Why the tragedy of daring comedy is hard to ignore

Poozai karaan aes gaemits vaens me tsayen

aeyov ti mei ma vuch na sahar

yoot matsar kyah?

[I worshipped shadows all my life

Did I alone miss

the arrival of the dawn

What frenzy is this?]

Zareef Ahmad Zareef, a well-known satirist-poet and cultural commentator based in Kashmir, often leaves his audiences in stitches with his witty and satirical remarks. In his satirical poetry, the veteran poet has delved deep into the region’s cultural heritage, history and social issues but he no longer enjoys writing in the genre. “When peoples’ suffering continues unabated, satire makes little or no sense,” he tells The Federal.

Humour, satire and comedy are tools that soften the blow but convey the angst nevertheless. Saying the same thing, no matter how important, tires the listener and mitigates the impact. Mixing satire, humour and stand-up comedy offers a heady concoction that doubles up as a weapon to fight injustices and creatively highlight issues that matter. Psychologists concur that an individual’s sense of humour is a ‘plastic shield’ in adverse circumstances and it improves mental and physical health.

Zareef, however, isn’t the only one disappointed and dejected. Many new-age artists too say writing satire or using it in their stand-up comic acts is proving to be tiresome and scary given the audience fatigue and the current socio-political atmosphere.

While some stand-up new-age comedians are making a statement through their defiant stand-up acts that highlight issues of significance, with grace and gravitas, and grit and wit, staying the course is not easy. While dealing with heavy subjects is tiring, in politically divided times, it also draws backlash. This makes the going tough and many have thus shifted focus to ‘softer’ and apolitical issues.

Hard lessons

Agrima Joshua, a stand-up comedian in her early 30s, learned her ‘lessons’ the hard way. Revealing why she has been avoiding touching issues that are considered politically hot, controversial or sensitive, Joshua candidly told The Federal that it is becoming extremely difficult to employ comedy to highlight important issues in the prevailing atmosphere. “Honestly speaking, our spaces are becoming constricted,” she says.

Joshua has grounds to tone down and instead talk about the ‘soft’ stories. She has faced online abuse, trolling and threats, coercing her once to tender a public apology on X (formerly Twitter) after a complaint was registered against her in Mumbai for allegedly “hurting the sentiments” of a particular community.

A purported video of Joshua about the Maharashtra government’s statue (of a historical figure) project had gone viral in 2019. A year later, the female comedian received a backlash on various social media platforms. Soon, legal action was initiated against her.

For obvious reasons, she has stopped highlighting sensitive issues for now. In her weekly experimental shows, she is trying to be funny while talking about the light-hearted stuff, including cricket. However, she says, “If the situation makes us fall, we will try to rise again and draw lessons from our low points.”

Based out of Maharashtra, Joshua opines that humour grants strength to the dispossessed for that one moment when he/she can mock those in power. Conscious of the limitations and what humour can achieve, she tells The Federal: “A stand-up comedian can’t do what focused activism or investigative journalism can achieve. Not with jokes! Real change emanates from action.”

Trained as a mechanical engineer, Joshua has survived in the cities of Mumbai and Pune on an interesting combination of jobs—switchgear design engineer, copywriter and sub-editor—before realising that she could also make people laugh on stage. In more ways than one, humour has been an ice-breaker for her in adverse situations. As a comedian, she realised, “The first laugh, when wrestled out of the toughest audience, feels like a victory!”

Maria Bamford, a well-known American actress and comedian, has been Joshua’s go-to comic. She took comedy ‘seriously’ only after following Bamford’s body of work, as she found Bamford’s art of storytelling fascinating. For her, the courage mustered by the Western comedian to talk about mental health issues on stage was “inspirational stuff”.

Joshua is of the view that like horror, what makes comedy thrive is the element of surprise. Other elements, of course, include how a comedian introduces characters, develops a story, controls the pace of narration, delivers a punch line, and ultimately weaves magic with the element of surprise.

As a teenage girl, Joshua loved watching 30 Rock and Desperate Housewives. That is how she found a connection between horror and humour. “A lot of the dark humour comes from this blend of dark and weird madness from Tina Fey and the tragicomedy situations from Desperate Housewives creater Marc Cherry.”

A reality-check

But for Ankur Tangade, a young stand-up comedian from Beed, Maharashtra, giving up on humour as a creative communication tool is no longer an option. The battle, she insists, continues and the show must go on even if being unapologetic entails a cost.

Tangade is not alone in her pursuit. Her peers in the genre, Manjeet Sarkar and Manaal Patil, hail from society’s margins. Together, they are challenging the age-old discriminatory system by employing humour.

As a queer comedian and human rights defender, Ankur Tangade made it a point that her friends and acquaintances got to know about India’s dark underbelly. The young comedian took a risk to give her pals a reality-check. “I decided, let’s take a risk and let my friends know who I am and from where I come. It worked,” she tells The Federal.

Listening to bizarre arguments from people in her proximity was pretty boring and tiring. People would often tell her that ‘inequality was a thing of the past’ and that in the 21st century, everybody earned money and owned a piece of land in India. They wouldn’t understand the anguish born out of inequality, marginalisation and dispossession Tangade shares with many from her community.

At that very moment, she decided to walk the talk on caste prejudices. As she began treading a new path, she realised in a trice that the makeup of her audiences started to change drastically.

“Initially, the response to our shows was amazing. It was beyond expectation. Right now, only academics, scholars, journalists, Dalit activists are showing up, and those who agree with us are among the audience,” she says.

It is like talking to the same set of people time and again in an echo chamber. You already know that everyone agrees with you. The challenge is to telegraph a message to large sections of people who refuse to acknowledge the crisis. “A comedy show is meant for every person. Those who have suffered already know. It is those who have lived privileged lives who need to listen,” Tangade says.

For obvious reasons, it wasn’t easy for Ankur Tangade and her fellow comedians to talk about caste discrimination or gender inequality and not face any backlash. “For us, it was not at all comfortable to perform on stage. There was always apprehension, what if somebody attacks us?” she says.

Unsurprisingly, she has faced stalking, and also death and rape threats. Despite the odds, she remains defiant. “People have stalked me and trolled me online. They have issued threats (death and rape). But I refuse to give up.”

Offering a pat on the back of fellow comedians, she summoned the courage to tell them: “Let people attack us. We will go viral…. (laughs).”

A flawed faultline

To highlight the fault-line of caste favouritism and vulnerability of the dispossessed sections, Ankur Tangade and her colleagues (a tiny group of Dalit comics), are now on a mission to make a difference by employing satire and humour as a device.

Brought up in Beed Maharashtra, Tangade started an arduous journey as a stand-up comedian at the young age of 18. As a queer woman, she initially performed before live audiences, focusing on issues that she thought the upper-class audience related to. Soon, she realised this wasn’t what she wanted to do in her life.

Some people from her own community accused Tangade of being ‘privileged’ enough for her father, Ashok Tangade, is a well-known human rights activist in Beed. Thankfully, her parents are supportive of her career choice. It was also a blessing in disguise, as her father’s work exposed her to many cases of civil rights violations at an early age.

As a kid, though, she thought nobody asked her about her religion, caste and background. It made her understand that her generation was different and destined to bring about a positive change. Discrimination was so normalised that she didn’t even notice that anything was wrong.

“But now, I am done with people who live either in denial or see no merit in discussions on the topic of reservations,” she says.

Punchy one-liners

Tangade is recognised for delivering punchy one-liners with a sense of perfect timing.

Recently, in Beed district of Marathwada, her hometown, a protest related to reservation took an ugly and violent turn when several houses were set on fire, and the internet services were snapped. In her typical style, the comedian remarked: “We were safe. My house was not burned down. I am offended. Am I not important enough?”

Tangade’s team is performing in places such as Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, etc. She is spreading awareness and enjoying her journey. Positive responses in Chennai and Bangalore please her to the hilt.

Comedy is the best way, she asserts, to raise awareness about issues that are not talked about as much as they deserve.

Audience poll

Indeed, life will turn boring and monotonous if we refuse to wear a smile and remain serious at all times. Rohit Pillai, a banker from Mumbai, loves watching comedy shows. For him, comedy that makes audiences laugh and reflect at the same time is more powerful and has a long-lasting impact. As a fan of Kunal Kamra, Pillai says that it makes him sad to see comedians restraining themselves. “Comedy is a kind of entertainment intended to amuse an audience. But intelligent storytellers use comedy in a variety of mediums, including literature, films, television, radio, stage shows, and visual arts like cartoons.”

In India, Pillai says that stand-up comedians like Vir Das, Kunal Kamra, Zakir Khan, Tanmay Bhat, Munawar Faruqi and many others have made a mark beyond the geographical borders. Occasionally, he also watches a popular stand-up comedy show—hosted by comedian Kapil Sharma—known as The Kapil Sharma Show (TKSS). “I do not find Kapil Sharma enlightening as his comic punch lines depend on the rounds of insults he serves on the members of the audience.”

Mallicka, a literature student from Sion in Maharashtra, says that “comedy that fails to inform and doesn’t make one reflect is a waste of time and space”.

In the current stifled atmosphere, Zareef aptly sums up the experience of silencing of voices, including satire as a form of expression.

Qabar baneimeich seenas seenas

maatam woath guftaras taam

[Every chest has turned into a grave

while speech too is in mourning!]