Smarty Pants

This weekend,when Pant took the stage at Arc Asia,ABC Farms,Koregaon Park,he promised the audience to convert the venue into “a mini-Delhi”. While Pant asked the men in the house to shout Oye hoye – a typical exclamation uttered by the Punjabi-dominated areas in Delhi,the women in the audience were asked to shout Bachao (help),a clever remark condemning the Capital’s making the headlines for violence on women. Performed in Pune for the first time on Friday,this The Travelling Pants,a rib-tickling act,was a compilation of Pant’s travels across the country and his observations of history,culture,architecture,language and people from India and abroad.

After getting into a controversy in 2012 for his act where he called the BR Chopra’s version of Mahabharata as “the ultimate rave party of 3000 BC”,Pant says that the Indian audiences have matured to a level where they can appreciate humour without letting it affect their sentiments. But he still is wary about not messing with the “sensitive spots”. While he does swear quite often on stage,he does not depend on getting laughs by just using random cuss words. In an experiment to test whether only cuss words can make an audience crack up,he ended a rather bad piece with a string of random cuss words during one of his performances. To his surprise,the audience was roaring with laughter by the end of the act. “I am not an anecdotal comedian or someone who would just use filthy language where it is not even needed to get people laughing. I work on my scripts,sort my jokes and hence call myself the best comedian in the country,” said Pant,who is currently working on his second book as well as on a film.