Improvising on popular subjects like technology and parents or boasting Indian travellers, Kunal Rao tells Shifa Naseer that English stand-up comedy is here to stay and the ways it can become a tool to spread awareness
Guys, what’s the downside of travelling to a foreign countryIJ” asked Kunal Rao in a rather serious tone. He waited for us to answer before dramatically, waving his hands in the air, saying, “You have to come back to India and meet Indians who have been to the same place,” leaving us in splits. He ranted off for about for another few minutes giving us a hilarious and true sketch of what we normally do when we are describing the places we have visited and how we compete on silly things like who has ticked off the maximum number of places on the ‘to-see’ list.
Over the past few years we have seen him spread all over the Internet, especially Youtube. Rao is no average stand-up comedian in the block. His humour is not light-weight. Strange, yet true, he has this unique talent of taking the few of the most serious subject and present it in a real funny way through the EIC (East India Comedy) Outrage series.
Well, we had the good fortune of meeting up with him at a popular coffee cafe chain here. As viewers of EIC videos, we were familiar with them but it still had us rolling on the floor, laughing.
EIC is one of the very few groups of stand up comedians who focus on very serious issues apart from cracking a joke here and there. And Rao is one of the founder members. We guess he had sensed our anticipation of wanting to know about EIC because even before we could pop the question he told us the whole story. “Initially we just started looking for venues like pubs, restaurants and coffee shops where we could have a tie-up and do a monthly show. Because comedy was new and there were new opportunities. As time went by, we kept on writing and by that time Youtube had become this new platform. So we got active on that. We have done a lot of writing assignments like twinkle,” shared Rao and gave us a little secret. “We also gave scripts for IIFA hosts,” he laughed.
Although a little reluctant at first, on a little insistence Rao traced his journey to the very beginning. “It was either chance or co-incidence, whatever you want to call it. Sorabh (Pant) was at one point working with WeirdAss comedy. Actually, he is the co-founder of WeirdAss comedy. They were hosting an open mic event in around 2009 and I gave it a shot. It went decent. I tried it again and that went well, too. And the next thing I know, I was the opening comedian for Sorabh’s one hour show called Pant on Fire. Since then we have been working together,” he summed up, rather shyly.
Rao, along with other members of the group believe in working to bring about a difference in the society. “We believe that comedy plays a very important role in shaping the opinion of the people at large. As a comedian, there is a sort of a power. As they say, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. As comedians, we are generally opinionated people. And I think it shows in our comedy. We have opinions about all kinds of issues and things that need to change,” he pointed out.
When asked about the future of stand-up comedy in India, he put forth strongly that English comedy is here to stay. “Every industry has its ups and downs while searching for its place in the society and that is exactly what comedy in India went through,” he said. According to Rao, now that stand-up comedy is a more acceptable profession in India, it is levelling down to stable grounds.
The comedian sounded very hopeful when he said, “I hope it’s here to stay for you can never tell about how things may be in the future. We are just bunch of comedians who like doing what they do and somehow manage to make money out of it.”