Luis Dias
My first brush with stand-up comedy happened at my very first job in England, at of all places, a London hospital.
I began work in Newham General Hospital, East London in August 1998 at the bottom rung of the hospital hierarchy ladder (senior house officer, SHO). My SHO colleagues were either OBGYN (obstetricians and gynaecologists) like me, or General Practice (GP) trainees. The latter group were much more fun to be with; the first group constantly talked shop.
Four months later, at the hospital Christmas ‘revue’ (fancy British term for full-on entertainment party), I was shocked to find my British-Indian GP SHO colleague Paul Sinha take centre-stage. For the next half-hour or so, he ‘roasted’ everyone present, including consultants he would answer to the next morning. I still remember the replacement lyrics he inserted into Stevie Wonder’s ‘Part-time lover’ to roast locum (‘part-time’) doctors: (“I gravitate from coast to coast; I drink your tea and eat your toast. Yes that’s me, your part-time doctor.”) He got laughter as well as heckles, boos and hisses, but what impressed me is how he could defuse even the taunts into laughter without batting an eyelid.
That night had much merriment, drinking and dancing, but all I remember of it is Paul Sinha’s act.
I didn’t know it then, but that was one of his earliest forays into stand-up comedy. Not long after that, he quit medicine; he has not only been on the British stand-up comedy circuit but is also a professional quizzer. I’m reading his 2024 autobiography ‘One Sinha Lifetime,’ “comedy, disaster and one man’s quest for happiness.”
Around 2002, I somewhat reluctantly accompanied other workmates to London’s famed Comedy Store for Al Murray’s ‘Pub Landlord’ act. It had even more raucous, take-no-prisoners material. “Any foreigners in the audience?” he asked. I sank into my seat and was grateful when someone else got picked and roasted.
After that, my exposure to stand-up has been virtual. ‘Nanette’ (2017) on Netflix introduced me to Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby, exploring attitudes to mental health and toppling Picasso off his artist-genius pedestal through comedy.
Closer to home, I’ve watched (online again) Radhika Vaz, Varun Grover, Vir Das and Munawar Faruqui. Unfortunately, Faruqui now sticks out in public consciousness not just for his unique brand of humour, but also is a prime example of how fearful the establishment is about comedians. Comedians have to second-guess the reaction to even a throwaway remark in their routine, lest someone get offended.
The 2015 documentary about the state of stand-up comedy in India is tellingly called ‘I Am Offended.’ Faruqui was arrested in 2021 in the midst of a performance in Indore, “for jokes he didn’t crack”, as reported by the BBC.
Jaideep Varma, director of ‘I Am Offended’ said, “We get offended very easily, but the offence is not the reason why humour doesn’t happen. It is the importance given to the people who get offended.”
In the last couple of years, for obvious reasons, I’ve been watching Lebanese-Palestinian-Syrian-Italian-American stand-up comedian Sammy Obeid a lot. The New York Times described his comedy as displaying “an analytic style full of wordplay, clever misdirection and ethnic humour riffing on his Middle Eastern roots.” As the unconscionable Gaza genocide unfolded in horrific slow-motion before the world’s eyes, Obeid’s seemingly effortless mix of compassion, dark humour, and studious facts-and-figures research helped me cope with the helplessness I’ve felt over the senseless, nonstop bloodletting.
As algorithms are wont to do, at some point in the many stand-up reels about Gaza by Obeid and others, I was first introduced to Daniel Fernandes, a stand-up comedian with Goan roots. The 15-minute clip was called ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’. I didn’t quite appreciate the routine about ‘baby Hitler’ and time travel, but I felt he was spot-on when he said, tongue-in-cheek about the “silver lining” in the dark cloud that is the genocide in Gaza: “Sales of back-rests have gone through the roof. Because people all over the world have been unable to locate their spines.” He left his audience with the sober reminder that posterity would judge us for our collective inaction, and that posterity wouldn’t be some nebulous distant entity but our own progeny, that would watch the heartbreaking video archive of the slaughter of Palestinian civilians, women, children, babies in real-time. And we would be asked by our own children and grandchildren why we were silent, why we said and did nothing.
The ‘Free Palestine’ T-shirt Fernandes wore on stage at his recent show ‘Do you know who I am?’ (my very first stand-up comedy experience in Goa) at Menezes Braganza Panjim silently reminded us of that thought.
There’ll be a repeat show at the same venue in December, so do go if you missed it. It centres around the recent death of Fernandes’s father, and poignantly explores through comedy the wider issues of the transience and fragility of life, and the need to live every moment to the full.
It hit home in a personal way, as I lost my mum last year (it would have been her 93rd birthday this October) but it also reminded me of my own father’s sudden death25 years ago. When Fernandes reminisced about his dad, it reminded me of my own, of the hilarious antics and pranks he and his lifelong bestie Dr. Pedro Monteiro pulled in their childhood, in a paradisiacal Goa to literally die for. My own childhood paled in comparison. My dad’s life has as much grist for the comedy mill as Fernandes’s dad’s did.
Fernandes’s top gimmick is to start a really serious discussion on something deeply profound, like what is our purpose in life, or where we are headed as a species. And then pull the rug from under our feet with a hard-hitting one-liner. Gotcha!
The Grim Reaper becomes so much less scary, and life becomes so much more bearable if we can savour the humour on both sides of that life-and-death existential coin.
(Dr. Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer and founder of Child’s Play India Foundation. He blogs at luisdias.wordpress.com)
