Episode 1439 - Vir Das

Episode 1439 • Released May 29, 2023 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucksters what the fuckadelics

00:00:18Marc:How's it going?

00:00:19Marc:I'm Mark Maron.

00:00:20Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.

00:00:22Marc:Welcome to it if you're new here.

00:00:23Marc:I feel like every once in a while people are new and it's important to welcome them to the fold or welcome them to the episode or welcome them as a fan of my guest.

00:00:38Marc:So hang out, have a seat, say hi to the regulars.

00:00:44Marc:Hey, if you do live in Los Angeles or you're going to be around or you want to make a special trip to watch me ramble, I'll be at Largo on Thursday, June 8th for a standup show and Friday, July 1st for the music and standup show.

00:00:58Marc:I'll be a dynasty typewriter on Saturday, June 10th and also on Saturday, June 24th.

00:01:05Marc:for stand-up ramblings, to kind of go over the stuff, to share what's happening in my mind, to move through some ideas, see if I can get any jokes.

00:01:13Marc:I've been enjoying the jokes lately.

00:01:15Marc:I've been enjoying kind of just doing a kind of laid-back groove and seeing how the words work on their own.

00:01:27Marc:without any pressure to do anything.

00:01:29Marc:I'm in a zone right now where I'm like, hey, if I don't do another special ever, fine.

00:01:34Marc:I'm just going to enjoy whatever craft that I put together for myself since 1987.

00:01:44Marc:Today on the show, I talked to Veer Das.

00:01:47Marc:He's a comedian from India.

00:01:49Marc:He's well known in India for both his comedy and his roles in popular films.

00:01:55Marc:And here in the U.S., you can see his stand-up specials on Netflix.

00:01:58Marc:And he's also on tour this summer.

00:02:00Marc:But you might have heard about a thing he did back in 2021 when he did a monologue called Two Indias.

00:02:09Marc:at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

00:02:13Marc:Start a little controversy.

00:02:14Marc:We'll get into that.

00:02:16Marc:I watched the specials and I enjoyed it.

00:02:18Marc:So I had an interesting few days, I believe.

00:02:23Marc:And I've been thinking about...

00:02:26Marc:What makes me me?

00:02:28Marc:Not in a weird self-centered way, just in terms of a getting older way.

00:02:33Marc:Because I feel like I'm on the precipice of actually tipping into a different time in my life.

00:02:38Marc:I'm not going to say old or that I'm over the hill or anything.

00:02:41Marc:But as I've mentioned before, some things are dissipating.

00:02:45Marc:There's some fucks not given that are happening.

00:02:49Marc:And it's okay.

00:02:49Marc:I think it comes with...

00:02:52Marc:With getting older, if you're lucky enough to get older.

00:02:55Marc:And also, I've just been thinking about my job, about what I do, not just stand up, but this and just how far I am from.

00:03:02Marc:The average person's experience, how because Kit.

00:03:08Marc:My girlfriend is in the work world and it's difficult.

00:03:11Marc:It's difficult every day for so many people that, that have to do things that they really don't want to do to get by and to sort of sustain their life and to, to sort of have a life.

00:03:23Marc:And I need to check myself and make sure I empathize with that, with that situation.

00:03:31Marc:Look, I spent a lot of years struggling with,

00:03:34Marc:In a lot of ways and in a lot of different on a lot of different levels.

00:03:40Marc:But I've managed to find a level that's working.

00:03:46Marc:But my struggle was never the struggle of doing something I didn't want to do because I had no choice.

00:03:52Marc:So I've been thinking about my job, about my jobs, primarily stand up.

00:04:01Marc:podcast personality, broadcaster, actor, and just thinking about

00:04:08Marc:different parts of my personality, like the one that's come into question, I'll try to explain it to you.

00:04:13Marc:Cause I don't, I don't consider myself a pathological narcissist.

00:04:17Marc:I believe that my father probably was and is at times, but what does it really mean?

00:04:24Marc:I mean, you know, pathological narcissists are kind of rare and it's a disturbing disposition that lacks empathy and conscience and self-reflection.

00:04:33Yeah.

00:04:33Marc:Now, that is not me, but I have elements of narcissism that I've been thinking about because I think it actually serves me and my job.

00:04:44Marc:And I think everybody has a certain amount of selfishness if they're successful in what they do or they're just trying to get by.

00:04:51Marc:There's a certain amount of necessary delusion, necessary denial, and sort of necessary self-centeredness

00:05:01Marc:to just forge on on a day-to-day basis.

00:05:05Marc:But I have this moment where I started to think about other people in my life that, like, I feel, I can feel connected to somebody fairly quickly.

00:05:17Marc:And I don't know what it's based on.

00:05:19Marc:I don't know if it's based on a reality, if there really is a connection, or it's something that my brain is making up.

00:05:26Marc:And the reason I'm talking about this is that a guy...

00:05:31Marc:Came into my life again recently.

00:05:33Marc:And it just it shed some light on on something.

00:05:37Marc:You know, this kid, I've known this kid, Alan.

00:05:42Marc:I'll just use his first name since he I think since he is probably eight or 10 years old, his family and my family were friends when we were growing up.

00:05:50Marc:He's about six years younger than me.

00:05:51Marc:And I knew him and his younger sister and his parents.

00:05:53Marc:I used to work for his father.

00:05:55Marc:In a clothing store that his father owned.

00:05:57Marc:But I just knew he's a kid I knew, like, I feel like my whole life we'd been through some stuff.

00:06:03Marc:You know, he started doing comedy when he was like 17 or 18.

00:06:06Marc:And, you know, and I was doing comedy at that point.

00:06:09Marc:And then he kind of, I think, realized that he didn't really have what it took.

00:06:14Marc:to kind of stay in the game.

00:06:16Marc:And then his life kind of like went different directions.

00:06:18Marc:And I'd see him here and there in different degrees of crisis at times.

00:06:24Marc:And I threw him a line when he was in New York and I moved him up to, I told him to move up to Boston and live in my house to get out of the fray of potential problems.

00:06:34Marc:And then I never I just kind of lost touch with the kid.

00:06:37Marc:But this is a guy I knew when he was a kid and I knew him well.

00:06:40Marc:And I know his being, which is really what it comes down to his being.

00:06:46Marc:Like I was connected to this guy emotionally as a friend and as you know, as a person.

00:06:51Marc:And, you know, he started doing comedy.

00:06:52Marc:I just you know, when you know somebody in a kind of deep way, a soul way.

00:06:59Marc:For whatever reason, usually it's somebody you know when you're younger or you have a connection to somebody or they're part of your life for a period of time.

00:07:09Marc:And then you lose touch for whatever reason.

00:07:12Marc:And I'd heard bits and pieces about this kid from here and there, but not much.

00:07:17Marc:And I knew that his life didn't really go easy and had difficulties.

00:07:24Marc:He got married.

00:07:25Marc:I heard he had a kid, but I heard he was selling mattresses.

00:07:28Marc:There was different points of time.

00:07:30Marc:And recently, he reached out and he's living here, not far away from me.

00:07:36Marc:And I don't think I've really seen the guy

00:07:39Marc:you know, for like 20 years, more, probably more.

00:07:44Marc:And I'm telling you, man, you know, this guy was Mishpulka.

00:07:48Marc:This guy was family in a deep way.

00:07:53Marc:And it was kind of, I said, look, man, because he said he was kind of poking around doing comedy now a little bit.

00:07:58Marc:And, you know, he's living up, you know, in San Berdu.

00:08:00Marc:And, you know, he's got a job up there.

00:08:04Marc:And I was a little nervous.

00:08:05Marc:I was like, look, man, why don't you come down?

00:08:07Marc:We'll go to the comedy store.

00:08:08Marc:We'll hang out.

00:08:09Marc:We'll catch up.

00:08:11Marc:I had no idea what to expect because I'd heard like rough, rough things like things, you know, got got rough for him.

00:08:18Marc:And that happens to everybody.

00:08:19Marc:We all go through rough patches and and sometimes we don't surface.

00:08:23Marc:You know, you know, people in your life, they they they get out in the weeds and they don't come back really or not totally or not fully or, you know, they come back and and something they get hard, man.

00:08:36Marc:I mean, that's the, that's the scary thing, right?

00:08:38Marc:Is that, you know, somebody, you know, somebody, well, they're like family and you don't see him for a while.

00:08:43Marc:And you know, some, something, something is, has, has a light has gone out.

00:08:50Marc:Something is calcified in their soul.

00:08:53Marc:Something has made them hard, has broke their spirit, has, has made them, uh, you know, fundamentally a different person because they no longer have access to,

00:09:03Marc:to the openness or to the optimism or to the excitement of life ahead of them.

00:09:12Marc:Something has fizzled out and it's heartbreaking.

00:09:19Marc:And I didn't know what to expect because, you know, look, I've been through some shit and you don't know, you know, I'm sure many of you in whatever life you're living,

00:09:31Marc:has been on the precipice of losing a chunk of who you are because life fucking broke you, man.

00:09:41Marc:Life crushed you and you can't uncrush it and you can't move forward carrying the crush, the crushing.

00:09:52Marc:And you live in reaction to that.

00:09:55Marc:You live in the shadow of,

00:09:58Marc:Of your broken spirit.

00:10:01Marc:And you may not be able to do anything about that.

00:10:03Marc:And that's just life.

00:10:05Marc:For a lot of us.

00:10:07Marc:At least for periods of time.

00:10:10Marc:So this kid, Alan, he's not a kid anymore.

00:10:14Marc:He's in his fifties.

00:10:16Marc:Like he comes over and, you know, and I saw him and I got very emotional.

00:10:20Marc:I fought back tears.

00:10:21Marc:I don't know why I decided to do that.

00:10:24Marc:Why I didn't let them happen.

00:10:26Marc:Because right when I saw the guy, I was like, he's not, he's not hard.

00:10:33Marc:You know, he's not, it didn't break him.

00:10:36Marc:Like I saw the,

00:10:38Marc:the kid I always knew in there.

00:10:40Marc:And he wasn't that far from the surface.

00:10:43Marc:You know, it was all intact, no matter what his life was.

00:10:47Marc:I mean, it may not be going well in his mind or it may, you know, he might've had other, you know, whatever.

00:10:52Marc:I was totally anticipating a guy that was lost, that lost himself.

00:11:01Marc:And whether he thinks he did or not, I saw the kid I always knew and I felt the emotional connection we always had.

00:11:07Marc:And I was thrilled to see it and reconnect and have those emotional feelings.

00:11:13Marc:And over the course of the evening, we both kind of acknowledged him and had them and we caught up.

00:11:17Marc:He had been following my life a little bit and then he filled me in on his difficult...

00:11:22Marc:things but he wasn't unable to find humor in it and he wasn't able to find you know goodness in it and uh yeah it'd been hard but he's okay but the the fundamental thing is that thing that fire that thing whatever we were connected however we were connected when we were kids or younger was still totally intact and it didn't erase time but i realized something in that moment

00:11:47Marc:That I can have that feeling about people in my life, you know, people, contemporaries of mine, people that, you know, I was doing comedy with early in my life where like my emotional, because of whatever inability to compartmentalize or lack of boundaries or strange upbringing I had that made me emotionally needy, you know, I would latch on and connect to people very deeply, fairly quickly and without them maybe even knowing it.

00:12:10Marc:So I was asking myself, well, is it narcissistic in, in the way that like a lot of these guys that I've known my whole life, but I don't talk to for years and years and we're not friends.

00:12:19Marc:I don't get invited to weddings.

00:12:21Marc:I don't get invited to dinners, but like, you know, people I started in comedy with who I feel I hold them in my mind and in my heart, uh, as the person I knew when I first, you know, began a friendship with that person or a relationship with that person.

00:12:36Marc:And I keep them in that place in my mind and in my heart.

00:12:40Um,

00:12:40Marc:And that doesn't lack empathy.

00:12:41Marc:But when I feel like they're part of me, that part of who they were is part of me.

00:12:47Marc:And I expect that they're going to be that way the whole time.

00:12:49Marc:And I approach them like, you know, we're bonded forever.

00:12:53Marc:And a lot of people just move on with their life.

00:12:56Marc:But because of that, I think even people that I've only met once or twice or don't know very well, they come on this show and I make I have these deep emotional connections because I feel like they're part of me because of something that may have happened 20 years ago.

00:13:09Marc:And I haven't even talked to them.

00:13:11Marc:But I think it's sort of the key.

00:13:13Marc:To what I do here.

00:13:16Marc:Because I believe I know people.

00:13:18Marc:But it's not in some sort of parasocial interaction way.

00:13:20Marc:I know that we're not friends.

00:13:21Marc:I know that they're not talking directly to me when they're in a movie.

00:13:26Marc:But I really make these assumptions that they're sort of part of me.

00:13:29Marc:They're not an extension of me.

00:13:30Marc:But they are connected to me.

00:13:32Marc:And I kind of move into things with that assumption almost immediately.

00:13:35Marc:And then I kind of adapt to whoever they've become or whoever they are.

00:13:39Marc:It's helped me.

00:13:41Marc:I'm not even sure it's pathological.

00:13:44Marc:the point is it was very emotionally gratifying and moving that, you know, that, you know, this guy and I, who I hadn't seen, you know, 20 some odd years, maybe 30 years, you know, the connection was still, you know, very alive and very strong.

00:13:58Marc:And I don't know how often I'll see him, but I was just, um, it was moving to me.

00:14:03Marc:And now I just have to stay engaged if that's what I want to do.

00:14:07Marc:But, um,

00:14:08Marc:It's so weird, man, getting older or just having a life where, you know, friends come and go.

00:14:14Marc:Sometimes you have falling out with people and sometimes you don't even know why.

00:14:18Marc:And, you know, that's happened recently.

00:14:22Marc:A friend of mine has just, you know, completely shut me out of his life.

00:14:26Marc:And, you know, I don't know if we were close or what, but I don't know what that means as you get older.

00:14:32Marc:Usually when you're really close with somebody, it goes way back as you get older.

00:14:37Marc:I mean, you make new friends and stuff, but those way back ones are the ones that are kind of a constant.

00:14:44Marc:They are part of your emotional fabric.

00:14:47Marc:And this kid...

00:14:49Marc:Alan, you know, he looked up to me and he saw me through all my different phases of comedy one way or the other, certainly early on.

00:14:57Marc:But he hadn't seen me recently.

00:14:59Marc:He doesn't have cable and whatever.

00:15:01Marc:But he came to the comedy store and he watched me do two sets.

00:15:07Marc:And after the second set, he goes, I don't get it, man.

00:15:11Marc:When did you become likable?

00:15:13Marc:How did that even happen?

00:15:15Marc:How did that even happen?

00:15:16Marc:You're likable now.

00:15:17Marc:It's crazy.

00:15:20Marc:And I took that as a compliment, you know.

00:15:23Marc:Why wouldn't I?

00:15:24Marc:Right?

00:15:27Marc:It was really an exciting, moving kind of weekend in the life, you know.

00:15:33Marc:That's all.

00:15:35Marc:So, Veer Das.

00:15:36Marc:He's got U.S.

00:15:37Marc:tour dates throughout the summer.

00:15:38Marc:You can go to veerdas.in.

00:15:42Marc:That's I-N like India.com.

00:15:45Marc:Virdas, like V-I-R-D-A-S.

00:15:48Marc:You can check out his tour dates there.

00:15:49Marc:Also check out his specials on Netflix.

00:15:52Marc:His most recent one is called Landing.

00:15:55Marc:And it was nice meeting this guy.

00:15:57Marc:It was nice talking to him.

00:15:58Marc:And it was nice watching him work on the television.

00:16:02Marc:This is me and Virdas hanging out.

00:16:09Guest:Virdas

00:16:13Guest:You don't live here, right?

00:16:15Guest:No, man.

00:16:15Guest:Mumbai, and then a little town called Goa, which is right outside Mumbai.

00:16:20Guest:You don't have a place in New York?

00:16:22Guest:No.

00:16:23Guest:No?

00:16:23Guest:No.

00:16:24Guest:Mumbai.

00:16:25Guest:Mumbai, and then like a 45-minute flight away from Mumbai is like a little beach town.

00:16:31Marc:And that's where you live?

00:16:32Marc:Yeah.

00:16:32Marc:That's where you get the sand?

00:16:34Guest:That's where I get the sand.

00:16:34Guest:Ha ha ha.

00:16:37Marc:That's where you get the sand you carry around the world?

00:16:40Marc:Well, one little Ziploc bag of sand that I carry around the world.

00:16:43Marc:Oh, so you don't... But don't you have to decide how much sand you're going to need for the number of gigs you have to do?

00:16:49Guest:Well, for the special, we carried a specific amount.

00:16:52Guest:Right.

00:16:52Guest:But then you actually cannot take that much sand across the world because it's illegal.

00:16:58Marc:What is the legality?

00:17:00Marc:What is the law about sand?

00:17:03Guest:Well, I think it's... You can carry, like...

00:17:06Guest:Probably like a little mini Ziploc bag about that much.

00:17:09Guest:But then for this special, because there were four guys coming in from India, I had to get them all to get sand.

00:17:18Guest:Like it's contraband.

00:17:19Guest:Like it's drugs.

00:17:21Marc:And then we joined our sand.

00:17:23Marc:You did?

00:17:23Guest:You got it all together?

00:17:24Marc:What did you do?

00:17:25Marc:Four shows?

00:17:26Marc:Two shows?

00:17:26Marc:I filmed two.

00:17:27Marc:Yeah.

00:17:28Marc:All right.

00:17:28Marc:So you needed a bit of sand.

00:17:29Marc:I liked the sand.

00:17:30Marc:I didn't know where the sand bit was going.

00:17:32Marc:Yeah.

00:17:33Marc:But I knew it had to be touching.

00:17:34Marc:I knew I didn't... I didn't think it was some gimmick.

00:17:36Marc:They kept cutting back to the sand.

00:17:37Marc:There'd be these close-ups of the sand.

00:17:39Marc:Yeah.

00:17:40Marc:And then at the end, we get the sand.

00:17:42Guest:Well, that was me on the edit.

00:17:43Guest:So, yeah.

00:17:43Guest:So I kept trying to... Just in case you forgot.

00:17:47Guest:You put sand on the ground.

00:17:48Guest:Yeah.

00:17:48Guest:I just wanted to keep checking in.

00:17:50Guest:In case you missed the gigantic set, which was in every shot.

00:17:54Guest:Yeah.

00:17:55Marc:I...

00:17:56Marc:But you did wait till the end to just explain it and then pay it off, right?

00:18:01Marc:Yeah.

00:18:01Marc:I watched that special.

00:18:03Marc:I watched some of the bits and pieces of the other ones.

00:18:06Marc:I watched the two Indias.

00:18:08Marc:But it's interesting.

00:18:10Marc:I'm just in a world now at my age where I don't know you kids.

00:18:14Marc:I don't know...

00:18:15Marc:Well, 43, so it's good to be called a kid.

00:18:18Marc:Thank you for that.

00:18:20Marc:But like, you know, I had heard about you, and then I'm like, you know, he's got four fucking specials on that.

00:18:24Marc:How do I not know him?

00:18:25Marc:You just get to a point where I can't know everybody.

00:18:27Guest:Do you know you and me have met before, but like very fleetingly.

00:18:30Guest:Oh, here we go.

00:18:31Guest:What did I do?

00:18:32Guest:No, you were nice.

00:18:32Guest:Okay, good.

00:18:33Guest:So it was at the Improv.

00:18:35Guest:Here?

00:18:36Guest:Yeah.

00:18:37Guest:On Melrose.

00:18:37Guest:Oh, I'm hardly ever there.

00:18:39Guest:So when was that?

00:18:41Guest:Maybe like five years ago, six years ago.

00:18:42Guest:So I just started working in the States.

00:18:44Guest:Yeah.

00:18:45Guest:And I think they'd given me like my first solo night in the main room.

00:18:50Guest:Yeah.

00:18:50Guest:Right.

00:18:51Guest:And then I think you and your band were playing like the later show or something.

00:18:56Marc:Oh, I was playing, it was one of those shows where I can't, I, Greg Berent or somebody, they used to host a show where you tell a story and play a song.

00:19:04Marc:Yeah.

00:19:05Marc:Right.

00:19:05Marc:I remember.

00:19:05Marc:Yeah.

00:19:06Guest:I remember that.

00:19:06Guest:So you were upstairs in the green room just tuning a guitar.

00:19:09Guest:Right.

00:19:09Guest:And I think you were tuning like a Strat or something like that.

00:19:11Guest:That's possible.

00:19:12Guest:And I went up there and I'd just gotten done.

00:19:14Guest:Yeah.

00:19:15Guest:And we just very fleetingly looked at each other and you were like, that's a lot of Indian people.

00:19:20Yeah.

00:19:21Guest:And I was like, that's a nice guitar.

00:19:24Guest:And then we just both left because we had stated facts.

00:19:27Guest:And that's when we last saw each other.

00:19:29Marc:Well, that's an interesting thing to me.

00:19:32Marc:I have to be careful because I forever live in some shame for how I interviewed Mindy Kaling.

00:19:41Marc:Oh, yeah?

00:19:41Marc:Yeah.

00:19:42Marc:Yeah.

00:19:42Marc:Because I have this fascination with India, but it's very shallow.

00:19:46Marc:It's really based on colors and food.

00:19:50Marc:Okay, sure.

00:19:52Marc:But I've always wanted to go, but I'm afraid to go.

00:19:56Guest:But isn't it a little, I mean, my fascination on America is based on Van Wilder and Game of Thrones, right?

00:20:02Guest:When I show up.

00:20:03Guest:So it's equally shallow at some level, right?

00:20:05Guest:I guess so.

00:20:05Marc:But I always feel like I should I should know more.

00:20:08Marc:And I don't I know.

00:20:09Marc:I know it was colonized and there's tension.

00:20:11Marc:And the thing with Pakistan is not great, even though you share some breads with the same people, essentially.

00:20:18Marc:And but but I always feel like if you're going to talk about wanting something or being interested in something, you should you should activate that interest.

00:20:26Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:20:28Guest:I mean, you could, you'd fit right in.

00:20:31Guest:Oh, really?

00:20:31Guest:In India?

00:20:32Guest:If you showed up, you'd fit right in.

00:20:34Guest:I promise you.

00:20:35Guest:You're kind of like, you're chill.

00:20:37Guest:You know what I mean?

00:20:38Guest:Maybe.

00:20:38Marc:I mean, I don't know if I'm chill.

00:20:39Marc:I'd be a little panicky.

00:20:40Marc:I'd be scared I would get sick.

00:20:42Marc:That's the other thing about India is like people go, it's great.

00:20:45Marc:You're going to get sick for like seven days.

00:20:47Guest:But after that, you're going to have a really nice time.

00:20:49Guest:Well, it depends on what you do, right?

00:20:50Guest:So don't show up and like fucking go straight to the street vendor and eat that shit, right?

00:20:54Guest:Like meet an Indian, go to their fucking house, have a home-cooked meal first.

00:20:58Guest:Yeah.

00:20:59Guest:Like get your body ready.

00:21:00Guest:Acclimated?

00:21:01Guest:Acclimated a little bit.

00:21:03Guest:But like I produced like a comedy festival some years ago and I had like six LA comics come down, right?

00:21:09Guest:Okay.

00:21:10Guest:They showed up with peanut butter in their suit.

00:21:12Guest:Who?

00:21:12Guest:Who's this?

00:21:12Guest:Who are these comics?

00:21:13Guest:They were like Laugh Factory comics.

00:21:15Guest:Okay.

00:21:16Marc:I would probably know them, but they were nervous.

00:21:19Guest:They were super nervous, so they brought food.

00:21:20Guest:I'm like, we have fucking bread.

00:21:23Marc:That's definitely true.

00:21:24Marc:That's one of the best things you guys have, is those breads.

00:21:27Guest:And peanut butter.

00:21:28Guest:And within one day, these guys had abandoned everything in their suitcase and were eating anything and everything.

00:21:33Guest:Right, and they didn't get sick.

00:21:34Guest:They didn't get sick.

00:21:35Guest:No.

00:21:36Guest:I would say Mumbai, Delhi, all the big cities, you're going to be just fine.

00:21:40Guest:Yeah?

00:21:41Guest:Yeah.

00:21:41Marc:Well, but what else what also struck me is that, like, I'm watching the specials and there's there's a lot of materials definitely not for me.

00:21:49Marc:I know.

00:21:49Marc:Yeah.

00:21:49Marc:And I don't mind it.

00:21:51Marc:Yeah.

00:21:51Marc:But it makes me go like, I wish I got that joke.

00:21:53Marc:But but I had a realization this morning that you're not really you're not trying to get over on America, really.

00:22:00Marc:Yeah.

00:22:01Marc:No.

00:22:01Marc:And that you are performing for Indians.

00:22:04Marc:Yeah.

00:22:05Marc:But you are something that most Americans aren't, and I am not either.

00:22:09Marc:You're sort of a global citizen.

00:22:12Guest:I definitely... That's definitely the goal, at least.

00:22:15Guest:I don't know if I'm there yet.

00:22:16Guest:Yeah.

00:22:16Guest:What would it take?

00:22:17Guest:I don't know.

00:22:18Guest:I did 29 countries last year.

00:22:20Guest:So, in that sense, touch wood, it's going well.

00:22:22Guest:But...

00:22:23Guest:No, I think there is a palatable version of the Indian who exists in America.

00:22:30Guest:And that's been part of your... Who would that be as a comic?

00:22:33Guest:I think Hasan Minhaj would be that.

00:22:36Guest:And for fiction, maybe Mindy Kaling would be... That's the universe that you exist in.

00:22:40Guest:But I certainly don't belong in that universe.

00:22:44Guest:Because you don't try to be.

00:22:47Guest:No, I don't.

00:22:47Guest:I don't.

00:22:48Guest:I have an authentic voice.

00:22:50Guest:And for years...

00:22:52Guest:this accent has been the punchline in that comedic world.

00:22:57Guest:Sure.

00:22:57Guest:You know, it's my conservative Indian dad and then they do my accent.

00:23:01Guest:Yeah.

00:23:01Guest:And that's what gets the laugh.

00:23:03Marc:But it's funny because those two, those two examples are ambitiously craving American acceptance.

00:23:09Marc:I think so.

00:23:10Marc:I think so.

00:23:11Marc:I don't think they deny their ethnicity, but they are both focused on the American prize.

00:23:20Guest:Yes, but also because what other audience do they go for?

00:23:26Guest:It's not like the billion people that live in India are watching...

00:23:30Guest:The Mindy Kaling show on Netflix, right?

00:23:33Guest:We release seven movies a weekend in India.

00:23:36Guest:So we have shit to watch.

00:23:38Guest:You know what I'm saying?

00:23:39Guest:We're kind of busy in that sense.

00:23:42Guest:You seem busy in every sense over there.

00:23:44Guest:It seems very busy.

00:23:45Guest:Yeah, it's... The country and you.

00:23:47Guest:It's a hell of an energy.

00:23:49Guest:Yeah.

00:23:50Guest:It really is.

00:23:51Marc:Yeah, I can't imagine.

00:23:51Marc:I think that's one of the reasons why I'm attracted to it.

00:23:54Marc:So in essence, you're saying that you're completely encultured Indian without any desire to be different.

00:24:02Marc:It was just a matter of bringing all Indians together in a sense, even American Indians.

00:24:07Guest:I think so.

00:24:08Guest:And also...

00:24:09Guest:I got taught it the hard way, right?

00:24:11Guest:Like the first few years you start touring the world, you're trying to, you know, cater a little bit.

00:24:17Guest:So you're trying to do a- Pander, you mean?

00:24:18Guest:Pander a little bit.

00:24:19Guest:Yeah.

00:24:19Guest:Sure.

00:24:20Guest:Like, so what is the, what do Americans think about Indians?

00:24:22Guest:And let me do jokes about those five things.

00:24:25Guest:Let me study Russell Peters.

00:24:26Guest:Sure.

00:24:27Guest:Yeah.

00:24:27Guest:But, but let me do five jokes about quick marts and, uh, and Apu and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:24:33Guest:And then like a Netflix comes along and a YouTube comes along and you realize, oh, shit, they're watching stuff.

00:24:39Guest:So now everybody is.

00:24:41Guest:Everybody is.

00:24:42Guest:So that shtick where Americans don't know anything about outside America, that's not really valid anymore.

00:24:48Guest:They're watching a bunch of shit.

00:24:49Guest:So it kind of becomes more important to do you and to take them someplace else.

00:24:56Marc:It's also it's sort of it's more it's almost more I don't know the word democratic, but it's it's.

00:25:03Marc:authentically inclusive.

00:25:05Marc:I think so.

00:25:06Marc:So what happens is, despite them knowing or not, they're learning about other cultures in an honest way.

00:25:13Guest:I don't know anything, Mark, about Ohio, right?

00:25:16Guest:I've never been to Ohio, but... You can go.

00:25:18Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:25:19Guest:But like, if I watch a Chappelle special, he's talking about it, right?

00:25:23Guest:I don't know his... Well, Chappelle's Ohio, is that...

00:25:26Guest:I own a town.

00:25:29Guest:No, I know.

00:25:30Guest:They're all very grateful.

00:25:31Guest:And my neighbor and me are fighting or whatever.

00:25:33Guest:But I'll still go, right, on that journey, knowing nothing.

00:25:37Guest:Of course.

00:25:37Guest:So why can't I take you back to Mumbai?

00:25:39Marc:Yeah.

00:25:40Guest:Do I have to talk to you about the Indian in Ohio or the Indian in New Jersey?

00:25:43Marc:No, no, I get it.

00:25:44Marc:I think that going to Mumbai is fine with me.

00:25:47Marc:But, you know, there's some things that not unlike Ohio, which is not a great example, that I'm really never going to understand because it's about growing up there.

00:25:54Guest:And but to me, it harks back to like the remember the George Lopez specials where there were certain things that were just for his for Mexicans.

00:26:01Guest:Yeah.

00:26:02Guest:Yeah.

00:26:02Marc:No, for sure.

00:26:02Marc:Yeah.

00:26:03Marc:I mean, I love watching it.

00:26:05Marc:I mean, I because to me, it's exciting that there there are other voices and there are large communities that are being represented because, you know, when I read about the history of comedy and the history of my people, the European Jew, that, you know, one of the ways that they they sought to assimilate

00:26:22Marc:And also to strengthen their communities within the assimilation was through performing.

00:26:27Marc:Yeah.

00:26:28Marc:And boxing and a lot of other stuff.

00:26:30Marc:It's kind of interesting.

00:26:30Marc:Jewish boxing?

00:26:31Marc:There were Jewish boxers in the 20s, a lot of them.

00:26:34Marc:Wow.

00:26:34Marc:Yeah, I mean.

00:26:35Marc:That's not something I've ever heard before.

00:26:37Marc:Well, that's right because, you know, we all have stereotypes.

00:26:39Marc:Yeah.

00:26:40Marc:Yeah, but there were some pretty tough Jews around.

00:26:42Marc:Nice, man.

00:26:42Marc:Yeah, come on.

00:26:43Marc:James Caan was a tough Jew.

00:26:44Marc:He's always my go-to example for a tough Jew.

00:26:46Guest:look at Israel full of tough Jews I'm scared of them and so a lot of Goa where I live it's this tiny beach town right and Goa is just full of foreigners and it's kind of like this hippie you know oh really they come they come yeah and so it's a lot of Russians and a lot of ex-Mossad really who are just the toughest fucking guys on the planet they really are they're just hanging out they're just hanging out and someone says like those guys they used to be the Mossad and don't don't fuck with them don't

00:27:16Marc:So has that town been a hippie town since back in the day?

00:27:20Marc:It has.

00:27:21Marc:Oh, really?

00:27:21Marc:So you got the first influx of meditation-seeking hippies in the late 60s, mid-60s?

00:27:28Guest:The quote-unquote find-yourself people.

00:27:30Marc:They came, because you talk about it in the act a bit.

00:27:32Guest:Yeah.

00:27:32Guest:Did they stay?

00:27:33Guest:They stayed.

00:27:34Guest:So there's parts of Goa, like really north where, you know, there are hippie communes and beaches and stuff like that.

00:27:40Marc:But like with several generations, you're talking like, you know, like there's some old ass hippies, like some 80 year old hippies.

00:27:45Guest:Yeah.

00:27:45Guest:Like my wife has a Tai Chi teacher who's like a German hippie called Martin.

00:27:50Guest:Yeah.

00:27:50Guest:Who's 82 and comes and teaches us Tai Chi.

00:27:54Guest:But you know, he's done every drug under the planet.

00:27:57Guest:Sure.

00:27:57Guest:And I think he, his big claim to fame is he brought karate to Goa in the 70s.

00:28:02Guest:Yeah.

00:28:03Guest:You know?

00:28:03Guest:Yeah.

00:28:04Guest:So do you do Tai Chi?

00:28:06Guest:I don't.

00:28:07Guest:I watch my wife do it and don't understand it.

00:28:09Guest:You don't understand it?

00:28:10Guest:No.

00:28:11Guest:I need something that moves quicker.

00:28:13Guest:Yeah.

00:28:14Marc:Well, I mean for exercise, right?

00:28:15Marc:Yeah.

00:28:16Marc:But Tai Chi, yeah, I talked to Laurie Anderson.

00:28:17Marc:I think I get it.

00:28:19Guest:Yeah?

00:28:19Marc:Yeah, I do.

00:28:20Marc:I think you're holding energy.

00:28:21Marc:You're moving it around.

00:28:23Marc:You got to believe, man.

00:28:24Guest:I did one lesson and he's like, I don't feel like you're moving slow enough.

00:28:30Guest:Yeah.

00:28:30Guest:You got to tap into the chi thing.

00:28:32Guest:It's a universal energy.

00:28:33Guest:Did you grow up with spirituality?

00:28:35Guest:No.

00:28:35Guest:Religion?

00:28:35Guest:Nothing?

00:28:36Guest:I grew up.

00:28:37Guest:So I was born in India, but then we left for Africa.

00:28:40Guest:So I was actually raised in Lagos, Nigeria.

00:28:43Guest:Really?

00:28:44Guest:Yeah.

00:28:44Guest:So when I was two months old, my dad got a job.

00:28:49Guest:In Nigeria?

00:28:50Guest:In Nigeria.

00:28:51Guest:What's your dad do?

00:28:52Guest:My dad is a businessman.

00:28:53Guest:He's a consultant.

00:28:54Guest:But back then, I come from a family of diplomats, right?

00:28:57Guest:So my grandfather was in the foreign service and in the government.

00:29:00Guest:Okay.

00:29:00Guest:And everybody kind of expected my dad to go... That way?

00:29:04Guest:That way.

00:29:04Guest:And he kind of wanted more and to see the world a bit.

00:29:07Guest:So he...

00:29:08Guest:He ended up taking this job in this food processing factory in Lagos, Nigeria, and eventually started his own business.

00:29:15Guest:But yeah, they have a classic, almost annoyingly humble story where they left privilege in New Delhi and kind of moved into one room in Lagos, Nigeria.

00:29:25Guest:And your mom, what'd she do?

00:29:26Guest:My mom was a housewife then.

00:29:28Guest:How many kids?

00:29:29Guest:Two.

00:29:30Guest:Elder sister and me.

00:29:31Guest:All right.

00:29:31Guest:And then mom went back to college when she was 40.

00:29:34Guest:Yeah.

00:29:34Guest:And now she heads the UN Wildlife Cell in India.

00:29:39Guest:Wildlife what?

00:29:40Guest:Cell.

00:29:40Guest:Oh, okay.

00:29:41Guest:So she's the head of business development for... For wildlife, what, conservation?

00:29:44Marc:For conservation, yeah.

00:29:45Guest:Really?

00:29:46Guest:Yeah.

00:29:46Marc:What is the focus in India?

00:29:47Marc:What are the animals?

00:29:49Guest:Well, she was heavily focused on tigers and dolphins.

00:29:52Guest:Yeah.

00:29:52Guest:Like India's a big tiger reserve right now.

00:29:54Guest:Yeah.

00:29:54Guest:Oh, really?

00:29:54Guest:Yeah.

00:29:55Guest:Most of the tigers in the world are actually in India.

00:29:57Guest:Yeah, I give money.

00:29:58Guest:And Texas, ironically.

00:30:00Guest:Is that true?

00:30:00Marc:Yeah.

00:30:01Marc:But there's the North Carolina tiger rescue, which I give money to because I went there.

00:30:07Guest:In Texas, aren't they just in people's backyards?

00:30:10Marc:That's right.

00:30:10Marc:And then they end up at the North Carolina Tiger Rescue because idiots buy tigers.

00:30:14Marc:And then, you know, when they're young and then when they grow up, they're like, there's a fucking tiger in my house.

00:30:21Guest:And if you've ever seen one of those animals up close.

00:30:25Guest:Man, you realize just how much could go wrong, how quickly.

00:30:29Guest:Sure.

00:30:30Guest:Yeah.

00:30:30Guest:Don't use them for your act and don't keep them as pets.

00:30:33Guest:No, I went to this temple in Thailand and I was on my way there and my mom said, you can't go there where you get to hang with tigers and it's this monastery.

00:30:43Guest:Yeah.

00:30:44Guest:And then she told me that they're drugging the tiger.

00:30:46Guest:So they sedate the tiger so that you can go and take a selfie with them and pet them.

00:30:50Guest:But it's a huge animal.

00:30:53Marc:Big man.

00:30:53Marc:Did you go though?

00:30:54Marc:No, I didn't go.

00:30:55Marc:I didn't go.

00:30:56Guest:So you're in Nigeria for how long?

00:30:58Guest:Parents were there for 17 years.

00:31:00Guest:Oh my God.

00:31:01Guest:So you grew up there.

00:31:02Guest:I grew up there, but I got sent to boarding school when I was eight in India.

00:31:05Marc:Now was that, now do you remember Nigeria and do you remember it well?

00:31:10Marc:We're very sort of very select memories.

00:31:15Marc:Yeah.

00:31:16Marc:Because see, like this is the thing about like being an American in a weird way is that it seems that, you know, people in any other part of the world.

00:31:23Marc:Yeah.

00:31:24Marc:Except maybe the other larger, you know, except well, not but even Russia.

00:31:28Marc:I mean, we don't have, you know, we vacation in America.

00:31:32Marc:Yeah.

00:31:32Marc:You know what I mean?

00:31:33Marc:Yeah.

00:31:34Marc:Or we go to Hawaii or what, maybe Mexico.

00:31:36Marc:But it just seems that the experience of coming from anywhere else, you go other places.

00:31:42Marc:Yeah, you do.

00:31:43Marc:Totally other country.

00:31:44Marc:I can't even imagine what Nigeria is like.

00:31:46Marc:Did you go back?

00:31:47Marc:Yeah.

00:31:48Marc:During the summer?

00:31:49Guest:I went back three years ago to perform in Lagos, just do a show.

00:31:53Guest:And then I found my childhood home.

00:31:55Guest:Oh.

00:31:55Guest:which was an insanely sort of, it was a lot smaller than I remember.

00:31:59Guest:Is it a big Indian community there?

00:32:01Guest:Big Indian community, but also like Nigerians and Indians are just the same people.

00:32:04Guest:Really?

00:32:05Guest:We're over-emotional, dramatic people who have no middle setting.

00:32:12Guest:You know, it's either very angry or very sad.

00:32:14Guest:Yeah.

00:32:16Guest:Are you very angry sometimes?

00:32:19Guest:I've learned to kind of keep it in there and put it on stage.

00:32:23Marc:Yeah.

00:32:24Marc:Yeah.

00:32:24Marc:I mean, yeah, it seems like you that that some of the stuff you talk about and even the way that you frame stuff is it's deep.

00:32:31Marc:It's thoughtful.

00:32:31Marc:You know, you're willing to express expose yourself, you know, for the for the good of the collective.

00:32:39Guest:I mean, I'm 16 years in, so I'm still kind of figuring it out.

00:32:42Marc:You know what I mean?

00:32:43Marc:Yeah, well, you'll keep doing that.

00:32:45Guest:You know, so I think the pandemic helped me a little bit because I started doing these shows called 10 on 10, which were outdoors.

00:32:54Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:32:55Guest:Where?

00:32:56Guest:In Mumbai?

00:32:57Guest:In Goa.

00:32:58Guest:How big is the comedy scene there?

00:33:00Guest:In India, it's huge.

00:33:01Guest:Well, I mean in Goa, specifically.

00:33:02Guest:It was nothing.

00:33:03Guest:So I had to climb up a hill with a speaker and a microphone.

00:33:05Guest:Oh, it was just you.

00:33:06Guest:And then there's, you know, 45 people in the sunlight in a forest and we're doing shows with each other.

00:33:11Guest:That's nice.

00:33:12Guest:And I was filming them.

00:33:12Guest:It's nice.

00:33:13Guest:It's a great vibe.

00:33:14Guest:But then you realize, oh, I can't just do jokes here.

00:33:17Guest:It has to be a little bit...

00:33:18Guest:honest and vulnerable.

00:33:20Marc:Yeah, because you got no, there's no context.

00:33:23Marc:No.

00:33:24Guest:Also, they just climbed up a hill for half an hour.

00:33:25Marc:And they're scared.

00:33:26Marc:Everyone's, you know, there's a disease.

00:33:29Marc:There's a lot of things going on.

00:33:30Guest:So there has to be a little more humanity to this conversation than normal.

00:33:34Guest:And so having to do that for a year, I think changed my voice a little bit.

00:33:39Marc:Yeah, because, you know, because I noticed that it's tricky.

00:33:42Marc:It's tricky when you...

00:33:44Marc:You know, drift into something that can either appear, you know, too emotionally vulnerable or too self-righteous.

00:33:52Marc:Yeah.

00:33:53Marc:Because you then, you know, there's a very fine line, you know, even if people are on board.

00:33:58Guest:Yeah.

00:33:59Guest:Yeah.

00:33:59Guest:I just know I have to have something really fucking silly around the corner.

00:34:03Guest:You know, like with this special, I think they're two pretty emotional moments, but the rule with them was they can't last more than seven seconds and there better be something really stupid immediately after to disarm it.

00:34:16Guest:That's the John Oliver format.

00:34:17Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:20Marc:But, all right, so...

00:34:22Marc:Growing up, when do you start?

00:34:24Marc:I mean, you worked as a comic from what age?

00:34:26Marc:You've been doing it 16 years.

00:34:27Marc:So did you have another plan?

00:34:29Guest:Did you go to school for something else?

00:34:31Guest:I went to drama school.

00:34:32Guest:So the aim was always to make it to like Hindi movies.

00:34:35Marc:And your folks were okay with that?

00:34:37Guest:They were unaware for the first two years.

00:34:40Marc:I'm only saying that because in my experience of...

00:34:44Marc:Talking to Indian people, even Asian people, any other than American people is that their parents are driven.

00:34:51Marc:Oh, yeah, for sure.

00:34:52Marc:And that there's certainly something in the culture.

00:34:54Guest:Well, I went to college in America, right?

00:34:56Guest:Where?

00:34:57Guest:And I went to Galesburg, Illinois.

00:34:59Guest:What is that?

00:35:00Guest:It is the Mecca of civilization.

00:35:02Guest:Is that near Chicago?

00:35:03Guest:It's three hours out.

00:35:04Guest:Three hours.

00:35:04Guest:That's not near.

00:35:05Guest:No.

00:35:05Guest:So you're in the middle of fucking Illinois?

00:35:07Guest:Conefield College, Conefield, one Maytag factory.

00:35:10Marc:A Maytag factory?

00:35:11Guest:Yeah.

00:35:11Guest:One Kmart, one JCPenney.

00:35:13Guest:Oh, JCPenney.

00:35:14Guest:Yeah, that's the fine.

00:35:16Guest:Kmart.

00:35:16Guest:Kmarts are gone.

00:35:17Guest:Yeah.

00:35:18Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:35:18Guest:And so I couldn't really afford to go there, but they gave me a big scholarship.

00:35:23Guest:How do you pick that school?

00:35:24Guest:Because they're known to support international students.

00:35:27Guest:So you had to find that place?

00:35:29Guest:I had to find that place.

00:35:30Marc:But did you have bad grades or?

00:35:31Guest:No, I just didn't have the money.

00:35:32Guest:So they gave me, I think, like a 95% scholarship, right?

00:35:37Guest:Yeah.

00:35:37Guest:So my parents had to kind of put together $6,000 a year.

00:35:41Guest:Yeah.

00:35:41Guest:So that I could come to college.

00:35:43Guest:Yeah.

00:35:43Guest:And was it a good college?

00:35:45Guest:It was a really good college, like a liberal arts.

00:35:47Guest:And you were set, you were ready to learn.

00:35:49Guest:I was ready to learn, to do econ.

00:35:51Guest:And then I had this professor...

00:35:54Guest:After a beginning acting class that I took on a lock, just kind of called me into his office and be like, yo, you're meant to do this.

00:36:01Guest:Radio?

00:36:02Guest:Uh-huh.

00:36:02Guest:What do you say?

00:36:03Marc:What kind of class?

00:36:05Guest:Beginning acting.

00:36:05Guest:Okay.

00:36:05Guest:Oh, beginning acting.

00:36:06Guest:Sorry.

00:36:06Guest:And he's like, so just become a drama major.

00:36:09Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:36:10Guest:And so I kind of listened to him.

00:36:12Guest:Why did he, how did he decide that?

00:36:13Guest:What did he see?

00:36:14Guest:I don't know.

00:36:15Guest:His name is Ivan Davidson.

00:36:17Guest:And I did the class.

00:36:18Guest:I got an A. In drama.

00:36:20Guest:In drama.

00:36:21Guest:In beginning acting.

00:36:22Guest:And then the next term, the college was doing War and Peace.

00:36:25Guest:Yeah.

00:36:26Guest:And he's like, I'm going to give you one of the leads without you auditioning.

00:36:30Guest:Yeah.

00:36:31Guest:But just, I believe in you.

00:36:33Guest:And just for the next three years, shut up and take every course I tell you to take.

00:36:37Guest:Yeah.

00:36:37Guest:Now, he didn't tell me to give up econ.

00:36:38Guest:I did that on my own.

00:36:39Guest:Yeah.

00:36:40Guest:I just didn't tell my dad for a year.

00:36:42Guest:Oh, okay.

00:36:42Guest:So after a year, I called him and I'm like, hey, I'm going to be a drama major.

00:36:47Guest:Yeah.

00:36:47Guest:And my dad was like, okay, just finish econ as well.

00:36:50Guest:So I did.

00:36:50Guest:Oh, you did?

00:36:51Guest:Yeah.

00:36:51Guest:And you did okay in it?

00:36:52Guest:I got a 2.1 GPA in econ.

00:36:56Guest:Did not like econ.

00:36:58Guest:And then I found stand-up my last year of college.

00:37:01Guest:At college?

00:37:02Guest:At college, yeah.

00:37:03Guest:What, was there a night or something?

00:37:05Guest:No, it was... So I... In Africa, you only really get...

00:37:10Guest:black American artists on TV so I saw Bill Cosby himself I saw Pryor I saw Eddie Murphy you know they choose that yeah it's so it's insane where on TV in Nigeria you'll have like Sanford and Sons sure you can still find that here but it's there's other options but you won't find a white sitcom on TV in Nigeria

00:37:33Guest:Really?

00:37:33Guest:So it's just taking American programming that appeals to them and putting it on TV.

00:37:38Marc:That's interesting.

00:37:39Guest:And so I saw Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and a bunch of other stuff.

00:37:42Guest:And Cosby himself.

00:37:43Guest:That's some special, yeah.

00:37:44Guest:That's a hell of a special.

00:37:45Guest:And then in college, I think the Comedy Central half hours started to happen.

00:37:51Guest:I remember watching those.

00:37:53Guest:And then I was just...

00:37:55Guest:And drama school was, American drama school is a hell of a thing.

00:37:59Guest:It's a lot of sitting in a circle and crying and emoting with your shoulders, you know.

00:38:06Marc:But you got, it sounds like you did the, you got the tools, you got the thing.

00:38:10Guest:I did the thing, but then I just was kind of rebellious.

00:38:14Guest:And so at the end of college, I wrote this 90 minute standup piece.

00:38:18Guest:Yeah.

00:38:18Guest:And did it for 800 people.

00:38:21Guest:And it went okay.

00:38:22Guest:But it was very, like, inside jokes for friends.

00:38:25Guest:It wasn't stand-up, stand-up.

00:38:26Guest:Yeah.

00:38:27Guest:I just remember... 90 minute.

00:38:28Guest:90 minute.

00:38:29Guest:That's a big, big bit.

00:38:30Guest:It's a big bit.

00:38:31Guest:And... But I just distinctly remember being on stage... Yeah.

00:38:35Guest:...and not feeling limited...

00:38:38Guest:As opposed to theater where I always was on stage but felt limited by script, collaboration.

00:38:44Guest:Sure.

00:38:44Marc:But also I would imagine that conversely, you know, having done the emoting.

00:38:51Marc:Yeah.

00:38:51Marc:That that helped you feel a freedom of mind.

00:38:55Marc:on stage as a stand-up.

00:38:57Marc:Do you know, like, not feeling limited goes, you know, you're working towards, I think when you do stand-up, to figure out how to own that stage up there.

00:39:04Marc:You know, for yourself.

00:39:05Marc:Yeah.

00:39:06Marc:Like, it's your place.

00:39:07Marc:So, I bet you that doing all the emotive theater work probably got you comfortable, though.

00:39:13Guest:It did, or at least...

00:39:15Guest:I think sometimes, maybe not in a live show, but in a special, an audience can tell the difference between a stand-up who's projecting emotion or accessing emotion.

00:39:25Guest:Right.

00:39:26Guest:And sometimes we just project, but we don't access.

00:39:29Guest:And theater teaches you to access.

00:39:30Guest:Yeah.

00:39:31Guest:So if nothing, that's very helpful.

00:39:33Marc:Sure.

00:39:33Marc:And that was, yeah, it's interesting.

00:39:36Marc:Because when you think about those two specials, if you think about...

00:39:40Marc:You know, Pryor's live in concert and Cosby's himself, you know, Cosby's projecting, Pryor's actually emoting.

00:39:48Guest:Yeah.

00:39:48Guest:And Pryor's remembering on stage, you know, and Cosby's kind of projecting.

00:39:54Guest:Yeah, he's a little more manipulative, clearly much more than we ever anticipated.

00:39:58Marc:Yeah.

00:39:58Marc:In a horrendous way.

00:40:01Marc:It's so hard to talk about him even, but you can't dismiss that special because it had such a profound effect on so many of us.

00:40:08Guest:And it was also just very, like that dentist bit.

00:40:11Guest:I go back to that dentist bit all the time, just in terms of... Structure.

00:40:15Guest:Structure, callback, everything.

00:40:18Marc:Yeah.

00:40:20Marc:But Eddie Murphy was so funny, but it almost seemed...

00:40:25Marc:Like what is his, what was his real voice?

00:40:28Marc:It almost seemed for a while that there was like, you know, he was just being everything a comic is like that came before him was.

00:40:35Guest:Ironically, I think he was, he always struck me as somebody who was very sensitive, who was doing an alpha act.

00:40:42Guest:Right.

00:40:42Guest:Like if you watch Raw and Delirious.

00:40:44Guest:Right.

00:40:45Guest:The memory stuff and the childhood stuff is actually very sensitive.

00:40:48Guest:Yeah.

00:40:48Guest:But there's this kind of.

00:40:50Guest:He steps in with the swagger.

00:40:52Guest:Bravado, alpha, peacock behavior.

00:40:54Guest:Sure.

00:40:54Guest:That to me reeks inauthentic.

00:40:56Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:40:57Guest:That's interesting.

00:40:57Guest:When I watch it in retrospect.

00:40:59Marc:Yeah.

00:40:59Marc:I do a bit in one of my specials about being an alpha pussy.

00:41:05Marc:Like, you know, there's a spectrum of alphas.

00:41:07Guest:Oh, hell yeah.

00:41:08Marc:In comedy especially.

00:41:10Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:12Marc:So you do that in college, and then what?

00:41:14Marc:Do you go back to Mumbai or Nigeria?

00:41:18Guest:They're still in Nigeria?

00:41:20Guest:I had a very dramatic exit from America.

00:41:23Guest:Again?

00:41:24Guest:Again, yeah.

00:41:25Guest:I went to Harvard does this program with Russians.

00:41:30Guest:Oh, yeah, I heard about that.

00:41:31Guest:Wait, I had another guy on here that was part of that.

00:41:33Guest:What's that guy's name?

00:41:35Guest:John Bernthal.

00:41:35Guest:Yeah, Bernthal was in that.

00:41:37Guest:Yeah.

00:41:37Guest:He did it.

00:41:37Guest:So I did that program, and I think he might have gone to Moscow to study to do the three-year program.

00:41:42Guest:Yeah.

00:41:44Guest:So I spent six months in Boston learning with those guys.

00:41:47Guest:Yeah, over at ART?

00:41:49Guest:At ART, yeah.

00:41:50Guest:And it's a hell of a program, you know, because they're brutal.

00:41:55Guest:It was great.

00:41:55Guest:Like, after four years of drama school in Galesburg, like day one,

00:42:01Guest:The artistic director of the Moscow Arts Theater comes out and he's just like, acting is very simple.

00:42:07Guest:Read script.

00:42:09Guest:Believe script.

00:42:10Guest:Do what the fuck you like.

00:42:13Guest:Thank you.

00:42:14Guest:All set.

00:42:14Guest:I just spent a hundred grand on all this other shit.

00:42:19Guest:And did that turn out to be true?

00:42:21Guest:They're very, very, very kind of brutal with their feedback.

00:42:26Guest:Russians.

00:42:26Guest:They're great.

00:42:27Guest:And they offered me what they offered Jon Bernthal as well, which is we'll take you to Moscow and you do the three years and we'll change your life.

00:42:34Guest:But I just kind of didn't want to do that.

00:42:36Guest:Really?

00:42:36Guest:And then.

00:42:37Guest:Why you thought you'd had enough?

00:42:39Guest:You got the hang of it?

00:42:40Guest:I wanted to teach Shakespeare.

00:42:41Guest:You wanted to teach Shakespeare?

00:42:43Guest:That's what my big plan was.

00:42:44Guest:I'd be a college professor.

00:42:45Guest:And so I went to Montgomery, Alabama.

00:42:48Guest:To do the Alabama Shakespeare.

00:42:50Guest:I like that town.

00:42:51Guest:It's a great town.

00:42:52Guest:The Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

00:42:54Guest:And so I got into grad school there.

00:42:56Guest:And I was just too young, you know, 22 to go to grad school for Shakespeare.

00:43:00Guest:Did you have that big a handle on Shakespeare?

00:43:02Guest:Did you get it?

00:43:03Guest:I loved it and I got it.

00:43:05Guest:But everybody else in the program was 30 years old.

00:43:08Guest:Oh, so it would have been an uphill slog.

00:43:10Guest:Yeah.

00:43:11Guest:They wouldn't have respected you.

00:43:12Guest:I dropped out in like three months and kind of went back to Mumbai.

00:43:16Guest:Dejected or ready to go?

00:43:18Guest:Very dejected.

00:43:20Guest:Because you didn't have a plan anymore.

00:43:21Guest:And also for Indians, a college dropout kid is not a happy scene.

00:43:25Guest:But did you tell them it was from Shakespeare teaching?

00:43:28Guest:Also, I kind of met a girl and my parents knew that's what was up.

00:43:31Guest:That's why I was coming back.

00:43:33Guest:Oh, how'd you meet her?

00:43:34Guest:I met her in between undergrad and grad school.

00:43:37Guest:You went back?

00:43:38Marc:Oh, in America?

00:43:39Guest:Yeah.

00:43:39Guest:And then she went back and I just kind of followed her back.

00:43:42Guest:She met Indian here.

00:43:43Guest:Yeah, I met an Indian here.

00:43:44Guest:And then she went back to Delhi and I went back to Delhi after a while.

00:43:47Guest:How long did that last?

00:43:49Guest:Five years.

00:43:50Guest:That's a pretty good run.

00:43:51Guest:It was a good run.

00:43:52Guest:So there you are.

00:43:53Guest:You're in... Were you in New Delhi?

00:43:56Guest:I was in New Delhi and then I...

00:43:59Guest:I did like a standup show and it sold out, strangely, because there was nobody under 30 doing standup.

00:44:06Guest:It was this very kind of posh, you know, upper crust, high society thing, at least in English.

00:44:12Guest:And so there wasn't a kid who was just talking about his balls or saying the F word or whatever.

00:44:16Guest:And so college kids showed up and they were like, fuck, this guy's 23 or 24.

00:44:20Guest:And he does, he talks like us.

00:44:22Guest:And you're doing Indian jokes?

00:44:25Guest:I was doing Indian jokes But in English We have the largest English audience in the world Do you have a second language?

00:44:32Guest:I speak Hindi So I do movies in Hindi in India But I do stand up in English Because I think in English So then that started to move a little bit You think in English I think in English

00:44:44Guest:Really?

00:44:44Guest:Yeah.

00:44:45Guest:What does that mean?

00:44:46Guest:I like it.

00:44:49Guest:But it's your default setting, right?

00:44:51Guest:I have options to... Because I come from a country where a billion people think in Hindi.

00:44:56Guest:Well, think... It's a processing thing?

00:45:00Guest:If you're thinking, I've got to go outside right now, that's an English thought in your head.

00:45:05Guest:But it exists in Hindi, doesn't it?

00:45:07Guest:It exists in Hindi, but for most people, that's a Hindi thought.

00:45:10Guest:Oh, I see.

00:45:11Guest:The inner monologue is Hindi.

00:45:12Guest:So...

00:45:13Guest:Somehow or another, English hijacked your Hindi.

00:45:16Guest:English hijacked my Hindi.

00:45:17Guest:It's the first language my parents spoke.

00:45:20Guest:It's a weird thing because we have a complicated relationship with English in India, right?

00:45:25Guest:Because we're the largest English audience in the world, by the way.

00:45:29Guest:Is that true?

00:45:30Guest:260 million people speak English.

00:45:32Guest:Right.

00:45:32Guest:In India.

00:45:33Guest:That's bigger than America's English order.

00:45:35Guest:Every time I hear about the population in India, I'm like, where are they putting everybody?

00:45:39Guest:And then you talk about it.

00:45:40Guest:They're just out in the streets sometimes.

00:45:43Guest:But we are kind of judgmental about English because it's taught to us by colonizers.

00:45:50Guest:So there's a complicated sentiment there with an English artist where you're immediately perceived as...

00:45:57Guest:Like privileged or pandering or Western.

00:46:00Marc:Yeah.

00:46:02Guest:And ironically, that got in the way of my stand up a little bit because they were like, oh, he speaks English and he's kind of privileged and snotty.

00:46:11Guest:That's funny.

00:46:11Guest:It's like an Al magical bit.

00:46:12Marc:You ever hear that Al magical bit where?

00:46:14Marc:No.

00:46:14Marc:He's talking about performing for a Mexican audience.

00:46:19Marc:And I can't remember exactly how it goes, but I think the comic before him performed in Spanish.

00:46:25Marc:Okay.

00:46:25Marc:And he came out and he's doing English jokes.

00:46:29Marc:And then I don't remember how someone in the audience realizes it, but like, he doesn't speak Spanish.

00:46:37Okay.

00:46:37Guest:And they kind of run him off the stage.

00:46:40Guest:That's great.

00:46:41Guest:So for me, what happened was when I got into like controversy and like everything kind of gets yanked away from you, that's when people were like, oh, he's fucked in every language.

00:46:51Guest:Like it doesn't matter whether he speaks English or not.

00:46:53Guest:So now because his privilege is gone, we can actually listen to his jokes.

00:46:58Marc:Oh, who this is the people that judge you before.

00:47:00Guest:Yeah.

00:47:00Marc:Like the audience was just like, they decided you were of another you were condescending.

00:47:06Guest:Yeah.

00:47:07Marc:But but that that first gig, you know, that's what sort of got you the bug.

00:47:11Marc:You know, like you sold out just because you were a young Indian guy.

00:47:15Marc:Yeah.

00:47:15Marc:And you were talking about the young Indian guy experience.

00:47:18Marc:And that's where it takes off.

00:47:19Marc:How do you start getting movie parts?

00:47:21Guest:How do you start doing more standup?

00:47:23Guest:I got a gig in Mumbai hosting like an award ceremony, like an MC gig.

00:47:28Guest:Yeah.

00:47:30Guest:And the next morning, the guys who ran our biggest newspaper called me into their office and they were like, we want to make you a VJ.

00:47:37Guest:And I'm like, what the fuck is a VJ?

00:47:39Guest:Like you're going to introduce songs on music TV and move to Mumbai in a week.

00:47:45Guest:And it did.

00:47:46Guest:And that lasted about five minutes because I sucked at being a VJ.

00:47:50Marc:It's like the most horrible job, unless you have some freedom to talk.

00:47:56Marc:But just like introducing songs or video clips, the worst.

00:48:00Guest:And just me with sleeveless cutoff shirts and like henna tattoos and spiked up hair.

00:48:06Guest:Whoa, you got pictures of that?

00:48:07Guest:No.

00:48:08Guest:Somewhere.

00:48:10Guest:And I think I was fired in like six or seven months.

00:48:13Guest:And I was a big Daily Show fan, like Jon Stewart.

00:48:17Guest:Big influence.

00:48:18Guest:And on my friend's like kitchen table, I ended up shooting like a news comedy pilot.

00:48:24Guest:Yeah.

00:48:24Guest:Just like me doing the news.

00:48:25Guest:Yeah.

00:48:27Guest:And CNBC picked me up.

00:48:29Guest:Weird, really.

00:48:30Guest:And so at age 26, at the end of the primetime bulletin, for the last three minutes, I got to go on every night and kind of do three minutes of stand-up about the news.

00:48:40Marc:In America?

00:48:41Guest:No, here.

00:48:43Guest:India has its own CNBC.

00:48:44Guest:Okay.

00:48:45Guest:So I did that for about five years.

00:48:47Guest:Oh, that must have been in building an audience.

00:48:50Guest:Building an audience, getting corporate gigs because everybody watches.

00:48:53Guest:Making money.

00:48:53Guest:Making money at the age of 26, which is great.

00:48:57Yeah.

00:48:57Guest:And then I saw a movie, a Bollywood movie called Rang De Basanti.

00:49:02Guest:And it's important because, you know, Hindi movies were always like beautiful leading man, beautiful leading woman.

00:49:10Guest:And then everybody else had kind of- Dancing?

00:49:13Guest:dancing everything and then everybody had really small parts yeah but this was an ensemble of city kids where people kind of look like me yeah you know and they weren't necessarily six foot four and muscular and amazing and I was like oh shit is changing I want to try and get in the movies yeah so I quit CNBC and gave myself like a year to become an actor and to get movies

00:49:34Guest:Because you had the chops, right?

00:49:35Guest:You knew how to act.

00:49:36Guest:I knew how to act.

00:49:37Guest:You learned from the Russians.

00:49:41Guest:Yeah, pretty much.

00:49:41Guest:And I've used none of that acting training.

00:49:44Guest:It's in there.

00:49:45Guest:Yeah.

00:49:45Guest:How can you not use it?

00:49:47Guest:I mean, my first Bollywood movie is a leading man.

00:49:52Guest:Yeah.

00:49:52Guest:You have to do the songs because that's part of our culture.

00:49:55Guest:You dance?

00:49:55Guest:Yeah.

00:49:56Guest:And so...

00:49:58Guest:I was on top of a piano in a chiffon shirt with six wind blowers fucking pointed at my nipples and my shirt is fluttering as some lady's running towards me, allegedly in slow motion, but she's actually sprinting for camera.

00:50:13Guest:I'm not using Stanislavski in that moment.

00:50:16Guest:You're not believing the script?

00:50:17Guest:No, I'm not.

00:50:18Guest:I don't have an inner monologue except for fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

00:50:22Guest:Look at me.

00:50:22Guest:What am I doing?

00:50:23Guest:So... But were you popular?

00:50:26Guest:As an actor, I got lucky.

00:50:30Guest:Like, my third film really blew up.

00:50:31Guest:Yeah.

00:50:32Guest:And then... How many did you do?

00:50:36Guest:I've done 17 movies.

00:50:39Guest:You know, but...

00:50:41Guest:That's crazy.

00:50:42Guest:But maybe four as a leading man, you know, and then I'm still, but like, you know, after like that third movie, you're on the streets and people are like, yeah.

00:50:50Guest:Yeah.

00:50:50Guest:And people know who you are after a movie.

00:50:53Guest:And it was this young, it was like, it was like our lock stock and two smoking barrels, like a cult comedy.

00:50:58Guest:Okay.

00:50:59Guest:You know, very Guy Ritchie.

00:51:00Guest:Yeah.

00:51:00Guest:And it was called Deli Belli.

00:51:02Guest:Deli Belli.

00:51:03Guest:And that was your third movie.

00:51:04Guest:That was my third movie.

00:51:05Guest:And that blew the hell up.

00:51:06Guest:Yeah.

00:51:06Guest:Big hit.

00:51:07Guest:With all 260 million people?

00:51:09Guest:With all 200, no, yeah.

00:51:11Guest:More.

00:51:11Guest:It was dubbed in Hindi too, so it was a big audience.

00:51:13Guest:So it was like, what, how many billion?

00:51:15Guest:Well, maybe like, I want to say 500 million people might have seen that movie.

00:51:19Marc:Yeah, because it's India, right?

00:51:20Marc:Everybody goes, right?

00:51:21Marc:Everybody goes.

00:51:22Guest:That's our thing.

00:51:23Guest:That's our thing.

00:51:24Marc:That's our Sunday.

00:51:25Marc:That's our Sunday.

00:51:26Marc:It's crazy.

00:51:28Marc:So now you have a certain amount of notoriety.

00:51:31Marc:Yeah.

00:51:32Marc:You can start performing these big shows.

00:51:35Marc:Did you get away from stand-up for a few years?

00:51:38Guest:I got away from stand-up.

00:51:39Guest:I just let it go for six years.

00:51:40Marc:You just did the chiffon shirt thing?

00:51:42Guest:I did the chiffon shirt thing.

00:51:43Guest:And the dancing?

00:51:43Guest:And the wheat crust smoothie and the two cell phones and the sunglasses and airports.

00:51:48Guest:We call that the Aziz here.

00:51:53Guest:I got lost, lost in that shit.

00:51:55Guest:No shit.

00:51:55Guest:Yeah, like heavily lost.

00:51:57Guest:Oh, boy.

00:51:57Guest:Did you buy a nice car?

00:51:58Guest:I bought a nice car.

00:52:00Guest:Which kind?

00:52:01Guest:I got a Range Rover, which is nice.

00:52:02Guest:That's reasonable.

00:52:04Guest:And then kind of stopped reading the scripts a little bit.

00:52:07Guest:And I was like, who's the studio?

00:52:09Guest:Who's the director?

00:52:10Guest:Got into that zone a bit.

00:52:11Guest:Oh, but you came a full on douchebag.

00:52:13Guest:Full.

00:52:14Guest:And then had it yanked away.

00:52:18Guest:What do you mean?

00:52:20Guest:There's a movie that was called Mastizade and it was kind of the biggest studio movie I'd ever done.

00:52:25Guest:Yeah.

00:52:26Guest:Biggest budget and just a horribly regressive kind of sex comedy script.

00:52:32Guest:Okay.

00:52:33Guest:And you did it.

00:52:34Guest:And I did it for the cash.

00:52:36Guest:Yeah.

00:52:36Guest:And it crashed and burned.

00:52:39Guest:Did you get flack?

00:52:40Guest:Flack and phone stopped ringing.

00:52:43Guest:Really?

00:52:43Guest:Because I wasn't dependable, right?

00:52:46Guest:I didn't bring in people on a Friday.

00:52:48Guest:Oh, so you couldn't sell tickets.

00:52:50Guest:You weren't a draw.

00:52:51Guest:I wasn't a draw as a leading man.

00:52:53Guest:And that movie did you win?

00:52:54Guest:That movie kind of did me.

00:52:56Marc:Was there a process?

00:53:00Marc:Like, I mean, was it several movies in a row?

00:53:04Marc:Yeah, it was about four or five movies in a row.

00:53:05Guest:And you can't plan this.

00:53:06Guest:They kept giving you the shot.

00:53:07Guest:They kept giving me the—and it reeked of somebody who was doing movies he wouldn't watch.

00:53:12Guest:So he was doing scripts that he didn't respect.

00:53:15Guest:So now you're out.

00:53:16Guest:So now you're out.

00:53:17Guest:And I was doing stand-up like once.

00:53:19Guest:Did you have to get rid of one of your cell phones?

00:53:20Guest:One of my cell phones.

00:53:21Guest:Range Rover.

00:53:22Guest:And that's when I was like, let's go to America and see what's up.

00:53:26Guest:Because the phone isn't ringing here.

00:53:28Guest:And it's ironic because CAA had signed me at kind of the peak of the Bollywood thing.

00:53:35Guest:CAA?

00:53:36Guest:Yeah.

00:53:36Guest:And so they were like, he's this big Bollywood guy.

00:53:38Guest:We're going to bring him over.

00:53:39Guest:And I didn't have the heart to tell them, not so much anymore.

00:53:43Guest:Good.

00:53:44Guest:Fuck them.

00:53:44Guest:Yeah.

00:53:45Guest:But now let's come over and take meetings in LA.

00:53:48Guest:How'd that go?

00:53:50Guest:I went over to the Laugh Factory while I was taking meetings and was doing generals.

00:53:55Guest:And I hadn't taken stand-up seriously in a really long time.

00:53:58Guest:I did like seven minutes, I think, between two killer acts.

00:54:01Guest:I don't remember who they were.

00:54:04Guest:And it went really well.

00:54:06Guest:And I had this...

00:54:07Guest:Kind of undeniable, oh man, I feel better about this than I have about anything in the last five years.

00:54:13Marc:Well, you probably loved it to begin with.

00:54:15Guest:I did, but I'd let it go.

00:54:16Guest:And then I was like, oh, this is where they're good at this, English stand-up.

00:54:20Guest:So I need to start spending time here.

00:54:21Guest:Yeah, we invented it.

00:54:23Guest:Well, you and the British.

00:54:24Guest:You got to give the British a little bit of credit.

00:54:27Guest:Not for stand-up.

00:54:28Guest:Yeah, but for comedy for sure.

00:54:31Guest:And then I spent a year just kind of traveling the States.

00:54:34Guest:You know, so then doing improvs in tiny clubs and... But were you pandering?

00:54:40Guest:For sure.

00:54:41Guest:In that moment.

00:54:41Guest:Just trying to figure it out.

00:54:42Marc:No, I get it.

00:54:43Marc:But, like, I was just curious.

00:54:44Marc:So did you...

00:54:46Marc:Did you use the model of the sort of new to America Indian caricature of yourself or not?

00:54:55Guest:No.

00:54:56Guest:At that point, it was literally just the 400 Indian people in town that were coming to see you.

00:55:01Guest:So they're still all Indian.

00:55:02Guest:So still all Indian at that moment in time.

00:55:04Guest:Oh, that's good.

00:55:05Guest:You know, so then you don't have to pander so much.

00:55:07Guest:You're kind of giving them a reunion with home.

00:55:09Guest:Sure.

00:55:10Guest:So they've come to you so you can tell them about home.

00:55:12Guest:Yeah.

00:55:13Guest:You know, it's that kind of a vibe.

00:55:15Guest:Yeah.

00:55:15Guest:So I did that for about a year.

00:55:17Guest:And then Netflix kind of came into my life and said, let's do a special.

00:55:21Marc:Right.

00:55:22Marc:And that was the first one?

00:55:23Guest:That was the first one.

00:55:24Guest:And then that kind of started bringing American audiences to the show.

00:55:28Marc:But that's interesting because like we were talking about before with YouTube and Netflix and everybody's watching is that, you know, you now...

00:55:37Marc:If you do a Netflix special in the United States, you can gain legitimacy internationally.

00:55:43Marc:In India, they watch it.

00:55:48Marc:And you're not beholden to the Indian entertainment system.

00:55:51Guest:No, not at all.

00:55:53Guest:And you can sell tickets kind of everywhere.

00:55:55Guest:Sometimes I feel like American comics underestimate how many tickets they can actually sell across the world if they have a Netflix special.

00:56:03Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:56:03Guest:Yeah, I'll look at American comics who have a Netflix special and be like, why aren't you touring more across the world?

00:56:09Guest:Because you could.

00:56:09Guest:Yeah, I mean, for me, it's just sort of like, yeah, I could, but I'm okay.

00:56:14Guest:No, I get it.

00:56:16Guest:Are you not a, like, I want to go to Europe guy or whatever?

00:56:18Marc:No, I go.

00:56:19Marc:The last tour, I went to Dublin.

00:56:23Marc:That's lovely, yeah.

00:56:24Marc:I love it.

00:56:25Marc:I went to London.

00:56:26Marc:I was there for a few shows.

00:56:27Marc:And then I've been up to Amsterdam.

00:56:29Marc:I've been to Sweden.

00:56:30Marc:I've been to Norway and stuff.

00:56:31Marc:I would do that.

00:56:32Marc:But that's sort of like I got to take a month.

00:56:35Marc:I don't love being away for a long time.

00:56:38Marc:I get it, yeah.

00:56:40Marc:But it was fine.

00:56:40Marc:It was a good experience.

00:56:42Guest:I love international travel.

00:56:44Guest:I'm very happy.

00:56:46Guest:Where haven't you gone?

00:56:47Guest:I think South America.

00:56:49Guest:That's the only continent I haven't kind of performed on.

00:56:54Guest:But I've gone everywhere else.

00:56:55Guest:Yeah?

00:56:55Guest:And you love it always?

00:56:57Guest:I do.

00:56:58Guest:Why?

00:56:58Guest:Is it still mostly English?

00:57:00Guest:It's all English and...

00:57:04Guest:I think it's childhood.

00:57:05Guest:You know, I was in boarding school.

00:57:08Guest:And then when I was 14 through 18, I stayed with my grandparents in Delhi.

00:57:14Guest:Yeah.

00:57:15Guest:And which is not a great time to put a kid in a room with like two 80-year-olds, right?

00:57:19Guest:Right, sure.

00:57:20Guest:We're just kind of free.

00:57:21Guest:Yeah.

00:57:22Guest:And they had a house where...

00:57:24Guest:One set of their kids was in Amsterdam.

00:57:27Guest:My parents were in Africa and Nigeria still.

00:57:30Guest:My sister was in college in two different cities and my cousins were in America.

00:57:35Guest:And everybody was kind of transiting in and out of this one house.

00:57:38Guest:And I'd go to the airport to pick these people up.

00:57:41Guest:So I just ended up spending a day a week or two days a week at the visitor's lounge.

00:57:47Guest:In the airport.

00:57:48Guest:And then here are these people who come in from somewhere else and smell different and look different.

00:57:53Guest:And their luggage looks strange and their clothes are kind of different than mine.

00:57:57Guest:There's something different about them.

00:57:59Guest:And I'm like, I'm going to be somebody that people wait for at an airport.

00:58:02Guest:You know, I'll be the guy who's different.

00:58:04Guest:So you're just curious.

00:58:05Marc:You know, there's a big world out there.

00:58:07Yeah.

00:58:07Marc:So, now, as you're growing up, you see the political climate changing.

00:58:15Marc:Yeah.

00:58:15Marc:How aware are you of that?

00:58:17Marc:I mean, when you're on the... Not just as a kid, but when you're on the top of the world with your Range Rover and you're... Not at all at that moment in time.

00:58:24Guest:Because you're not even saying anything remotely honest in your stand-up at that moment.

00:58:29Marc:And also, but you're living the dream, right?

00:58:31Marc:So, you know, it's all working for you.

00:58:33Guest:And it's...

00:58:37Guest:And it was just a different time, I think, in terms of, you know, if you talk about 2014 or 12 or 10, in India, it was very chilled out.

00:58:49Guest:And then I think in the world, this kind of, you know, super right and then also super sensitive wave.

00:58:56Guest:It's about a six-year-old wave, I want to say.

00:58:59Guest:Sure.

00:58:59Guest:And who was the president before?

00:59:01Guest:Well, we have a prime minister.

00:59:02Guest:Prime minister before?

00:59:03Guest:His name was Manmohan Singh.

00:59:04Guest:Yeah.

00:59:05Guest:supremely intelligent man, great man, very quiet.

00:59:08Guest:So the joke about him, like the Bill Clinton joke, was that he was horny all the time.

00:59:12Guest:The Manmohan Singh joke was that he just says nothing.

00:59:15Guest:But it was a common thing to do.

00:59:18Marc:But was there any sense, because there's no new guy, his name Modi?

00:59:21Marc:Yeah.

00:59:22Marc:Was there any sense when you were growing up that there was going to be this nationalism, that there was going to be this right-wing push?

00:59:29Guest:No, I think we didn't expect it much like the rest of the world didn't expect it.

00:59:33Guest:Except for those who knew.

00:59:35Guest:Except for those who knew.

00:59:36Guest:Right.

00:59:37Marc:So was it a simmering reaction when he took power?

00:59:43Marc:Because he's not unlike Trump, except that everybody seems to like him.

00:59:47Marc:Yeah.

00:59:47Marc:He's very effective at what he does.

00:59:49Marc:How is he?

00:59:52Marc:What is he doing culturally?

00:59:54Marc:Is he making it more conservative?

00:59:56Marc:Is he anti-gay?

00:59:58Guest:He's actually not doing anything culturally.

01:00:01Guest:That's the thing about a prime ministerial or a parliamentary system, right?

01:00:05Guest:Where the prime minister kind of gets to just focus on projects, infrastructure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:00:11Guest:And then there's a very big cabinet that does things.

01:00:13Guest:Right.

01:00:14Guest:Okay.

01:00:14Marc:So where is it taking India?

01:00:16Marc:I don't know.

01:00:18Marc:But I mean, what is he like?

01:00:19Marc:Because like, you know, when you say someone's like Trump, you know, that that indicates something.

01:00:23Marc:So what is what are the two opposing forces within the culture right now?

01:00:28Marc:Because you speak of it, but you speak about class.

01:00:31Guest:I think it's it's about extreme progress and a defining moment at the worldwide table versus human rights versus, you know,

01:00:41Guest:you know, culture or dealing with poverty or a conversation around privilege or class or oppression.

01:00:48Guest:Now with you guys, you've kind of hit the top of the mountain progress wise, you know, so you're not, that's not around the corner from you guys.

01:00:56Guest:No, we're now we're going down the other side.

01:00:57Guest:You still have time and the luxury of focusing on this conversation.

01:01:02Guest:But right now, if you look at somebody in India and you're like, we're going to be the third largest economy in the world soon.

01:01:07Guest:We're going to be at every global table, etc.

01:01:09Guest:Do you really want to focus on all this other stuff?

01:01:11Guest:Is the popular narrative.

01:01:13Guest:Which other stuff?

01:01:15Guest:Human rights.

01:01:16Guest:Poverty.

01:01:16Guest:I mean, less and less Indians are poor every year under his government.

01:01:21Guest:You know, more and more hospitals.

01:01:22Marc:But what's the percentages, though, that when you have like how many billions of people?

01:01:26Guest:We have 1.4 billion.

01:01:27Guest:OK, so like, all right, so less and less.

01:01:29Guest:So less and less.

01:01:30Guest:Right.

01:01:30Guest:But then do you want to talk about minorities?

01:01:32Guest:Do you want to talk about all these other things?

01:01:34Guest:It's the classic, does a full stomach also mean a full conscience, you know, conversation.

01:01:41Guest:Right.

01:01:41Guest:But now what about, tell me the dynamic with Pakistan.

01:01:44Guest:I don't think it's so much of a hot dynamic anymore.

01:01:48Guest:It used to be about 10 years ago.

01:01:50Guest:Pakistan's kind of imploded on itself in the last like 10 years.

01:01:54Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:01:54Guest:Like I saw, geez, I saw a photograph of their prime minister.

01:01:59Guest:His name is Imran Khan.

01:02:00Guest:decent guy walking around with a bucket over his head, like to parliament, like a bulletproof bucket and like four guys with bulletproof shields around him.

01:02:09Guest:Not great.

01:02:10Guest:Not a great visual for the ex-leader of a country.

01:02:13Guest:So I think they have big problems just internally right now.

01:02:16Guest:We're not a problem for each other.

01:02:17Marc:From tribal warfare?

01:02:22Guest:From tribal warfare, and I think the army runs their country.

01:02:24Guest:Their president is just sort of a sitting puppet for the army.

01:02:28Marc:So how does it get to a point where, you know, you do these few specials, you tour internationally, you don't do movies anymore?

01:02:38Guest:I do, but less.

01:02:39Guest:I'm giving stand-up time in these years.

01:02:41Guest:Oh, yeah, right.

01:02:42Marc:So the last special landing is sort of a reaction and a deconstruction of the event that got you outlaw status, which I guess you've got—is it still?

01:02:59Marc:No.

01:03:00Marc:All right.

01:03:00Marc:Well, so—because I watched the two Indias.

01:03:03Marc:Mm-hmm.

01:03:04Marc:And, you know, not being Indian, I watch that and, you know, given the reaction to it, I'm like, what did I miss?

01:03:11Marc:Yeah.

01:03:13Marc:Hey, man, you and me both.

01:03:16Marc:So explain what the two Indias was and why you did it.

01:03:22Guest:It was at the end of a special?

01:03:23Guest:It was at the end of... I performed at the Kennedy Center, so I'd done 90 minutes of stand-up.

01:03:27Guest:Yeah, it's a good room.

01:03:28Guest:I've done that place.

01:03:29Guest:Yeah.

01:03:30Guest:And so it's a really strange thing.

01:03:32Guest:Like, I...

01:03:33Guest:I'd done like 10 YouTube videos like that before.

01:03:36Guest:You know, just kind of pieces and spoken word pieces, etc.

01:03:40Guest:Spoken word, almost poems about the class differences.

01:03:44Guest:Class differences about privilege.

01:03:45Guest:I'd done a bunch of those videos.

01:03:47Guest:And this one, you know, it's weird how...

01:03:52Guest:I'd done all of these videos over three years.

01:03:55Guest:And then suddenly people start calling you brave, but you're just doing the same thing that you've always done.

01:04:00Guest:But shit around you has changed.

01:04:01Guest:But there's no fuck you to it.

01:04:03Guest:No, there's nothing to it.

01:04:04Guest:I mean, it's not like incendiary.

01:04:07Guest:It was just, I think, a timing.

01:04:09Guest:And it was more about how people were feeling at that time rather than what I said.

01:04:12Guest:But here's the story, right?

01:04:14Guest:So I'm...

01:04:15Guest:I'm at the Kennedy Center.

01:04:16Guest:I've sold it out.

01:04:18Guest:And my wife and me are doing like a tour of D.C.

01:04:20Guest:in the morning.

01:04:21Guest:It's week six of a tour.

01:04:23Guest:Yeah.

01:04:24Guest:Missing home.

01:04:25Guest:You know, we both want to go home and have some Indian food and, you know, be in our house.

01:04:30Guest:Yeah.

01:04:30Guest:And we see all these monuments.

01:04:31Guest:And at about 2 p.m., I write this piece over lunch.

01:04:35Guest:And I go to my wife, Shivani, and I'm like, should I do this?

01:04:37Guest:And she's like, yeah.

01:04:39Guest:Why not?

01:04:39Guest:What could go wrong?

01:04:42Guest:And I'm like, we need somebody to film this for my YouTube.

01:04:45Guest:And we find a wedding photographer on Yelp who's free on Friday or whatever.

01:04:51Guest:And we pay him 300 bucks to show up.

01:04:53Guest:And we lay my cell phone down on the Kennedy Center stage and just hit record.

01:04:58Guest:And we filmed it.

01:04:59Guest:And we put it up.

01:05:00Guest:And it was about the duality in a nation.

01:05:04Guest:And it was about the light and the dark.

01:05:05Guest:And it was about not getting lost in the darkness, but remembering, you know, who we are.

01:05:12Guest:And it ended in a good round of applause.

01:05:15Guest:I put it up on my YouTube.

01:05:17Guest:And it got something like three or four million views overnight, which was unusual for me.

01:05:22Guest:And then I think we all have the crazy news channel.

01:05:27Guest:You know, like you guys have your Fox TV, et cetera.

01:05:30Guest:We've got like three of those.

01:05:31Guest:You have three of them.

01:05:32Guest:We have three of them, yeah.

01:05:33Marc:Now, is it like before you go on, because I'm trying to make a connection with the Indian Prime Minister.

01:05:39Marc:Is there a racial problem in India?

01:05:42Guest:No.

01:05:42Marc:There's none of that?

01:05:43Marc:No.

01:05:44Marc:Okay.

01:05:45Guest:Go ahead.

01:05:48Guest:They took two or three lines and kind of put them up on news bulletins.

01:05:52Guest:So looking for clickbait?

01:05:53Guest:Looking for clickbait.

01:05:55Guest:Yeah.

01:05:55Guest:And they found it.

01:05:56Guest:And then suddenly I was the number one trend in the country for, I want to say three weeks, three and a half weeks.

01:06:02Guest:Okay.

01:06:02Guest:Right.

01:06:03Guest:And then.

01:06:03Guest:So what happens when you get back?

01:06:05Guest:So I have to leave in like a week, right?

01:06:08Guest:Leave the States.

01:06:09Guest:Leave the States because my visa is expiring.

01:06:11Guest:And I get a call from my lawyer saying these investigations are going to come against you.

01:06:16Guest:So people are filing police complaints.

01:06:18Guest:For what?

01:06:19Guest:For defamation.

01:06:20Guest:Defamation of the country?

01:06:22Guest:Yeah.

01:06:22Guest:Who files a complaint like that?

01:06:24Guest:I mean, you can walk into a police station and file any complaint.

01:06:27Guest:It's the police's job to honor it or not honor it, right?

01:06:30Guest:But that's not the way it works here, really.

01:06:32Guest:I think it's a different system where the average civilian can walk into a police station and say, I want to complain about this.

01:06:39Guest:And a policeman has to write it down.

01:06:41Guest:Whether it has legal merit or not, the policeman will decide.

01:06:44Guest:Holy shit.

01:06:45Guest:Like, you know, some places in America can't even get a cop to do anything.

01:06:50Guest:Right.

01:06:50Guest:So...

01:06:51Guest:So people do that in 15 different places in the country.

01:06:55Marc:Now, was that organized?

01:06:57Guest:I don't know till date.

01:07:00Guest:It's a very weird thing and I'll tell you why.

01:07:01Guest:All right.

01:07:04Guest:This starts to happen in like the first three or four days of this being on the news.

01:07:08Uh-huh.

01:07:08Guest:The video gets shared 35 million times or something like that.

01:07:12Guest:Largely domestically, by the way.

01:07:14Guest:It's not a video that's actually watched abroad.

01:07:16Guest:In India.

01:07:17Guest:In India.

01:07:18Guest:So the allegation that you've done this abroad, it's actually a domestic video.

01:07:22Guest:Right.

01:07:22Marc:And given the numbers we've been talking about, not incredibly popular.

01:07:27Marc:Not incredibly popular.

01:07:29Guest:Only 35 million.

01:07:29Guest:I know, right?

01:07:30Guest:It's a drop, right?

01:07:33Guest:And my lawyer is like, it's a seven-day cycle on mainstream news.

01:07:38Guest:If you're still on the mainstream news on day eight, you're fucked.

01:07:43Guest:So I just need you to shut up for seven days.

01:07:47Guest:Were you talking?

01:07:48Guest:No.

01:07:48Guest:I was saying nothing.

01:07:49Guest:Phones were off.

01:07:50Marc:So were you freaking out?

01:07:51Guest:Yeah, I was getting death threats.

01:07:52Guest:You know, I got like 50,000 death threats, you know, in that week.

01:07:59Guest:Where?

01:08:00Guest:On the YouTube comments?

01:08:02Guest:On my email, through my website, all of that stuff.

01:08:05Marc:But see, like, I don't...

01:08:08Marc:So this is nationalism.

01:08:11Marc:Those are the people that are sending those things.

01:08:13Marc:And what is that?

01:08:15Marc:Now, you're telling me that nationalism in India is rooted in progress.

01:08:19Marc:There must be something else driving it.

01:08:22Guest:Is there something religious driving it?

01:08:24Guest:No, because I didn't actually bring up religion at all.

01:08:27Marc:Yeah, but that doesn't matter.

01:08:28Marc:But what's making these people so pissed off?

01:08:30Guest:I think it's because I had a reputation of being in a group of artists that's also kind of anti-establishment.

01:08:36Guest:And comedians are considered anti-establishment as well.

01:08:39Guest:Anti-establishment meaning anti-regime.

01:08:40Guest:This government, anti-regime, et cetera, which comedians are painted as, right?

01:08:44Guest:Right, okay.

01:08:46Guest:So you're scared to death in those moments.

01:08:48Guest:Yeah, of course.

01:08:49Guest:It's the worst.

01:08:50Guest:And then on day six, like somebody turned a light switch off, I was off the news.

01:09:00Guest:It's like it was machinery, like somebody turned a machine off.

01:09:04Guest:And so we landed in India on day five and we were expecting there to be policemen and all of that stuff.

01:09:10Guest:Nobody at the airport.

01:09:11Guest:There were 200 photographers waiting for me.

01:09:14Guest:And I ain't that kind of famous, you know.

01:09:16Guest:And so then we just kind of put our phones off and went underground for three months, my wife and me, really.

01:09:24Guest:Because whether it was on the news or not didn't matter.

01:09:26Guest:There was a momentum to it.

01:09:27Guest:There was a momentum to it.

01:09:28Guest:I had to wait for it to die.

01:09:30Guest:And then... Like on the street and stuff?

01:09:32Guest:Yeah, I was a little bit worried about going outside, etc.

01:09:35Guest:And so you almost put yourself in this bubble and you don't know how people feel about you.

01:09:40Guest:And you...

01:09:42Guest:At some level, one day you feel like the center of the universe and the next day you're strangely humbled because it just all went away in like 30 seconds.

01:09:50Guest:So did it really happen?

01:09:51Guest:Were you really national news?

01:09:53Guest:You don't know.

01:09:53Guest:It's a weird... Or worse, you know, is that what the news is?

01:09:58Guest:Is that what the news is, right?

01:10:00Guest:So you're living in a reality you don't quite fucking understand in that moment.

01:10:06Yeah.

01:10:07Guest:And I think when I wrote my first joke about it, because I knew I had to talk about it.

01:10:12Guest:Of course, I mean, it was your life.

01:10:14Marc:It was my life.

01:10:15Marc:You're a talk about your life guy.

01:10:16Guest:Yeah, I am.

01:10:18Guest:And then I think I came back to Mumbai three months later.

01:10:23Guest:And when I started talking about it, that's when I just kind of met people.

01:10:26Guest:And

01:10:27Guest:Most regular people were just like, yo, that was a crazy fucking month.

01:10:31Guest:And I have bills to pay and I have to go now.

01:10:33Guest:Sure.

01:10:35Marc:So in your mind, you were speaking as an individual Indian in relation to the world that you see in a free thinking kind of way.

01:10:45Marc:But certainly not in a let's fight the power way.

01:10:49Marc:No.

01:10:50Marc:But but, you know, you you do fall into this sort of coincidental, you know, almost hero status for speaking truth against power.

01:11:01Guest:I mean, there's nothing more annoying than being painted with that status.

01:11:05Guest:I'm sure I'm going to be honest, you know, because it wasn't your intention.

01:11:09Guest:It wasn't my intention.

01:11:09Guest:And also there's no way to go from that status.

01:11:12Marc:Yeah, either you've got to pick up the sword or you've got to hole up for three months.

01:11:17Guest:Exactly.

01:11:17Guest:But I don't get to do dick jokes immediately after that status.

01:11:20Guest:So I don't get to be silly immediately after that status.

01:11:22Marc:No, no, no, no, no.

01:11:24Marc:You've got to figure out.

01:11:25Marc:You've got to give enough time so you can do the serious joke and then the dick joke.

01:11:29Marc:Your classic structure.

01:11:30Guest:Yeah.

01:11:31Guest:So I had to kind of say, okay, the first thing that I say about it has to be really, really fucking funny.

01:11:35Marc:Yeah.

01:11:35Guest:And at no moment can I lionize myself or victimize myself.

01:11:39Guest:So it's a weird... You kind of really learn what being a comic is for the first time, where you have to shoot for funny first, et cetera.

01:11:46Guest:And so it's a weird one to figure out.

01:11:49Marc:But it's just interesting in a country here...

01:11:52Marc:Like in America where people talk about not being able to say things, which is bullshit, you can kind of say whatever you want.

01:12:01Marc:But you literally had your home country was filing claims against you.

01:12:10Guest:Well, I have what might not be a very popular thought on that American sentiment about not being able to say things.

01:12:17Guest:I don't think...

01:12:18Guest:If we're being honest about it, going to jail means you're not able to say things.

01:12:22Guest:That's right.

01:12:23Guest:Going to a police station or spending all of your money on lawyers every single day means you're not being able to say things.

01:12:29Guest:Being worried for your safety on the street means you're not able to say things.

01:12:33Guest:But complaining that people are going to get upset at you online or, you know, be mean to you, etc.

01:12:39Guest:in the comments.

01:12:40Guest:That's not complaining that you can't say things.

01:12:42Guest:That's complaining that other people also get to say things.

01:12:45Guest:Sure.

01:12:46Guest:About what you said.

01:12:47Marc:I agree with that.

01:12:47Guest:You know?

01:12:48Marc:Yeah.

01:12:48Marc:But you came up against something different.

01:12:50Marc:Yeah.

01:12:51Marc:That, you know, it's interesting because I didn't know the scope of it.

01:12:55Marc:But, you know, but the prime minister never stepped in.

01:12:57Guest:Oh, no.

01:12:58Marc:And did the government step in?

01:13:00Guest:They never would.

01:13:01Guest:Never officially.

01:13:02Guest:And to that point...

01:13:05Guest:The most dangerous guy in the room is not the guy with power.

01:13:08Guest:It's the guy who's two degrees of separation away from power.

01:13:10Marc:Wait, the guy who's going to do something at the behest of the power because he thinks he's entitled to do that.

01:13:16Guest:Yeah, that's the most dangerous guy in the world.

01:13:18Guest:Sure, your neighbor.

01:13:19Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:13:20Guest:So that's who's filing complaints.

01:13:21Guest:It's not the government.

01:13:22Guest:They've got shit to do.

01:13:24Guest:But it's somebody who's looking for their attention.

01:13:26Guest:And then it becomes news.

01:13:27Guest:And then it becomes news.

01:13:28Marc:So, how – do you find that you're engaging with Indians on both sides of the you problem any more than you did before?

01:13:42Guest:I think the special coming out on Netflix really helped in terms of – The new one.

01:13:48Guest:The new one.

01:13:48Guest:Landing, yeah.

01:13:49Guest:Put a perspective out there and also –

01:13:50Guest:You know, give people enough time.

01:13:53Guest:There's enough cycles then.

01:13:54Guest:Yeah.

01:13:55Guest:And also, strangely enough, what happened is every issue that I talked about in the video kind of came true.

01:14:01Guest:You know, just in terms of there were lots of stories in all of those veins.

01:14:04Guest:So a lot of people were like, yeah, he's kind of... Right.

01:14:07Guest:Right.

01:14:08Guest:And then the two Indias...

01:14:11Guest:sort of meme or all of that stuff became something that people started using a lot, you know?

01:14:18Guest:So... Oh, when they're talking about it?

01:14:20Guest:It was just so annoying, man.

01:14:21Guest:And that was your thing?

01:14:23Guest:No, not because it was my thing.

01:14:24Marc:No, no, but it's your... The concept of the two Indias being popularized was you.

01:14:31Guest:No, it existed before me, but like I just got done getting trolled, right?

01:14:36Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:14:37Guest:So now it's kind of...

01:14:38Guest:So like five weeks into me, just like everything's peaceful.

01:14:42Guest:Everything's great.

01:14:43Guest:The leader of the opposition goes on the floor of parliament and he's like, there are two Indias.

01:14:46Guest:And I'm like, oh, fuck.

01:14:48Guest:Now we have to do that.

01:14:49Guest:Or then somebody says it on the news.

01:14:51Marc:But it's not you.

01:14:52Marc:And also that's what you want to happen.

01:14:56Guest:In a perfect universe.

01:14:58Marc:No, but I just mean that's the risk of speaking truth to power, speaking about politics publicly, is that you have something you're relating to people that is about humanity and inhumanity in relation to government.

01:15:14Marc:And you're putting it out there so people will see it differently.

01:15:19Guest:Absolutely.

01:15:19Guest:It's a double-edged sword in that you don't get to predict when you create the conversation, right?

01:15:24Marc:I get that.

01:15:25Marc:But you definitely facilitated that enough time has passed.

01:15:30Marc:Enough people have seen it for people to kind of go like, oh, it's kind of like what he said.

01:15:36Marc:And maybe we need to sort of make this more visible or talk about it in a different way.

01:15:41Guest:That's what you want.

01:15:42Guest:That's what you want.

01:15:43Guest:And also you have to accept humbly that you cannot control where this conversation goes.

01:15:48Guest:Right.

01:15:48Marc:And also you can't say like, I didn't mean to, you know, start any shit.

01:15:52Marc:You know what I mean?

01:15:53Marc:No.

01:15:53Marc:You can't go because you did the video, right?

01:15:55Marc:Right.

01:15:56Marc:But sadly, I think there is some part of us as comics where it's sort of like, I didn't really want to cause any trouble.

01:16:04Marc:And then when it happens, you're kind of like, oh, fuck.

01:16:07Marc:So now this is real.

01:16:08Guest:Yeah.

01:16:09Guest:And it's a weird thing where you walk out on stage now and they were coming, you know, to just have a good time earlier on.

01:16:19Guest:But now they're coming with just 20% more emotion.

01:16:22Guest:Yeah.

01:16:22Guest:They're a little bit more invested in you.

01:16:25Guest:Right.

01:16:25Guest:And you have a responsibility.

01:16:26Guest:And you have a responsibility.

01:16:27Guest:And also, they're dying to see you talk about it.

01:16:30Marc:Yeah.

01:16:31Guest:And where do you put it in your set?

01:16:32Guest:Just structurally, even that's a tough question, right?

01:16:35Guest:Like, I put it nine minutes into my special.

01:16:37Guest:Sure.

01:16:38Guest:And I spent three minutes on it.

01:16:40Marc:It's so funny because it's like, you know, really, and I just mean this in a nice way, but only Indians know about this.

01:16:47Marc:Yeah.

01:16:48Marc:You know what I mean?

01:16:48Marc:And it's a big fucking deal.

01:16:50Marc:It's a big deal.

01:16:50Marc:Yeah.

01:16:51Marc:And, like, you know, when I watch that special, I honestly—and I don't know if you cut it right or if it was the appropriate reaction, but there's a beat in that special outside of the two Indias where you're just talking about, like, you're talking about the two buckets—

01:17:06Marc:Now, I don't know if that was really your life or if that is the life, but it is something that is real.

01:17:13Marc:And there were two guys up front that just went over.

01:17:16Marc:They just kind of, it killed them.

01:17:18Marc:And I thought it was so specific, but, you know, the identifying with it was so perfect.

01:17:25Marc:It was great to see, you know.

01:17:26Marc:The bucket buff.

01:17:27Guest:Yeah.

01:17:28Guest:Mark, you got to try a fucking bucket bath.

01:17:29Marc:A bucket bath?

01:17:30Marc:Well, I know there's a lot of guys getting barrels now at ice.

01:17:33Guest:No, the bucket bath.

01:17:35Guest:One hot, one cold.

01:17:36Guest:And like in thinker position on your knee, putting a hot, like just boiling hot water on you and having it run down your back.

01:17:43Guest:Yeah.

01:17:43Guest:It'll beat any shower in your life.

01:17:46Guest:It's amazing.

01:17:46Guest:It's a good thing.

01:17:47Guest:It's a damn good thing.

01:17:49Marc:And so what happens now?

01:17:50Marc:What are you doing here now?

01:17:51Guest:Just promoting the thing?

01:17:53Guest:Just promoting the thing, and then I'm writing while I'm in LA.

01:17:57Guest:I'm just in two writers' rooms for stuff that I'll hopefully get to be in.

01:18:01Guest:Oh, really?

01:18:01Guest:Yeah.

01:18:02Guest:Like what?

01:18:03Guest:I have a sitcom that's in development at Fox.

01:18:07Guest:Oh, yeah?

01:18:07Guest:That I'll hopefully get to star in, you know?

01:18:09Guest:But what is that?

01:18:10Guest:Is that you as an Indian who lives in America?

01:18:14Guest:It's me coming over and being a country music star from India.

01:18:19Guest:It's called Country Eastern.

01:18:20Marc:Are there country music stars in India?

01:18:22Guest:Yeah, and I'm in a band.

01:18:23Guest:I've been in a band for 10 years and everything we do is kind of country blues influenced.

01:18:29Guest:Yeah, me too.

01:18:30Guest:And so it's a music show that's in development.

01:18:34Guest:I might do a rom-com here.

01:18:36Guest:Okay.

01:18:37Marc:As an Indian guy who lives in America?

01:18:38Guest:As an Indian guy who lives in America.

01:18:40Guest:So now they don't want you there.

01:18:43Marc:We got to deal with you?

01:18:44Guest:Well, I got some Bollywood stuff as well, my friend.

01:18:46Guest:I'll keep the lights on everywhere.

01:18:48Guest:Yeah, you got a lot of Bollywood stuff coming on?

01:18:52Guest:I'm ironically playing a nationalistic journalist in my next project.

01:18:56Guest:That's good.

01:18:57Guest:Yeah, so that should be fun.

01:18:58Guest:Mix it up.

01:18:59Guest:Yeah, it's like a newsroom kind of a piece.

01:19:02Guest:Interesting.

01:19:02Guest:Yeah.

01:19:03Marc:Well, good talking to you.

01:19:04Marc:It's good to see you.

01:19:05Guest:Nice to meet you.

01:19:05Marc:Yeah, man.

01:19:11Marc:Okay.

01:19:12Marc:Veer Das.

01:19:14Marc:That was a nice talk.

01:19:15Marc:His tour dates and tickets are available at veerdas.in.

01:19:19Marc:And hang out a minute.

01:19:20Marc:I've got a surprise for you.

01:19:24Marc:OK, so last week, this is this is pretty great, people.

01:19:29Marc:Last week, I spent 90 minutes with William Shatner and I got a real kick out of the guy.

01:19:36Marc:And you'll hear the full episode this Thursday.

01:19:39Marc:But I figured, why not give you a little taste?

01:19:42Marc:Why not just give you a little right now?

01:19:45Marc:I'm a big cooker.

01:19:47Guest:I cook.

01:19:47Guest:What the fuck?

01:19:48Guest:Yeah.

01:19:49Guest:I said, is there anything to eat there?

01:19:50Guest:And your lady said, no.

01:19:52Marc:Well, I mean, it's my house.

01:19:55Marc:I mean, it's limited to what I have.

01:19:58Guest:I got a biscuit and some jam.

01:20:01Guest:But great coffee.

01:20:02Guest:I wouldn't have been able to provide a biscuit or jam.

01:20:06Guest:Okay.

01:20:07Marc:Why not?

01:20:08Marc:Because I don't have those.

01:20:09Marc:I have toast.

01:20:10Marc:I could make a toast.

01:20:11Marc:Yeah, toast.

01:20:12Yeah.

01:20:12Guest:They had a biscuit, so I said, yeah, I think the biscuit was all dry.

01:20:16Guest:It was cold.

01:20:18Guest:Why didn't I ask him to heat it up?

01:20:21Guest:The butter was cold, so he couldn't spread the butter.

01:20:24Guest:And I'm afraid of choking.

01:20:25Guest:Are you afraid of choking?

01:20:26Guest:Yeah, sure.

01:20:27Guest:I'm afraid of a lot of things.

01:20:28Guest:Yeah, like me.

01:20:29Guest:Yeah.

01:20:31Guest:I'm afraid to go to sleep.

01:20:36Guest:I am too.

01:20:37Guest:Well, my shoulders bother me.

01:20:39Marc:We're posting that full episode on Thursday.

01:20:41Marc:And as always, if you want an ad-free WTF experience with new episodes and every episode in the archives, sign up for WTF Plus.

01:20:49Marc:Click on the link in the episode description or go to WTFPod.com and click on WTF Plus.

01:20:56Marc:Here's some swoppy fast guitar.

01:20:58Marc:Sloppy and fast.

01:22:12Thank you.

01:23:57Marc:boomer lifts monkey and la fonda cat angels everywhere