hum Sab Ek Hai, Zabaan Sambhal Ke, and the likes.  I still believe Gudgudee on Zee, Aflatoon on SabTV, and The Great Indian *Comedy* Show were the most underrated shows of our times. Enough nostalgia.

To top that all, my family is pretty much into liking live comedy in different forms. My father got me interested in comedy, and he was my companion in discovering comedy shows on TV. He used to take me to Kavi Sammelan (Poetry Recitals). I feel Kavi Sammelans laid the foundation of stand-up comedy culture in India, as it used to be a place where 12-15 poets gathered on stage to recite poems and anecdotes that were either funny or nationalistic. In fact, Kavi Sammelan is the proof that India was always interested in comedy, stand-up comedy just gave it a proper tag and made it a viable career option.

What do you consider was your first step into the comedy world?

I remember my first tryst with comedy. It was in the 4th standard when I became a news reporter for a fancy dress competition. My Mom had my dress sorted but had no idea what I will say on stage to complement my outfit. The only thing I knew was, it had to be something funny. It was the day of the competition, and I still had no material to present. But something clicked, and just half-an-hour before leaving for school I wrote random lines on things that I was aware of; a few jokes from Current Affairs section, Sports, Weather, and the likes. I recited those jokes to my mom and she laughed. I went on stage and won hearts. And luckily, the prize too. Looking back, I can say that, that was a really tight set.

Apparently, I pulled of a ‘Last Week Tonight’ before John Oliver made it a famous thing. Here’s the proof that I was way ahead in time.

How did you get into stand-up comedy?

As I grew up, I kept up with comedy through Shekhar Suman’s satire, pre-memes twitter era, and AIB podcasts. But I still never knew that I will do stand-up at some point in time.

It took two ‘Biswa’s (Biswapati Sarkar & Biswa Kalyan Rath) and regrets-to-taste to get me into stand-up comedy. In 2015, I was a big TVF fan and a bigger Biswapati Sarkar fan, I met him at the Permanent Roommates success party. We talked for a good 15-20 minutes about the craft of writing and many things profound.

This conversation inspired me to start a podcast channel in IIT Madras along with two other friends.  I was a writer-editor of the podcast and wanted the podcast to reach the masses. So in order to advertise the podcast, we started a facebook page where I used to put funny observations related to the institute, which people related-to, to a great extent and the page started to get good traction. I liked the validation and started observing things keenly, to look for pattern that would be relatable to everyone. Eventually, I started sharing content about not just the institute by also about life in general.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I attended a stand-up show in Canvas Laugh Club, which had then not-so-popular Biswa Kalyan Rath in the lineup. We were left impressed! I became so much interested in comedy that I started following everything that had comedy associated with it. I attempted mimicking Arnub and got a chance to roast the Director of IIT Madras. My impression of Arnub wasn’t really impressive, but the jokes worked! This gave me confidence that I can translate the written jokes into a performance as well.

After passing from the IITM, I went to an open mic with 10 odd jokes that were written while collecting material for the facebook page, and to my surprise, people laughed and enjoyed. That was it! I haven’t looked back ever since. Now, this human being needs more and more validation from people every week by saying things that mostly make no sense at all.

What are the challenges you’ve faced in your journey?

I was not getting enough open mics to perform initially but everything changed as I started a room for open mic. Now, I make sure there are enough spots for new open mic-ers at my venue as I can relate to their pain.

Your key achievements?

A few achievements which deserve a mention are: (a) Successfully Roasting the Director of IIT Madras, (b) Got laughs in my very first open mic, boosted my confidence, (c) My joke made it to Reddit front page.

Any bombing moment?

Bars and naïve comedy audience are what I sometimes find difficult to perform to. Once in a bar, the crowd was so dead in my set that I got off the stage in 2.5 minutes from a 7-minute slot. My words before getting off stage were, “Okay then”, which apparently was the biggest laugh of the evening.

That night I considered leaving comedy, but I went to another open mic the next day and the jokes worked Confidence regained!

Any experiences with annoying audience members?

None, yet! Thankfully.

Connect with Manish on Instagram & facebook

The post Tête-à-Tête with Manish Jain appeared first on Humour Sapiens.

How did you get into comedy?

I always had a knack for humour. However, I was not aware of the comedy scene in India. I was fascinated by the fact that people have taken comedy as a profession. The only comedians I knew were Russell Peters, Jerry Seinfeld, Rowan Atkinson, Ellen DeGeneres and the great Jim Carey. I followed more of Indian comedy back in my school days and used to love “The Great Indian Laughter Challenge”. That was the only platform that I was aware of. I started YouTubing more in 2013, and I came across the channels “The Viral Fever” and “All India Bakchod”. TVF and AIB used to make spoofs/sketches and I loved them. I became a religious follower. I started writing funny one-liners and stuff and shared on social media. The first few stand-up videos I had seen were of Amit Tandon, Zakir Khan, and Jeeveshu Ahluwalia. I could relate to the jokes, which led to me watching one after the other. In 2015, I witnessed the Weirdass Comedy Festival live in Bangalore with 20 hilarious comics in the lineup.

It was then, that I decided to hit the stage someday. I happened to find out about the open mics. I did my first open mic in November 2016. However, for me to get on-stage again, I took 8 months (courtesy: JOB). I switched my job to focus on comedy as well. Since July 2017, I have been on stage every week working and struggling to find the funny stuff.

What are the challenges that you have faced?

Though I am a writer, but a budding comedy writer. I take time to build jokes, which unfortunately end up being non-funny sometimes. That’s the most challenging part. Some of my peers are better writers than me and I am striving hard to reach that level, and go beyond. Hopefully, I will.

Also, the number of people performing at open mics has exponentially increased over the years. Another challenge has always been to find stage time. Even if we find stage, we seldom see audience.

Your key achievements?

In a short span of a year, I am not sure of any achievements. Whenever a joke works, I feel accomplished that I could connect to the audience. However, I have performed for 80-200 people at different instances and I did manage to make them happy. That certainly motivates me to write better jokes. Even then, it’s a long road to travel and I hope I achieve the goal of making people laugh and have a good time on stage.

Any bombing moments?

The first few bombing moments were disheartening and then I got used to it. I feel that this art will always keep you grounded. I bombed at an open mic where the audience just stared at me and all I could manage was 5 minutes of silence. One of the worst evenings of my stage life. I was so apologetic that I went to each one of them and said sorry after the show. I know there will be more such experiences and I am working on how to get back the audience in those situations.

Experiences with annoying audience members?

I can give it in writing, that in every show there will be one. I was hosting one of the open mics and there was a guy who proclaimed to be a journalist. He started heckling us comedians, and we had to give him back by taking a jibe at him. By the end of the show, he had given up and was listening to the jokes. But, he never laughed. He was annoyed to such an extent, that he forced his partner not to laugh either.

In another show, a couple of ladies were not letting us narrate the jokes and were getting offended at everything we said. We made them understand that these jokes are on us and not on them, and they can relax. They eventually left the venue and we had a great show after that.

Connect with him on Instagram.

The post Tête-à-Tête with Pronoy Chowdhury appeared first on Humour Sapiens.

Read on to know how it all began for the 27-year old, and how he is working hard to make a mark for himself.

How did the journey to stand-up comedy begin?

It all started back in school in the 6th grade. I still remember reading jokes from a small joke book I had, on a daily basis, and sharing those with my friends during breaks. The laughter I got was contagious and it made me happy. Though those weren’t the jokes written by me, but I still managed to get laughs through my delivery. It went on for quite some time, after which it started fading away.

Never at any point in time, I had thought of it to be a career option for me. A suitable career for a middle-class home-oriented guy was either becoming a doctor or engineer. Time went by, I focused on my engineering and secured myself with a decent job. I was satisfied and my parents, happy.

This went on, until I came across stand-up videos on the internet in the early 2017, and memories of me narrating jokes to my friends started coming back. Now I was wanting to do the same, make people smile and be happy and earn with time.

How did you bring yourself back into the spotlight?

Managing time out of office, I started attending live shows first. Rahul Subramanian and Neville Shah were my first live acts. From thereon, it became an addiction and I started frequenting to live acts. Finally, in July 2017, I was determined to start out, and began by visiting open mics to test the waters and get a fair idea of the stage.

Though I have loved the attention, but have avoided the stage all my life. However, this was not the time to dwell over stage fear, it was time to own the stage. The stage was my only destination and I had to perform for the people, all alone in the spotlight. The thought of going on stage took 2 months, but I was certain of doing it, and getting over the fear.

Your first on-stage experience?

September 2017 was the first time when I went on stage, with my own, self-written, set of jokes, and I bombed it. It was indeed a very bad start. Going up on stage in all confidence, but forgetting it all as soon as you hold the mic? Yeah, that’s what happened! I had forgotten everything, and as if that wasn’t enough, there was no mic to mouth coordination. I started shivering.

3 minutes on stage were enough to have shaken my confidence. I came back home, and had constant thoughts of not going back again, not facing the audience again!

How did you make up your mind to go back on-stage?

Though my confidence was shaken, it wasn’t broken. That determination with which I had decided to make comedy an important part of my like, was still there. And then I self-assuredly resolved that, this was something I was going to do for myself and my happiness.

October 2017, was when I officially started out with open mics.

How was returning to the stage like?

I met a lot of people, understood the process, spoke about it and that was it. I realized, the only way to learn and excel at this was hitting as many open mics as possible, and better the writing every time.

It has been a year now, and the journey is wonderful. I am enjoying every bit of it. I love the art of writing, the entire process of delivering it in front of people and putting in my best to make people laugh.

Having said that, not all times are good times, but it’s a part of the process. The best thing about this art form is “You are the only person responsible and the whole act is dependent on you. There is no one else to blame for.” We may win the applause sometimes, brickbats the other times, but isn’t it all that would make us better?

Connect with him:

Instagram: middle_class_insaan
Facebook: Ritesh Banerjee

The post Tête-à-Tête with Ritesh Kumar Banerjee appeared first on Humour Sapiens.

A PRODUCTION ASSISTANT

Kunal dropped out of college and started interning at MTV when he was just 17-years-old. A year after that, he started working with Corcoise Films as a production assistant, for the next six years.

FIRST ENCOUNTER WIth COMEDY

He tried stand-up comedy for the first time in 2013. But then, Kunal started pursuing it seriously only last year with an act on ‘Patriotism & the Government’. This act was so powerful content-wise and jokes-wise, that it grabbed a lot of attention.

He made fun of people who always end up saying “Hamaare jawaan Siachen mein lad rahe hain,” whenever someone complains about the government. The line, since then, has gone viral. It is definitely a political issue that he took, but it has humorous punches in every line he speaks.  “I went and stood in the line, not for money, but for content” he says about the demonetization. He even speaks about the controversial JNU students issue and still manages to get laughs out of us.

Gau Rakshaks & Tripple Talaq

The comedian takes it up a notch higher with his latest act. Though the act was on how he takes revenge on old people for all that they have done to him, what stands out are the parts where he cracks jokes on all the Gau Rakshaks and the ‘hidden’ agenda behind the Government’s plan to scrap the Triple Talaq rule. Kunal Kamra is just a class apart.

The inexplicable goodness of Uber & Ola

Not all his acts are politically-motivated though. There was one act on Taxis and that was equally funny. He takes on Uber and Ola, apart from the local taxis. “We are not used to so much goodness” he says about the apps.

Shut Up Ya Kunal

Like a few other comedians, he also has a podcast on YouTube; his is called ‘Shut Up Ya Kunal’, where in a matter of about five odd episodes, he has had guests like Ravish Kumar (Journalist) and Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Kahlid (JNU Students). It has its moments of fun and humour too!

With such strong but chilled-out acts, we just cannot stop wondering who or what will the subject of his next act. But, one thing that we are sure of is this Mumbai lad is definitely going to make us roll of our seat laughing with that too!

ALSO READ: THE BEST UP-AND-COMING COMEDIANS RIGHT NOW

The post Against All Odds: Kunal Kamra appeared first on Humour Sapiens.