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This is an archive article published on June 12, 2013
Bengali By Nature
Stand-up comedian Anuvab Pal takes the influence of his growing-up years in Kolkata and his love for the 80s cinema to the stage.
Written by Anjali Jhangiani KP
June 12, 2013 03:57 AM IST
3 min read
3 min read
It used to be a charming little town before they decided to build nine-lane highways and force a metropolis on Pune, says Mumbai-based comedian Anuvab Pal. The scriptwriter of The President is Coming and Lions of Punjab Presents and author of The Chaos Theory is nonetheless excited about his first stand-up act in the city. Though he visits the city once a month to conduct comedy scriptwriting classes at the Film and Television Institute of India,he misses the old charm of what was once known as a pensioners paradise.
He will perform his solo stand-up-act titled The Nation wants to know at High Spirits,Koregaon Park,today. He talks about the revolution that news anchor Arnab Goswami has brought to the art of debate. In other debates,people listen and then respond,but Arnab can listen,react and comment at the same time. While youre talking,he has already heard what you want to say and responded to it. He has this God-like ability to ingest and spit out information simultaneously, says Pal, pointing to the chaos on news channels.
He claims that being a Bengali and growing up in Kolkata has a major influence on his work. It is his Bengali roots that make him easily philosophical,artistic and opinionated. Though the stereotype is that Bengalis are lazy,Pal says there is much more to the Bengali culture that has encouraged him to take the stage as a stand-up comedian.
Bengalis have a different mindset. In fact,it even applies to anyone of a different community who has been brought up in Bengal. For example,when people call someone a thief,we go into the depth of what could have caused him to steal and hence,have great sympathy for him. Things that I say when Im performing a comedy act are those that anyone from the crowd could have said,but I am doing it because the audience expects a different point of view from me, says Pal.
Another topic that Pal often refers to in his act is growing up in the 80s. The 37-year-old deeply misses the films of the era,specifically the villains. That was a time when the bad guy used to have a pet lion and a pool full of acid. It was fascinating. Now,we have movies where a handsome hearthrob sets off on a journey to explore life, says Pal. His next venture,a stand-up act featuring Kunal Roy Kapoor,Rajneesh Kapoor and himself is inspired by the intricacies of the 80s television series.
Just having launched his book titled The Chaos Theory,an unconventional love story between two professors who fall in love and meet each other over a game of Shakespearean quotations every Thursday for 50 years,Pal has his hands full with film scripts.
He is presently working on a science fiction romantic comedy and another script based on a comedy of ghosts for UTV.
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