Phenomenal Rise of Stand up in India

 Stand-up comedians,

what comes to your mind when you hear this term? some young witty talented guys(not women but more on that later); if you had heard this term about 10 years ago what do you think had come to your mind?-nothing.

So stand-up comedians went from nothing to witty talented guys in 10 years. Quite an improvement, don't you think?

 This is a bizarrely short period for a non-conventional artform to develop and become wildly popular in a country like India where even traditional arts like dancing and singing are discouraged.

In this age, stand-up comedians are an integral part of the Indian entertainment scene. They command an army of fans comparable to those of Bollywood actors and cricket players, make and break new trends and influence the political and cultural ideology of an insanely massive young demographic (it's India after all).

One of the indicators of their reach and influence (especially among young people) is how seriously they are taken by the ruling party and other political

  groups. Their words carry weight and are perfectly capable to make waves across the nation (in outrage mostly). Most of the topical comics get threats whenever they express their opinions on anything ranging from civil liberties to social evils or even freedom of speech itself

On several occasions, topical comics are even compared to the opposition of the country. (well it is more of a fault of the real opposition than an achievement of stand-up artists, but more on that in another post someday).

And if their cultural and social status is not enough to convince you, then I think this will convince your materialistic brain 

They make shitloads of money; top comedians charging lacs per gig.

  

They are visible everywhere, you can see them acting in web series(Zakir khan: chacha vidhayak hai hamare) or in movies(Kanan gill: Noor); you can see them revolutionizing youtube (AIB) or streaming their way back into fame(Tanmay Bhatt).every year or so there comes a new breakout artist gaining widespread fame with just 2-3 10 minute videos(Zakir, Upmanyu, Bassi)

 

In a nutshell, They are listened to, followed, admired, and even threatened. 

How did they pull this off?

Well, let's start from the start.

The start

First of all, let's address the legends. The first stand-up comedian of India was Johnny lever. Yup, heard that right. johnny lever was doing mimicry and observational comedy as far back as the 80s. He was doing stand-up when no one knew what was stand-up. he is the classic case of doing it before it was cool.

THE AGE OF TELEVISION COMEDY

Then came the Great Indian laughter challenge which made stars out of Raju Shrivastava, Sunil pal, and the king of TV comedy Kapil Sharma. All of them and many more tv comedians originated here.

This show inspired a whole generation of 90s kids from which came the first-gen stand-up stand-up comics in the modern sense.

Then came Kapil Sharma, he rose to fame after winning the great Indian laughter challenge and never looked back ...well until that happened. He ruled on television for almost a decade. He won six consecutive comedy circus season, launched his own show (twice), broke TRP records, featured in countless commercials, hosted dozens of show, became the most admired TV personality, made his way into Forbes celebrity 100 and most influential Indians lists, won CNN Indian of the year award and even starred in a movie.

At his peak, he was wildly popular all over India, even so much that a lot of non-Hindi speakers learned Hindi by watching his show. All of this is showcased by the fact that when PM Modi launched swachh Bharat Abhiyan then he was one of the public personalities chosen to promote cleanliness.

What Kapil Sharma did was to show the true potential of comedy in India. what a comedian can be. Now a comedian was not someone who was just a supporting character in a masala movie put there to get a few laughs out of the audience, now a comedian was who can even lead a movie, become the most admired celebrity, and amass a following which can put lead Bollywood actors to shame. He raised the status of comedian, now note here that he didn't improve the quality of comedy in any way. although comedy is subjective I think we can all agree that body shaming fellow cast members(even though scripted) is not funny.

THE BEGINNING OF MODERN STAND UP COMEDY

Like most of the good things, stand-up comedy was imported from the USA and UK to India. Perhaps the two oldest Indian stand-up comics Vir das and papa CJ learned stand up in USA and UK respectively.

Vir das brought stand-up to India when he opened the weird-ass comedy club in Mumbai in 2008. While he headlined the shows there, it opened up an opportunity for aspiring comedians to test their skills in small acts and opening for him. This was the first batch of homegrown comics and they were none other than tanmay Bhatt, Sourabh pant, Gursimran Khamba, Rohan Joshi, etc.

Of these tanmay Bhatt, Rohan Joshi, and khamba went on to co-found AIB while Sourabh pant founded EIC. both organizations played an instrumental role in popularising stand-up.

Both were one of the first fully-fledged comedy companies.

but while EIC was more conventional(read: normal) in its way to popularise stand up. AIB went all out Khatron ke Khiladi. They took an altogether different approach which included FIRs, outrage, and death threats.

The controversial nature of their first few videos got a lot of attention. In hindsight, you can see that India wasn't really ready for this at that time, AIB was way ahead of its time. They provided social commentary from a fresh perspective which was dead honest and tough to digest. This type of comedy found its fair share of admirers and more than a fair share of haters.

Most notable of them all is of course the Ranveer singh-Arjun Kapoor roast which resulted in widespread outrage and dragged the world of Bollywood into controversy. As the live audience of roast comprised of biggies of Bollywood, they were forced to give their opinion on something which generally they would have ignored conveniently.

well long story short, After the initial shock, all that outrage put AIB on the map. This became one of the best examples of "All publicity being good publicity ". This resulted in a lot more people across India becoming aware of this new avenue of comedy and entertainment that they could explore. And hence was integral in the blowing up of the standup comedy scene.

THE SECRET INGREDIENT

The above-mentioned chronology describes the conditions in which stand-up evolved but it doesn't explain the swiftness of its rise.

you can draw an analogy to the miller-Urey experiment, just like they simulated all the conditions but it wasn't until they introduced the secret ingredient- lightning, that the first organic molecules appeared, it was the well developed social networks and high internet penetration that blew up the popularity of stand up to phenomenal levels.

India had a large market potential waiting to be tapped through social media and Stand up comedians did just that. The Earliest comedians like Biswa Kalyan rath, Kanan gill, Kenny Sebastian experimented and the later ones like Zakir Khan, Upmanyu, and Bassi perfected the recipe to achieve stardom through youtube.

 After perfecting their art by trial and error in open mics and live shows they presented their best material packaged in 10-minute videos to the massive online audience. it was like throwing sodium in water.

of course, it exploded. Such was the vacuum in online spaces created by low-quality content that they were embraced by the audience with open arms. add to this the relatability of their content which Bollywood actors normally lack (that is changing slowly and about time too). During a street interview, as an IIT student put it "jab ham Zakir bhai ki video dekhte hain to esa lagta hai, 'yaar ye to Apna hi bhai hai' "   

 Stand-up comics have also put platforms like   Twitter and Insta to very efficient use allowing them to reach their target audience and exposing younger generations to their work.

As happened with most of the innovations in recent human history; after the initial spark of ingenuity, the art form is being propelled forwards by the forces of a capitalist economy.

bringing smiles to people's faces and spreading joy is all good; but in the end, the world is being run by money, not by smiles and laughter(unless Rahul Gandhi invented the new machine that this time converts laughter to money "aloo daaloge paisa niklega"). 

As soon as the corporate sector realized the potential of this new market they jumped on the bandwagon. Big cities started having open mic events and stand-up comedy clubs popped across the nations. 

All these factors combined led stand-up comedy to become an indisposable part of the Indian entertainment landscape and perhaps more importantly an indisposable part of the social landscape.

  

THE FUTURE

The Indian youth nowadays is relatively more interested in political and social issues around them as compared to older generations and one of the reasons may be the interestingly presented content they find online. stand-up is undeniably an important part of this content and as it now in its initial stages as an artform and continuously evolving, so we can say it is in for the long run.

After all who doesn't love young witty talented guys :).