The big challenge before India’s standup comedians, as Varun Grover says in a promotional video for Aisi Taisi Democracy (ATD), is the fast-shrinking gap between satire and reality. “Satire is in direct competition with reality these days,” the Hindi film lyricist quips. “Hum do haftaa soch ke koi joke likhte hain, pata chalta hai kal shaam ko ho gaya (We take two weeks to think up a joke, the next thing we know is that it actually happened last evening),” he adds.
It is a challenge all right, but it is a fact that politics and its practitioners in this country are increasingly becoming the butt of jokes, probably making life easier in a sense for satirists. The tribe has been thriving over the past decade, appropriating to a great extent the art of the cartoonist.