How Indian Dalit comics are exploring the 'blue' stand-up scene with laughter

Vitala is one of those villages in Vidarbha that is often the source of grim news Other than farming fishing in the Domi and Wardha rivers is the career choice for most villagers This obscurity is also why Neha Thombre popularly known by her character name ldquoThombrebairdquo doesnrsquot give a damn about propriety in her videos on social mediaSome of these are about the irony of the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana ldquoWhen the scheme was first announcedrdquo says Thombre ldquomany Marathilanguage influencers called the beneficiaries of 1500 gold diggers and shopaholics in reels I went another wayrdquoAnkur Tangade a Beedbornandraised pansexual Dalit comic has found her voice in standupIn her video a woman in the village runs to the shops as soon as the money comes in only to realise that the price of one kg of onions has gone from Rs 18 to Rs 80 and a kilo of garlic costs Rs 400 ldquoVery few of us are taking the bull by the hornrdquo says the engineering graduate who works at National Law University in Nagpur as superintendent Her family depends on her financially Thombrersquos humour directly addresses traditional civic infrastructuremdashroti kapda aur makaanShe has 14 lakh followers on Instagram and this election season has been approached by various political parties to be a part of their lsquomahilarsquo initiatives ldquoThey donrsquot even request me to address the crowds they are offering offensive amounts of money just to stand on the daisrdquo she says Her gender in Amravati district is the draw her caste is not a surprise nor needs to be underlinedNeha Thombre Digital content creatorIn fact most of Thombrersquos videorsquos are almost all antiestablishment questioning usual political rhetoric like sops ldquoMy work often questions the recent onslaught of these so called yojanas Every party is doubling and tripling the remuneration for schemes distracting us from real issues in the videos I keep circling back to the point that the common man cannot be bought irrelevant of casterdquo she saysThombre has mixed feelings about being identified as Dalit ldquoSometimes when people meet me in person they say things like lsquoOh Yoursquore from that categoryrdquo she recounts ldquoI do understand that my life has informed my perspective and to an outsider my village and people in Vidarbha may seem different But I do not understand why it becomes solely a Dalit perspectiverdquoSiddhant Navale an engineer by profession says his humour is too dark for the community to digestThombre is a stage artiste at heart and did try to break into the MumbaiPune theatre world from 2011 to 2014 but was often rejected with the feedback that her diction was not ldquocleanrdquo enough or she was either ldquotoo rusticrdquo or just not ldquorightrdquo for the part She got her spotlight in 2019 in Bharatiya Digital Party BhaDiParsquos standup training programme that took 16 comics across MaharashtraThombre is official selected social influencer by Election Commission of India in Maharashtramdashshe was also awarded the Radhika Sen Memorial Award for Digital Champion for Girls Rights for 2024 in August this yearThe Bharitya Digital Party BhaDiPa has recently begun to take on Marathi comics and standups including Dalits as their talentBefore the tour BhaDiPa test drove Marathi standup acts and rappers over three weekends in Mumbai with small audiences comprising mostly family and friends The threepart series was called Secret Marathi Standup aka SMSldquoUntil SMS we were mostly writing producing and marketing Marathi content for TV and filmsrdquo says Sarang Sathaye Cofounder BhaDiPa Once a standup comic himself Sathaye has now transitioned to being the companyrsquos creative manager ldquoThe point of entering this domain is to create space for everyone We have comics who are Savarna and we have comics who are DalitrdquoAs a pioneer in the field and as someone resolute about creating inclusive content Sathaye shares an interesting insight about the selfeffacing humour of Dalit comedians ldquoWhen a rich person talks about their privilege they seem awkwardrdquo says the Bandra resident ldquobut most Dalit comedians have no problem making fun of themselves They have found humour in the darkest of circumstancesrdquoAs a Dalit this writer too colours her humour dark blue asking colleagues if they know the implications of sharing a homemade lunch Most times this is met with an awkward chuckle or ldquoshut uprdquo sometimes the shocked Savarna silence is satisfying Consequences have also been fewer invitations to any auspicious occasion and fewer people eating out of your dabba or borrowing a personal item Thombre who attributes her sense of humour to her parents can relatePost the COVID pandemic in 2021 and much after the SMS tour more Dalits wanted to get on stage starting a wave of Blue Material Ravi Gaikwad Cofounder The Collective which hosts open nights at Dorangos in Bandra on Saturday voices the confusion and dichotomy ldquoIs it Dalit comics doing jokes Or comics making Dalit jokes We feel itrsquos the former Savarna gaze of boxing a Dalit artist in a mould point is missing in making the dichotomy part more clearrdquo He elaborates on the crucial difference saying ldquoA Dalit comic should also have the freedom to make a haathichitti joke elephant and ant joke but certain jokes really hit the mark in a Blue Material open mic night but fall flat in a regular room because of larger lack of caste context in the artstanduprdquoHe gives the example of how during crowd work he asked an audience member whether she was from the community ldquoWhat communityrdquo she asked genuinely Silence ldquoThe cool community marsquoamrdquo Gaikwad finishedItrsquos a tightrope walk he explains ldquoWe need a space for us but our jokes need to have a wider appealrdquo Gaikwad got acquainted with his caste only when he joined engineering college and was constantly reminded that he had ldquotaken a seat away from a deserving personrdquo Gaikwad eventually dropped out ldquoI donrsquot know why after suffering through three years I didnrsquot go that day to write the exam I was just so over itrdquo he saysSome of Gaikwadrsquos own material as a comic comes from this experience A spontaneous moment on an open mic night posted on Blue Materialrsquos Instagram bluematerialgigs shows two people coming in late ldquoFind a seat for them guysrdquo Gaikwad says ldquoHow can you not find a seat at a Dalit showrdquo The audience roarsThere is no fee for performing at a Blue Material open micmdashcaste no bar This mindfulness underlines the recognition that 200500 is a fee that most from the community cannot afford ldquoWe know how much 200 means to a person who has very littlerdquo says Ankur Tangade from Beed Tangadersquos parents both human rights activists supported her financially for a while as she tried to find her way as a standup comic fresh out of college ldquoI couldnrsquot afford the rent in Mumbairdquo says the now 27yearold ldquoWhen COVID happened I came back and now work as a researcher and fact checker for an American newspaperrdquoShersquos back on the circuit with Blue Material touring Maharashtra and her set is a crosssection of Dalit and nonbinary jokes As a child she consumed standup material voraciously on the Internet to combat severe depression ldquoI came out as queer before I came out as Dalitrdquo she says adding ldquoThe former is much easier than the latterrdquoIn Mumbai in 2019 Tangade felt alive when she heard fresh humour at clubs such as Comedy Ladder and Laugh Club ldquoI told a few comics that I write andsoon formed Blue Material with Ravi because after a few years of performing I realised I would never escape the fact that I am a Dalit womanhellip might as well embrace itrdquoThe power of comedy is to make the Dalit narrative palatable Itrsquos a doublepunch to the majorly Savarna audience of PuneMumbairsquos Marathi theatre space A punch up to the BrahminsSavarnarsquos unclothing their ignorance or bias about the BahujanDalit experience and a deprecating punch down to the comicrsquos own Dalit lived experiences which makes the audience squirm uncomfortably ldquoWersquore introducing a kind of humour that most of MumbaiPune doesnrsquot know how to react tordquo Tangade saysMost comedians from the Dalit community feel that addressing Maharashtrarsquos policies through the prism of caste directly puts off an audience who otherwise might be accepting if the message is not shoved down the throat I canrsquot tell you my jokesrdquo says Siddhanth Navale ldquoThey will get me into troublerdquo All of 27 years of age Navale lives in Vasai and works as a quality control engineer ldquoMost Dalit comedians punch up I try to punch down and make audience laugh at thatrdquo he says Navalersquos humour can go deep dark down to referencing ldquoimpurityrdquo of Dalit blood ldquoEven a blue material crowd gets awkward but I donrsquot mind I will keep pushing the audiences to laugh at uncomfortable jokesrdquo he addsThe broader aim is to get Savarna crowds so used to blue humour that a joke by a Dalit comic is seen as just that A joke ldquoAway from the usual comic material about the woes of travelling in a train or Mumbai liferdquo says Gaikwad ldquothe point is to ease them into our humour and get to laugh with us while they think they are laughing at usrdquoThe next step in his vision is Blue Jam a standup tour in collaboration with Dalit rappers An ode to the rsquo90s American Black comedy showmdashDeff Jam considered a watershed moment for black standups