Indian politics is a joke, try Netflix for real humour
With politics dominating Indian TV news, the comedy is all slapstick
Netflix is lately my preferred diet over Indian politics (both of which sound like characters from Asterix, the French comic series). Though I was slow to the American video-streaming service that came to India in January, I’ve found refuge in it because there’s nothing on offer on the hundreds of TV channels that my satellite dish offers. I don’t watch regional news which are lurid bordering on torture porn; and I find Hindi serials demented. That leaves the occasional free-to-air sporting telecast, and the news, whose cacophony is what I imagine a lunatic’s head to sound like from the inside. Too much TV news can drive anyone insane.
The main difference between Netflix and TV news is that on the former, I get to watch a lot of stand-up comedy. With politics dominating Indian TV news, the comedy is all slapstick. I got into stand-up when I lived in Mumbai though the comedy in India’s financial capital is nothing to cheer about (unless the comic is visiting from England, etc). In Mumbai, the jokes are limited and the shows are short; I blame this not on the performing talent but on the audience. After all, investment bankers and stock brokers have zero sense of humour (though they have lots of money to spend on tickets for live performances). Also, they’ve been weaned on that other great staple of theatre in Mumbai – the Gujarati bedroom farce.
Thus the performers try and build up a funny narrative for their stonefaced audience, only to abruptly end it in a ranchy joke that has everyone in splits. It’s better (and cheaper) to just get in bed with your iPad and watch YouTube clips of up-and-coming comedians on US late night TV. That way, Netflix is a great saviour. I’ve watched shows by Aziz Ansari (an ethnic Indian, cheers!), CK Louis, and Chris Tucker, and I’m amazed at how hard these comedians work – ninety minutes on stage requires good health, good reflexes (to change gear depending on how the audience responds), good preparation of narratives, good segues, etc. Sure they have sex jokes, but those are embedded in relationship narratives. Their live shows must be electric.
Less electric, of course, is the comedy nights on Indian TV news; it’s more like electrocution. Currently, the queen of lay-down comedy is comatose Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, tucked away in a private hospital, and kept quarantined from even the state’s Governor (he stared at her for a few moments in the ICU). Chennai is rife with rumour about her. She’s still on ventilator, according to the hospital’s bland daily bulletin, the only source of news about her in true democratic fashion; the bulletin itself is parsed as if it were a document of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politbureau. Eight people have been arrested by the state police for stating the obvious about her health on WhatsApp and Facebook. It is said that this interim period is being used to consolidate power by her likely successor and intimate Sasikala Natarajan, a barely literate woman whose friendship with the CM dates back to the 1980s and a lurid rumour. If she does inherit the mantle, the joke will be on the Tamils.
Another comedy that has erupted is in Uttar Pradesh, where an assembly election is around the corner; most likely March 2017. The silent comedy in progress is in the Congress Party, where vice-president Rahul Gandhi has been marginalised in decision-making by his sister Priyanka Vadra, mainly because none of the cadre of this moribund party has faith in him. Without exception, the rank-and-file seek out his sister. The louder farce is over at the Samajwadi Party, which is the family business of Mulayam Singh Yadav, a man who dreams of succeeding Pranab Mukherji as President of India: a fight has broken out between MSY’s son Akhilesh, who is also the incumbent CM of UP, and MSY’s brother Shivpal, who is said to have been egged on by party general secretary Amar Singh, who is like Sasikala to Mulayam Singh Yadav. It might be him, but there is talk that the real culprit is MSY’s second wife, Sadhana Gupta, who is promoting her son Prateek and his own ambitious spouse. The family feud has reduced everyone to tears. It’s funny considering that this is India’s most crimedependent political party.
In Maharashtra, the joke is on Bollywood. So innocently they invited foreign actors to participate in their films. Karan Johar, who probably needs a Sasikala at this point, was accused of anti-nationalist film production; his accuser was Raj Thackeray, whose party (MNS) got exactly one seat in the last assembly election on three per cent of the vote. The state CM, Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP, brokered peace, thereby elevating Raj to the A-list of state politics. This he seems to have done to cut down to size his coalition partner, the Shiv Sena, run by Raj’s cousin Uddhav. Just imagine, the farce of replacing Tweedledee with Tweedledum. — No wonder some of us prefer Netflix over Indian politics. The tears are of genuine joy, not tragicomedy.
Less electric, of course, is the comedy nights on Indian TV news; it’s more like electrocution