Comedian Sahil Shah, who is known for immaculate grip on observational comedy, is back with one of his most introspective stand up yet, Broken. The 34-year-old comedian, who has performed over 1500 shows across New York, London, Toronto, Nairobi, Singapore, and Dubai sat with Hindustan Times talking about his transition as an artist and importance of mental health.
He also touched upon the recent controversy surrounding Kunal Kamra who allegedly took a dig at Maharashtra Deputy CM Eknath Shinde calling him a ‘traitor’ leading to vandalism of his stand up venue Habitat studio. Sahil also gave his two cents about comedian Samay Raina‘s India Got Latent controversy where podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia‘s joke on parents landed him in big trouble. Sahil stressed how audience can help during uncertain times in Indian comedy scene.
Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us about your latest standup comedy show on YouTube, Broken.
It is a comedy show about me being broken and all the steps that I am taking to fix myself. It is a deeply personal show and I have been working on it for five years. My first special was Childish Behavior, so Broken was an antithesis to that, saying that look, I am not childish anymore. As Covid happened and my mental health went up and down, I started getting existential, which eventually formed the show. A big chunk of the show is also about my dog and cat.
What made you turn your existential crisis into a comedy special?
Comedy is the greatest form of catharsis. If a comedian has a break up, there are two thoughts. First thought is, ‘Oh my god, I am heartbroken’ the second thought is ‘Waah, kya joke milega isme’ (Wow, what an amazing joke will come out of this). So as I was feeling all these emotions in the lockdown, I started to write them down and the more I wrote about it, I thought it would be fun to speak about mental health, the sadness I am feeling.
What is your process when coming up with jokes on everyday situations?
So let me give you a great example. I was talking to my therapist saying I don’t think I have achieved enough in my life and my therapist said, hey look at Vincent Van Gogh, he became famous after he died. And I told her that is the worst advice you have given me, stating the obvious irony of the situation. Even she realised after some time and said, almost panicking, ‘No no. I am not saying you have to die to become famous’. The moment she said that, I wrote it down that this is such a funny joke that my therapist also thinks that maybe you will be famous after you go! So when something like this happens to me, I do think about what has happened to me and the next thing is, I can turn it into a joke.
You had mentioned in a previous interview that comedy should be taken as an art form and not a threat. Why do you think people are taking it as a threat?
So let us just put it this way, comedy works on a very simple thing called context. If you were watching a comedy show live, you would understand that when I am performing and I am cracking my jokes, they are not coming from a place of malice, there is no hidden agenda, nobody has paid me money to say what I want to. My jokes are coming from a place where I want to express my emotions.
Now, for example, tomorrow, I am doing a joke on a therapist, hypothetically, and a bunch of therapists get angry, at that point I will be like why are you getting angry? I am not trying to threaten you. It is not what I meant. I was talking about my journey and my thoughts. As an artist I believe that all of us are allowed thoughts, opinions and if you disagree with my thought and opinion, you are allowed to disagree. But if that turns into you getting aggressive or violent then that is where it gets problematic because we aren’t threatening anyone, we are cracking jokes, it is not hate speech.
But what can people take offence to, we don’t know. In fact, it is a scary time as an artist where, tomorrow for example, if you are writing this column but you were scared or afraid that you want to say things but you think may be I can’t or maybe I shouldn’t.
Have you had a conversation with fellow comedians like Kunal Kamra, Samay Raina or for that matter Ranveer Allahbadia?
I don’t know Ranveer personally but with Kunal and Samay, I have messaged them and I have spoken to them. And look, I can’t do anything except be there for my fellow comics. I sent a message asking ‘all good’, ‘hope all good’, that’s it.
You also mentioned that the audience should be there for the artists. What do you actually expect from the audience?
I don’t expect the audience to do anything. If someone comes to vandalise the property, the audience will run. No one is going to stand up. I agree, I accept. I am saying, online, support the person, that is it. Tomorrow, I have given you a joke on dogs and PETA gets angry at me, I want people to be there and say no Sahil was joking. He has a dog, he is talking from experience, I don’t think he means hatred, we support him.
People don’t understand this but everyone gets affected by it. It is not only about Kunal Kamra but also Habitat got shut down, the livelihood of the people working there, what did they do? Nothing. Their livelihoods are getting affected. We don’t have a venue anymore to perform.
How do you think online support will help the comedy scene in India?
I’ll be honest, no controversy is bad controversy. People feel that silence is a very good tool but silence can work another way. On one hand, if you are telling someone that hey, now we will never let you perform, when the person goes and performs in a foreign country they are going to be sold out. The more you try to stop people from doing something, the more the people would want to do it. It is as simple as that.
Look at Kamra’s YouTube channel, see the amount of super thanks he has got. I had seen recently someone has sent ₹10,000 to him saying ‘bro keep up the good fight’. So this is what I mean by support. You are financially supporting someone who could have lost their opportunity. You are monetarily supporting someone by buying tickets when they do start touring. You emotionally support someone by sending them a message when they are down. We are nothing without our audience. We are just people who talk. If tomorrow my audience stops coming for my shows, it doesn’t matter what I do, my support has gone forever.
Even the audience is at a loss when something like this happens, like them being questioned.
This was unpredictable. I don’t think that venue thought it would be broken. We are living in uncertain times. You don’t know who would react to what and for valid legitimate reasons as well. What Kamra said, must have hurt someone, and they have reacted because of that, maybe how they reacted for them seem valid but for us it is not valid. There are two sides of the coin. So as an audience, I am saying things will start again. Shows are still going on. The Habitat will be back again. When it does, come watch shows, support the artist.
As an artist, how important is it for you to be fearless?
It totally depends on what you stand for. Kamra is super fearless, he is doubling down. His Tamil Nadu thing is the funniest thing I have ever heard. (In a viral audio clip, Kunal Kamra was allegedly threatened by a person, who was asking his address but the comedian told him that he is in Tamil Nadu). I am also fearless in the topics that I am tackling. As a comedian you get to decide what topics you want to tackle. Fear comes from ‘I don’t think I can talk about this’. I want to talk about death, that is more important to me.
When I talk about support, I would also like to mention that if someone does get cancelled or someone does get threatened, as Ranveer had said that his family was getting threats, you would have to understand that these people’s mental health also would be at an all-time low. A simple message, I love what you do, I will always be there for you, goes 10 times more than buying a ticket, although buying a ticket does help. Even in my show, there is a very important part where I talk about how important this equation between comedian and audience is.
You have been performing since 19 and now you are 34. How do you think your journey has been all over these years? And how has your audience evolved?
I think what we fail to realise is that after every comedy show there’s always someone who is like, ‘Oh my god, I am seeing you for the first time’. We fail to realise that not only are there new comedy audiences coming but there are old audiences too. I have met parents who said, ‘Listen I was in college when you used to perform. Now this is my child and I am like ‘Oh my god’, that is when you realise, your audience is also growing old with you. My duty now is for my audience who have grown old with me to have pride and say, ‘hey when I was 19 and he was 19, that was fun but now as we aged, it still feels the same. I have grown, he has grown, I enjoy it’.
What are the new experiments you are trying to do?
I put my everything in this show. There is a new show I am working on and the theme of it is in continuation, saying how I am average in everything and how I realised I don’t want to be great. I am happy being average. There is too much pressure being the best, so that’s the entire next angle in my life. I want to put my baby (new show) into the world, I want it to walk and while it is growing I want to enjoy life a little with my dog and cat.
You talk about mental health and how you have coped over the years in your show Broken. What has helped you that the audience can take a cue from.
In improv comedy there is this basic fundamental rule called, ‘Yes, and?’ I have learnt to ‘Yes, and?’ my life. If anything happens I have learnt to be like, ‘Yes, and now what?’ Covid happened, I started doing digital shows, streaming. Live shows are happening, I am adapting. YouTube is happening, I am adapting. Reels are happening, I have adapted. It is very important to keep adapting and growing. So that’s the advice I would give, if anything happens, accept it, say ‘yes, and now what’ and look forward to the next chapter.
Sahil Shah’s Broken is available to watch on YouTube.
