Opinion Aditi Mittal on Vir Das’s Emmy: ‘Landing’ win proves Das was right about ‘Two Indias’

At the Kennedy Center in 2021, he wrote and performed a piece called “Two Indias”. It was a sometimes wistful, sometimes funny love letter from Das to his homeland. In it, he remarked on the paradox that is our country. And there are many, for example, there are nearly 200 billionaires and the largest number of people living below the poverty line in the world — it boggles the mind. Economist Joan Robinson too had observed this about India in the 1960s: “Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite of it is also true.”

Two Indias went viral, and Das was a subject of prime-time news debate for nearly a week — labelled a “terrorist” and “mad man”. Much like the paradoxes he talks about, his social media following exploded that week with the outrage and harassment that any public figure is used to, but also with messages of incredible love and support.

I am about to open WhatsApp to write him a congratulatory message, when I see messages from some media houses — their last messages to me were two years ago when Das’s piece was released, demanding that the inane/insane accusations of being an anti-national be debated. Today, they were asking me to write a piece on the “state of comedy in India”. I chose to write for this publication because it was one of the few that didn’t.

Of all the performance arts, stand-up is the one that exposes the framework of power between the performer and the audience most plainly. You don’t have to be born to Mahesh Bhatt, you don’t need to win a genetic lottery, you don’t need to be a MENSA. The materials required are sparse — a quick wit, a microphone or a phone camera. But “the” most important part of comedy is the audience. You trade your joke, your clever thought with them in exchange for their laugh. And what is that laugh? A laugh is a parasympathetic response to that thought. You cannot predict exactly what will make you laugh, but your body and mind will demonstrate for you. Both laughing and having someone laugh at something you say/do triggers pleasure and reward centres in the brain. It is one of the most intimate things you can do with a large group of people. It’s with this audience that you exchange power whenever you trade a joke or a clever thought for a laugh. And as a nation, we have a complicated relationship with power.

When you zoom out, swathes of us are largely powerless — where we pay the highest taxes in the world, but we also have some of the poorest infrastructure, where the process of getting justice is a punishment, so power, and proximity to it, is something we aspire to. The beauty of comedy is that it feels like and is an acquirable power. Every one of us has watched a comedian and thought “Arre I am funnier than this when I’m talking to my friends”. It’s not an art that requires any tangible skill set. (Except wild fluctuations between crippling self-doubt and frightening self-confidence, or maybe that’s just me). So why shouldn’t you have the power that the comedian yields in the micro-moment that you give them the vulnerability of your laugh?

The concepts of “punching up” and “punching down” are integral to comedy. Punching down is where the target of a joke is someone who has less power than you: Jokes about wives being nags, poor people not having houses but still finding ways to make babies, or anti-reservation sentiments. These are popular in India. I tell myself that there’s a cruelty to our everyday existence and it makes us cruel. The widening inequality between the haves and have-nots is overwhelming. It is almost as if in an act of self-preservation, we choose to turn a blind eye towards someone else’s victimhood and mock it. It’s easier to turn on someone weaker than hit out at something so much bigger.

“Punching up” indicates that you are making a joke at someone more powerful than you. When you are in a system that does not accommodate you, the bare minimum power you have is to have a laugh at it. In the most human way, you’re acknowledging your powerlessness. And when more than one person laughs with you, you stack up that power, maybe even enough to demand a change to that system. This is what bothers governments and authorities about comedy. Because in governments built on mirthless chest-thumping, demagogic worshipping, and fear-mongering, there is hardly any space for self-deprecation or self-reflection. The powerful will, of course, have their well-planned, brutally executed laughs, but the powerless will not be given that luxury.

So, in the style of the latest Emmy award winner, Vir Das and Economist Joan Robinson, here are some paradoxes about comedy in India. In the past decade, I’ve seen five comedians get arrested, and one comedian win an International Emmy Award. I’ve seen celebrities from the echelons of power do stand-up comedy (no more, please!) to a domestic worker, Deepika Mhatre, take the mic and leave a room in splits (more, please!). Superstar comedians from minority communities have felt powerless to say a word about the spate of hate crimes on their communities, and young Dalit comedians with no backing have formed the delightfully named “Blue Material” collective to take on tour.

Every weekend, there are multiple comedy shows in your city — get a ticket and share a laugh and even get on stage if you like. Take back your power. And I’ll get back to that congratulatory message I have to send.

Mittal is a stand-up comedian, actor and writer