Kautuk Srivastava

In 25 years, Kautuk Srivastava has never sent a dish back to the kitchen at a restaurant, even if he has found a nausea-inducing strand of hair in the food. "That's because I want to avoid having any sort of conversation with the chef or the waiter," he says. A bit of an oddball by his own admission, Srivastava says his life has been a series of socially awkward moments one after another. "I think all of us come with a default emotion, and mine happens to be awkwardness. It's my factor setting," he says. Culling some of the most embarrassing moments from his life and the observations he has gathered from the sidelines, Srivastava will present a one-hour stand up act titled Anatomy of Awkward at the Barking Deer BrewPub next week.