Man Behind The Laughs

When you ask Sadanand Chandekar to tell you something about himself,he says,"I was a dull student,who could never pass in Maths and English."

62-year-old stand-up comedian Sadanand Chandekar’s autobiography is like a live comedy show

He calls himself a ‘Divata’,which mean a useless or a nalayak person. When you ask Sadanand Chandekar to tell you something about himself,he says,”I was a dull student,who could never pass in Maths and English.” The good students in his class were never allowed to play with him as he was notorious for mimicking his teachers and he never took interest in studies. “I was a fool,hated by the teachers and the other students!” he chuckles.

This 62-year-old Marathi stand-up comedian,whom Johnny Lever once described as an Institute of Comedy,recently released his autobiography Aamhi Divate (We,the useless lot). In my shows,I have always portrayed fools. When I compare myself with the white collared intelligentsia around me,who waste a large chunk of their time discussing things they can never control,I start thinking of myself as fool. In fact,this ‘hypocrisy’ was lampooned in Chandekars most famous show – Hasari Uthathev’.

I love talking to people. It gives me immense pleasure when I make them laugh. I find it useless to keep talking about things like what corrupt politicians are doing or what changes should be made in policies. Lives of people like you and me are full of ironies. I just narrate them back to you, he says.

Chandekars family is originally from Nagar. His grandmother was a kirtankar while his mother was a theatre actress. “In the 50s,my grandmother allowed her daughter-in-law to act on stage. Our entire family is full of chatterboxes. Everyone loves talking. My two uncles were highly placed officers in the Indian Railways,but they still travelled in second class compartments. According to them,that was where one could meet real human beings as against the elite first class,” he says.

Chandekar passed his Std XII exams only because he did well in drawing. He later completed his diploma from Abhinav Arts College and then joined Modern Highschool as a drawing teacher. When I was in college,I got a chance to perform in Delhi at an extempore stand-up comedy competition. I won the first prize there,” he says. Even while teaching,he continued to do freelance assignments as an artist. “But the money that I earned was not enough to make two ends meet. Thus,I started doing stand-up comedy shows and that’s how it all started,” he adds.

In his autobiography,published by Manranjan Prakashan,Chandekar speaks to the reader as though he/she is his audience at a comedy show. When Chandekar went to legendary P L Deshpande,who attended one of his earlier performances,to ask whether he could start shows based on Deshpandes writing,the reply was “No.” Deshpande told him that he was competent enough to do shows on his own and did not need the crutches of Deshpandes writings. What more could I expect? Chandekar asks.

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Chandekar now trains stand-up comedians for various TV shows. An hour with him seems like five minutes as one never stops laughing. Comedy that hurts no one is the elixir of life. An artist like Chandekar has every right to say so.

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