Comedian Amit Tandon talks to Sangeeta Yadav about how the stand up industry is evolving
Some are good at doing a political satire, others adept in dark comedy. But when it comes to businessman–turned-comedian Amit Tandon, picking on very common mores becomes a laughing matter.
“I like to do observational comedy. I pick on weird habits and behaviours. In comedy, you need brevity to make fun of things that go on in everyone’s mind, nobody comes out and talks about it. That’s what people connect to most of the times. Political satire or dark comedy are a very small percentage of what I do in comedy,” says Tandon who was in Gurugram recently for his live show in collaboration with Big FM.
Picking on middle-class people and the Punjabis are his favourite, do though he himself is one. “I’m a Punjabi myself and I know how weird we people are. Somehow logic doesn’t work with us. We are known for forcing people to eat or drink. Agar apko diabetes hai, tab bhi woh bolenge ‘ek gulab jamun kha le, kuch nahi hota. Arrey tu heart ka doctor hai jo tujhe pata hai ki kuch nahi hota. Tumhara dil rakhne ke liye mein heart attack le lu’. Or they would say: ‘Tu mera bhai nahi hai? Mere liye ek aur glass pee le yaar’. Their approach is weird and irrational. I don’t understand what they get from forcing somebody to go overboard with drinking and eating,” Tandon says.
He believes that for comedians, it’s their jokes that decide their audience. Since he does clean humour, he has more of a family audience from all age groups. “I came from a background where most of my time is spent around making money, taking care of kids and the entire family. So 90 per cent of my comedy is also around that and my audience has grown on this familial hour. They come to my show expecting that I will do clean comedy. Even if I want to use abusive language, I stop myself from doing it looking at people sitting in the front coming from all age groups,” Tandon tells you.
Tandon’s journey as a humourist has been full of ups and downs. “That’s because I was getting on the stage after 10 years and had low confidence. Second, back then, stand up comedy used to happen only in English and we used to get a spot on the basis of knowing the English language well. Since I was doing comedy in both Hindi and English, there was a pressure on me. Third, I would do the kind of comedy that everyone else was doing. I would not connect that much with people. Slowly I started using Hindi and bringing my stories on stage and then I realised that the more honest you are on stage, the more people connect with you,” Tandon says.
To go to the next level in comedy, Tandon released his videos which got him millions of fans across the world who would demand his live performance in their country. “Releasing comedy videos are more appealing and give you a push which you can never get from live shows which are limited to maximum 30,000 people as compared to millions of audiences. Because of this, my popularity grew by leaps and bounds and now 50 per cent of my work is outside India. Sometimes I end up doing seven stories a month. Wherever I perform, I like to add little bit about the place also and that gets me closer to those people,” Tandon says, adding that he shut down his own HR recruitment firm — Empyrean Partners — as it was contributing lesser than what he was earning from comedy shows.
Many people don’t come to comedy shows as they would find it offensive and also due to the fear of being picked up. “In my middle-class act, once a man got offended because I made fun of the State Bank of India. He said: “how can you make fun of such an old and reputed banks of India”. Somebody wrote that he comes from middle-class background and makes fun of middle-class people, he should be ashamed of himself. There will come a time when comedians will be left to do elephant and ant jokes and even that also PETA will come and object. Beyond a point, you can’t think about if anyone can get offended or not. People in India have a fragile ego and could not tolerate a joke on themself.” Tandon says.
Being a male-dominated industry, Tandon feels that more and more women need to come up on stage and perform. “The problem in India is that as soon as a woman comes on stage to do comedy, she gets judged. It is not a question of survival of women comedian but the challenge for them is to enter the industry because neither the parents would support them nor the audience will accept her,” he says.
Though it is a very good time to be in comedy in India, the challenges too are aplenty. “One should not be tempted to go for shortcuts. When we had started doing comedy, there were very few comedians in India who were doing it purely for passion. But when the greed for money comes in, passion takes a backseat. They start doing corporate shows and end up lifting comic material of others thinking nobody would catch hold of them. That is plagiarism. If you get into that habit, you will stop writing and push yourself. A lot of people enter comedy circuit looking at high bucks. The challenge is to stay true as a comedian,” Tandon warns adding that one must be persistent for three-four years and keep on writing and performing more and more.
Talking about how live standup is different from stand-up on TV, he says: “TV requires a different skill set altogether. There is a different set of writers. They have paid audience who are asked to laugh which looks very mechanic. It is not a genuine laughter. TV also works on a template. They are not breaking the barrier to evolve,” Tandon says