Oye, Trevor, return to India, okay?

My favourite Indian standup guy Biswa Kalyan Rath as he put it at his gig recently holds a simple ambition for his comic sets He wants reviews of his shows to be that minor punctuation between people exiting and deciding where to head next ldquoThat was funny no Yeah Okay where to go for dinnerrdquoWhich is fair ROI for a walk down the neighbourhood for a local gig Probably not the same if the South African standup star Trevor Noah is in townNoah is Michael Jackson of standup comedymdashnot saying this because hersquos both black and white Like Barack Obama incidentallymdasha part Noah could easily play in a biopic He could also play young Sai Baba from Puttaparthi But thatrsquos not something hersquos evidently glad about having googled the name in IndiaUnlike Rath Noah is connoisseur of accents including lsquoRussell Petersrsquo read Indian to western ears That hersquod eventually perform among desis was a given for India inevitably shows up in his sets His devotion to Indian food ldquoBest cuisine in the worldrdquo I agreeHis BFF growing up was a desi named Theesan Pillai And he says ldquoSouth Africa has the largest population of Indians outside Indiardquo which is probably where his poking fun at Bollywood dance routines comes fromNone of which could prepare him beforehand for spoton jokes about selfimportant Delhiites that he delivered to audiencersquos expected delight at his gig in Bombay PerfectNoah you can tell is a terrific traveller gathering observations interacting with locals which he always mentions is the antidote to ignoranceTravelling is the also reportedly why he quit his desk jockeyrsquos job anchoring The Daily Show that made him the globalAmerican starDoing political newscommentary as comedymdasha genre thatrsquos made so many standups Noahrsquos mentor Jon Stewart onwards stand in for the most popular intellectuals of our times OpEds get perceived as pompously boring wordily hammering in the helplessly obviousWatching Noah on stage felt like a legend checked off a bucket list One thing he was constantly warned against before performing in India he repeated ldquoDo not commentjoke on Modirdquo Did heWell he sees the Prime Ministerrsquos face literally everywhere in India Modi shows up under his eyelids before he falls off to sleep What else does he see everywhere ldquoG20 G20 G20 G20helliprdquo The audience is in splitsFurther as he takes the usual swipe at Indiarsquos richest man Mukesh Ambani and his Bombay skyscraper for a ldquo2 billion home Antilia housing five people and 300member staffrdquo I wonder if Noah knew Ambani is the biggest stakeholder in BookMyShow organisers of his India gigs tooWouldrsquove loved to ask Although whatrsquos common between PM Modi and several standup comedians including Noah They barely do press interviews In Noahrsquos casemdashwhatever he says in interviews as personal experiencesopinions could well be worth saving as material for his shows noNo Itrsquod be fun to ask Noah what he feels about fellow comedian Hasan Minhaj whorsquos as much a frontrunner to host The Daily Show as potentially getting cancelled over The New Yorker lsquoexposeacutersquo on how his stories in a similar show Patriot Actmdashabout receiving threatletter laced with anthrax or on an undercover FBI informantmdashturned out to be untrueTechnically not untruemdashgrossly exaggerated to falsely attributed Including about Minhajrsquos girlfriend who rejected him for highschool prom as narrated in his Netflix special The Kingrsquos JesterWait are we factchecking jokes now As it is dissecting comedy is like deepcleaning ashtraymdashwhatrsquos the point Isnrsquot embellishment in humour essential even when autobiographical How exciting could the life of comedians regular blokes be if not sufficiently overstatedJournalists get judged on fidelity with facts I know having done a media roast for a standup routine once Finding it hard to make shit up Reporter in me going ldquoCanrsquot say thisrdquo Me ldquoYeah you can itrsquos comedyrdquoI bring this up as Noah goes on at the Bombay gig about his previously cancelled Bangalore show for all that he went throughmdashnonstop jam offroading on dirt track semipermanent tent for venue dealing with security gawking at caged dogs backstagehellip He refused to perform Audiences left dejected Neither was at faultGoing through Noahrsquos Netflix specials Son of Patricia Afraid of the Dark I Wish You Would you realise traffic is his staple peeve Whether hersquos picking on LA NYC or Delhi Bombay at his India tour A semilogical problem with cracking traffic jokes ismdashwell you are the traffic whorsquos the joke onThe cosmic issue is you probably invite bad karma I asked my Bangalore friends whorsquod gone for Noahrsquos gig if all that he said was true Guess what Nobody saw caged dogs otherwise 100 per cent trueExaggerations hardly necessary And theyrsquod faced nothing like this before either For that punctuation between audiences exiting and deciding where to head after Noahrsquos show in Bombay all I could hear around me was ldquoThis is so embarrassing what he went through in BangalorerdquoWhich is why Noah must return to India As my other favourite desi standup guy Kunal Kamra says it best ldquoKahan milega itna content Where will you find such free materialrdquo See you soon NoahMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper