Stand-up comedian Aayushi Jagad(Written by Ruchika Goswamy)
Medium good is a phrase my father uses a lot. He uses it to describe anything that is not bad, not too good, but passable. That is how I feel like my life has been so far,” says Aayushi Jagad, about her piece, titled Medium Good, which she will perform at Social, Pune, as part of the Futures of Sexuality Festival by Pune-based arts organisation TIFA Working Studios on September 14.
Medium Good explores what it means to be average or middling in every sphere of life, personal and professional. “It deals with what it is like to be a median in life while trying to push past the label of ‘just good enough’. Medium Good is about queer identity, the ups and downs of being on Twitter and the narcissism that ties all of it together,” she says.
Jagad adds that when it comes to queer identity, she likes to focus on how alike people truly are and that the queer experience is, essentially, a human experience. “It is still gut wrenching to tell someone you have a crush on them, that you still have middle-class parents or that you still struggle with money, love, work and success just like anybody else,” she said. In the show, she talks about her experiences with the queer world, interactions with her family about it and sings some funny songs in the process.
The 27-year-old from Pune came into stand-up through casual performances, liked it enough to cultivate it as an art and, over the years, has become an important voice in the Indian comedy scene, whose videos on YouTube are popular across the country. “It has sure been a rollercoaster ride,” she adds. Medium Good will be performed a few days after India celebrated the first anniversary of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalised homosexuality, being read down.
“I do not want to discount progress because even this seemed like a far-fetched idea just a decade ago. We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us. But there is still a long way to go in this, just like in everything else. Marriage equality is next, and then, of course, the ultimate challenge of actually exercising all of our freedoms of speech and expression without punishment or prejudice,” she says.
The artiste also believes that humour can play a big part in making people understand some basic fundamentals of human society. “Laughter is an involuntary reaction, so making someone laugh whose ideology is opposed to yours, is very unifying. It is the glue in the middle. That is precisely why I talk about the commonalities, so that ‘cisgendered binary heterosexual individuals’ can see our side too,” she adds.
