Comedians of Mumbai crack serious jokes, find place in a US documentary

MUMBAI: In March last year, Aditi Mittal appeared for an interview in her pyjamas. In her defence, it was 1 in the night and the interviewer could only see her top half. Weeks after this Skype conversation that contained the words 'sanitary pads' and 'vaginal tightening creams', Mittal, a standup comic, found herself on her first sponsored flight to the US, meeting American standup legend Bill Cosby and standing on the same stage as her idols. There she told people why she smelled of curry.

She was travelling as part of a soon-to-air TV documentary, Standup Planet, whose idea was to invite the audience to "follow the joke" to a deeper understanding of poverty, sanitation, HIV and women's rights. "We have been preaching to the choir, reaching only the few who care about social issues documentaries," says Wendy Hanamura, executive producer on the Stand Up Planet transmedia series. "Our goal is to reach an audience who loves stand up and expose them to something new."

So, with the idea of exploring places where the standup scene is exploding, host and American standup comic Hasan Minhaj, travelled to Mumbai and Johannesburg—cities that belong to countries with unique challenges. "In India, children are dying from preventable diseases ," says Hanumara. "In South Africa, the rate of new HIV infections is still the highest in the world. But in both places comics are finding new ways to tell these stories," she adds.

In Mumbai, Minhaj saw Tanmay Bhat and Mittal perform political jokes, attack religion and make Bollywood pop culture references. Minhaj noticed that two topics were "super touchy" with Mumbai audiences—religion and censorship. "I thought it was awesome that Aditi clowned Bollywood actresses," says Minhaj, adding that he especially loved Mittal's routine on sanitary napkins. "She's breaking down these traditional conventions of what women should do onstage," says Minhaj, who along with a posse of comedian friends, including Nate Bargatze, James Adomian and Michelle Buteau, invited Mittal from Mumbai and Mpho Popps from South Africa to perform in Hollywood.

While English standup is still finding its feet in Mumbai with comics like Bhat testing jokes about terrorism, politics and condoms, the crew realised that in South Africa, which is only 20 years post-apartheid, comedy is about race and sex from the "born frees"—the first apartheid-free generation. "But in both places, standup comics are finding new ways to tell stories," says Hanamura, who calls Mittal and Bhat the political satirists of today. "These young comics are paving the way for dialogue about issues that challenge their nation," she says. Recently, the documentary was screened to a sold out audience of 500 people in San Francisco. "It was so wonderful to see them really laughing at the jokes and situations but it was even more wonderful to hear the woman sitting next to me say, 'Wow, those statistics about children in India really make you think'," she says.

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