So last night I hopped over to St. Andrews Bandra to witness The Indian Comedy Store’s first roaming comic brigade starting with Sapan Verma, Atul Khatri and Rohan Joshi. Now I enjoy stand up and I get desi jokes (for the most part) so please know that this blog post comes from a place of love (and yes, admittedly some fear.) Lets go.
Definite highlight of the evening, opening 80s soundtrack. We walked in to Broken Wings, We Will Rock You and Take on Me. Pure genius. I feel the build up was a tad long and a little Rocky 5, but… I’ll let that slide.
Our first comic, Sapan Verma also played host for the night and was quite sweet about it all. I loved his irreverent dig at the not-so-full house with:
LOL I even chuckled a little at his “MBA aspirant is not a career!” jokes.
Then came Atul Khatri.
Oh boy, now how do I put this? It is very rarely that a comedy show makes you sad. The kind of sad you feel when a puppy gets run over right in front of your eyes. I feel bad cos I wanted to like you, I really did. You seem like a nice guy, the green pants were even kinda trendy and I totally giggled at the Gujju jibes…
BUT did you really have to go the dirty-old-man route? And do you really have to do it on toilet humor block? I’m sorry, but I’m unfollowing you until you clean up your act. (Literally.)
PS. I am both amazed and distraught that the peanut gallery behind me was peeing themselves laughing at some of your jokes. Fess up, was that family?
No but I have to say, I had a similarly eerie experience when I went to watch (don’t ask why) Housefull 2. Is it that my fellow Indians are SO easily amused and I just don’t get it? Because It was SERIOUSLY shocking to see people guffawing at every crass comment like retrograde Beavis and Buttheads.
I’ll be honest, during intermission we discussed the merits of staying or leaving. And I said I had to see this through, wherever it may take me. Plus I had faith in Rohan Joshi. I am happy to report we were not disappointed 🙂
Even though this was one lady’s reaction to the awesome 80s on full blast (particularly Thriller) personally, I loved it!
Once again Sapan returned with an excellent observation, “If you wanna know how big a dork a guy is, just ask him what his email ID was back in the 80s.” Hahaha. (I’m looking at you machodude69@yahoo.com.) I also agree 100% with:
And by far my favorite comic observation of the night…
LOL.
Rohan Joshi, or @mojorojo as he’s popularly know on Twitter, I think hit it out of the park. I found myself truly cracking up (having removed myself from the vicinity of the peanut gallery by this point.) And I feel like this guy has a real face for comedy :o) and brilliant timing! He also asked aloud the question we have all wondered silently…
My favorite bit was his, ”all our problems come from old Hindi movies” tirade, especially the classic – rows and rows of crates filled with Johnsons baby powder only to be discovered by some ridiculous pandu who says:
*cue Bollywood SFX* and immediately Crime Master Go Go materialised in my mind! And I have to agree with Amrita on the one about the guy who lives in the ceiling at shoe stores!
So all in all, I’m happy I went (minus the middle). If you’ve got the stomache for it check out the next installment at Blue Frog this Sunday. I meanwhile am off to sample the Indian specialty Rojo mentioned, of “cross cultural” cuisine 🙂