The country’s highest-rated comedy show on television, Comedy Nights with Kapil, reduced me and my two children, aged nine and 14, to tears on Wednesday when we had the misfortune of being part of its studio audience.

For almost nine hours — from 2 pm to 10.30 pm on June 18 — we were asked to sit in one place, without water, without food and without any bathroom breaks. We were not even allowed to leave our seats while we waited for the stars to appear, and we waited even more for the show’s recording to start on its sets in Goregaon.

Kapil Sharma and Sachin Acharya (right)

The impeccable comic timing of its host Kapil Sharma and the witty banter of the comic cast aside, the nine-hour nightmare that my family and I endured under inhuman conditions made us feel we were in some kind of detention centre.