Laughing with

TWO HUNDRED and twentytwo Indians and a handful of Filipinos walk into a bar. They think they’ve come to watch five stand-up comedians give them belly laughs with anecdotes, buildups, and punch lines.

They got some of that, and a bonus. They had glimpses of what it means to be a South Indian growing up in Malaysia, and also that no matter what region we come from, there are certain insanities that we share as a people.

“Mine was an arranged marriage,” said Kavin Jay, the emcee and the first one up. “Yes, my wife arranged it.” That won’t make sense in this culture where the concept of arranged marriages doesn’t exist, at least not in the way Indians know it. “I looked at an actual picture book to choose my wife, not pictures from a cell phone. That album was yesterday’s version of Tinder.” His uncle convinced him to just pick one from the album and marry her. What if he doesn’t like her, Jay asked. “Marry her first!” his uncle said. Jay shared that in the way that parents throw surprise birthday parties for the their kids: “I was afraid that my parents would throw me a surprise wedding!”

Laughter ripped through the audience because almost every member knows the travails of spouse shopping that way, or have friends who’ve been through it. This wasn’t laughter at, this was laughter with. We were all in on it. The best comedy is when the context doesn’t need to be explained.

How about risqué and politically incorrect jokes? Many of the Indians in the Philippines are native-born Sindhis, whose parents or grandparents immigrated from Hyderabad, Sindh as a result of India’s Partition in 1947 (okay, too much explanation, please look it up). “Why do Sindhis like to see porno movies?” Jay innocently asked his primarily Sindhi audience who nervously giggled. “Because they like to play it backwards and to see the prostitute actually give back money to the client.” Roaring laughter. Ah, the recognition of one’s reputed stinginess. Change “Sindhi” to “Ilocano” and you’ll get the same laugh, from a different audience.

There were five stand-up acts at the Green Sun Hotel, brought in by new events team Prime i Events led by power couple Dilip and Saira Budhrani. “People are too stressed,” Mr. Budhrani, a native- born Filipino- Indian businessman, lamented, “and cliché as it sounds, laughter is