INTRO: Abijit Ganguly, a stand-up comedian, was born in Bangalore and raised up in New Delhi. His acts tackle the most mundane of Indian problems like parental pressure, marriage, social media and racism among others. The bi-lingual comedian has performed in over 2000 shows. When he is not packing venues on comedy nights or doing corporate shows, the Delhi School of Economics graduate poses as a brand consultant for major corporations like Woo, Sprite, Culture Machine and OYO Rooms. In a tête-à-tête with Dipti Ranjan Das of Orissa Post, he threw light on the trending culture of stand-up comedy in the country and much more.
Excerpts:
How do you see the current scene of stand-up comedy in India?
Standup comedy is growing at a good rate right now. Earlier it used to happen within a limited number of people, it was a small scene. Now, it has become a huge industry that involves a lot of people. The disadvantage here I would say is the increasing challenge that the rising industry brings in.
There has been a lot of talk about ‘Freedom of speech’ lately. Since most of your sketches involve political satire, does it pose any challenge for you?
There is a line of course but ‘It’s not what you say but how you say it’. I have not faced any problem till now and most people actually don’t. This ‘Freedom of speech’ debate is nothing but social media hype and useless newsroom discussion. Social media shaming and trolls are to be completely ignored. Period.
Your standup content has been plagiarized in the past. What could one do to keep stand-up content secure?
That is a very grey area in this industry. Plagiarism has become more and more rampant in recent times. Anybody lifting my content is very dicey situation for me. Anything that we put online has an IPR address attached to it. We can secure our content this way. You can be ethical yourself and expect more and more people to follow the same. That’s optimism, right?
Do you think comedy as a culture is yet to be wholeheartedly accepted in India?
India itself doesn’t have one particular culture. We are diverse in so many ways that complete acceptance will always be a challenge as we have a lot of sections in our society. The situation is varied in different places. We can just hope that with time people start accepting and promoting the culture. Optimism again!
How was your first experience of performing in Bhubaneswar?
It was absolutely fabulous. The experience at XIMB was especially pleasing and I had a lot of fun. The crowd here is amazing. I had never thought that Bhubaneswar could be such an amazing place to perform in. I am looking forward to my next visit here.