Sit down and watch stand-up

BENGALURU:28-year-old Aameer Peeran, a half-Pakistani and half-Indian, who considers himself to be an Indian if this were the 1930s, has been garnering the attention of Bengalureans with his standup performances since 2013. On Sunday, Aameer along with 26-year-old Kritarth Srinivasa, plans to stick to 'clean' jokes will take centre stage at BlueFrog, Church Street. City Express catches up with the comedians ahead of their show that is part of the Bangalore Comedy Takedown.

Why comedy? When did you decide to dive in to the industry?

Aamer: I wasn’t really good with in academics, all I knew was lying and getting away with my antics as a kid. So, my comedy was a natural progression, especially since stand-up routines are exaggerated lies. By the time I was 23 I had discovered that I could put my skill to use. At the same time, the stand-up scene was warming up in India. I just googled open mics and shows and stuff like and that's really how I began.

Kritarth: I started hitting open mics when I was in college. I figured that engineering was going nowhere, so I decided to drop out and chase standup comedy. I had even started making a little money out it at that point. Even so, I went back to college to study History and Economics and only later in 2011 went into comedy full time.

2. Is it possible to take up standup as a full-time profession? What are the challenges?

Aamer: I’ve always been an attention sponge, the only challenge in this industry is understanding the huge variety of audiences in india. Just making steady money is the only challenge. Once you figure out a market for it becomes easier on the pocket. Otherwise, it's super chill.

Kritarth: Everything I've learned about being a working professional or an independent adult is being a comedian. The biggest challenge are payments not coming in on time or clients taking payments for granted. But things are changing and we are seeing even the clients take this a lot seriously.

3. What in store at tomorrow's performance?

Kritarth: It's a show if you have a low attention span and love great content. That's all I'm going to say.

4. Tell us about your best and worst performances.

Aamer: Actually the first standing loners show at a performance venue on Church Street was my breakthrough moment as a comedian because I figured that I could actually do this. The worst performance I’ve ever had was four years ago when I was a horrible joke writer and horrible performer. I was attacked by a bunch of drunkies because I did a sex joke about an audience member’s wife.

Kritarth: The best show I've done was my Standup Special ‘Identity Crisis’, two years ago at a space on MG Road. Tickets were sold-out and I got a standing ovation. But the worst show has to be a corporate show I did couple years back. My mic was turned off from backstage because the audience would rather have drinks than watch me.

5. Has any member of the audience ever gotten offended by your jokes? How did you deal with it?

Aamer: I’ve offended a lot of people at numerous times.But the trick with offending people is, if to offend them enough that they don’t want to engage with you even after the show.