It’s George Carlin’s birthday today, and while this is a mere coincidence it provides an interesting backdrop to what this post is about. A couple of months back, when the Commonwealth Games were on – a website approached me to pen a guest post for them as part of their weekly showcase. Given my general regard towards them, I agreed and wrote a piece about stupid sports that are part of the Commonwealth Games in my usual style – though somewhat toned down given that it wasn’t for my personal blog – and sent it across. After initially approving it however, the editors decided it wasn’t suitable enough for everyone given the diversity of their audience and asked me to tone it down. I refused, citing that I was sure they knew my voice before asking me to guest post and it was ridiculous for them to ask me to after having approved it once already. Either way, the decision was theirs and it is something I can understand given that for them, their stakeholders come much before the cause of free speech and highlighting individual voices they seem to espouse.

Here is what I wrote for them – verbatim – for you to decide whether it is offensive:

"As the Commonwealth Games draw nearer, the focus must shift from the controversies and blame games to what really matters – the sports. In order to bring them into the forefront, here is a brief introduction to some of the lesser publicized sporting events that will make up the Commonwealth Games.

Lawn Bowls: Lawn Bowls is a traditional British sport that finds its origins in the 13th
century. It is played on a small rectangular surface where athletes throw small balls one by one – with the winner managing to get his first ball closest to the second ball without touching it. The fact that the last sentence sounded like something Michael Jackson would do to kids is completely unavoidable. Indians have shown a great interest in this because it requires no physical exercise to play and involves checking out a lot of hot female asses while they bend down and try and get one ball to touch the other. If you’re not an ass man, you can also go and stand on the opposite end of the lawn and try and sneak a peek at the hanging cleavage – made especially possible by the Delhi heat. The game is especially suited to those with arthritis and can’t afford/lift actually 10 pen bowling bowls – and the Indian govt. has launched a major campaign to promote the sport in Uttar Pradesh where its land acquisition policy has left farmers with land enough for only this particular sport.

Wrestling: Not only is wrestling excellent entertainment for the average sports fan – it
provides great insights for sociologists keen on exploring the issue of rape across the
NCR region. Many top Indian wrestlers, who hail from the state of Haryana, are routinely observed and copied by a lot of young rapists as they provide fool proof, unblockable and technical correct methods of pinning and decapitating an opponent. It is apt perhaps, that our success in the global wrestling area and the number of rapes in the NCR region have grown hand in hand over the last few years. Young people from the NCR region interested in learning such holds are advised to watch the event – as are men who are unsure of their sexual disposition. Inadvertent penile movement on watching men grappling wearing tight spandex is one of the many tried and tested techniques that can help clear your mind.

Shooting: Shooting is of India’s biggest sporting strengths – the credit for which goes to its colonial legacy and pioneers through the ages such as Udham Singh, The Maharajas of Rajasthan, Salman Khan and Manu Sharma etc. Since Independence, youngsters have been training in the art of air rifle shooting at every Diwali and Dusshera Mela – where they decimate balloons and plastic animals such as deers, goats, lions and elephants – leading to immense and equal interest in the sport amongst rich and poor alike. The current generation has also grown up training and honing their skills on world class technological systems such as the Media / Samurai Systems offering intense experiences such as Duck Hunt – which have now been upgraded to the Call of Duty series on the Nintendo Wii.

The sport is inclusive and has low cost barriers of entry – and those interested can easily start training after attending a weekly induction camp at Azamgarh or other parts of Uttar Pradesh/Bihar.

Tennis: While a lot of people believe the game of Squash to have originated in France
as a counter to tennis (a notion that became popular thanks to common knowledge of
the French having much smaller balls) it is actually the other way round. Tennis was
developed as a counter to squash – that too in India – when a freshly built squash court wall collapsed, and construction workers started playing catch with the ball on either side of the rubble. This later led to the development of a bigger ball, bigger racquets, bigger prize money and a bigger ego on court.

The event will be conducted on the Rebound Ace surface, imported from Australia –
which gets extremely sticky in the summer sun. This has been done to prevent female
tennis stars to fly all over court and give Indian perverts a chance for peek-a-boos. Sania Mirza fans can save money by only buying tickets till the 2nd round.

Netball: Netball is a discipline for those too poor to afford plywood for a basketball
board. This sport, another British invention, is especially suited to African and other
Commonwealth Nations where lack of nutrition leads to stunted growth as there is
no need to take more than one step before passing the ball or having to try and dunk.
Another predominantly female sport – it has seen great ups and downs in Africa as nets were earlier stolen by athletes and used to prevent their children from getting malaria.

These were then replaced by dustbins, which these women were used to working with – however this led to a crisis as no one was tall enough to be able to take the ball out. At present, nets are back in favour but with holes wide enough to remind one of Paris Hilton.

Cycling: The eco-friendly version of NASCAR for poor people. Enough said."

As you can see, it’s quite harmless. And now that I read it again after a few months my only reaction is “OMFG! What the fuck is this shit? I can’t believe I wrote this!”

Which brings me to Bill Hicks. Most of you will be familiar with the 1992 David Letterman incident where at the peak of his career, Bill Hicks’ set at the Late Show was cut at the last minute because the network was afraid of pissing off the pro-lifers. The exact lines that scared them were “If you're so pro-life, do me a favour: don't lock arms and block medical clinics. If you're so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries”. This after producers of the show, and Letterman, who was beating Leno black and blue in the ratings because he was so edgy approved his material.  Again, remember, this is 1992, and the stakes, because it is television, a relatively controlled medium, are much higher.

Then you have Carlin – whose seven words you can never say on television is the first set you know by heart. This is how the set begins:

"I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion.
Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words. I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal; it is a matter of how you pick them. There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you 7, Bad Words. That's what they told us they were, remember?

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits" Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."

Except we can’t even use those words anywhere, forget television, lest we be judged for being morally inferior and uncouth. That brings me to the two points I want to make:

First, although I am in no way comparing my incident with that website with that of Hicks and Carlin, notice that here it occurred on the internet, the last supposed bastion where we can still be free and speak our minds without having to confine ourselves to the diktats of mainstream media. I don’t know whether we do it knowingly, but if our websites that are meant to highlight bloggers and individual voices and provide them platforms shirk from doing the same just because it might offend a few people, then what hope do we really have of ever reaching the promised land which for everyone seems to be an Indian version of The Daily Show or Bill Maher? Where you can talk about religion, belief systems, politicians and god men without offending loonies whose business card says “defenders of the faith”? And while I have only given one example, this hasn’t happened to only me, and not with only them – but seems to be a pattern across the board. We get offended so easily ourselves that there’s no way we can be fearless enough to not offend someone because it leads to violence instead of civilized discourse.

And while we might be outraged at the new IT regulations the Indian government wants to pass that will effectively shut down the internet on pretexts such as annoyance, blasphemy and defamation and a million others (atleast it will my website) just because ONE person doesn’t agree with your point of view – the truth is even without these regulations we have sold out and surrendered. If a vagina reference is too “out there”, then let us not complain about how our comics are not as good as the Oatmeal, about how our news is not as incisive or cutting across the bullshit and about how our jokes are confined to Santa Banta and Bollywood – because you are already only being exposed to a reality controlled by a few suits in a boardroom who want you to talk, feel and think a certain way without having the opportunity to say what you really feel and talk like you really do.

The second point I want to make is connected to this censorship – and that is the power we attach to words. I get asked about why I seem to cuss so much on the blog and the answer is because that is how I talk. But the difference is that I don’t attach as much power to the word as a lot of people do – and that is, a lot of times, the basis for them getting offended. I’m reminded of Lenny Bruce’s statement (and his entire life is something we can learn from when it comes to censorship and taking offence) "The word’s suppression is, what gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness." 


Something he demonstrated in this set - whose transcript I post here:


“Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? “Are there any niggers here tonight?” I know there’s one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let’s see, there’s two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there’s another kike— that’s two kikes and three niggers. And there’s a spic. Right? Hmm? There’s another spic. Ooh, there’s a wop; there’s a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there’s three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there’s one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, “I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet,” and if he’d just say “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” to every nigger he saw, “boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie,” “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” ‘til nigger didn’t mean didn’t mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.” 


Or another one of his bits on obscenity.




They are only words, and how much power you ascribe them is entirely upto you. No more, no less. How I treat my words, on my space on the other hand is entirely up to me, and that right can’t be taken away.

This brings to the title of this post. I recently did my first show in Bombay and as expected it was a lot of fun. There was no major difference in the audience because you’re practically exposed to the same set of middle/upper-middle class rich people whose values are, to a certain extent, homogenized. (Except Delhi women are hotter. Actually I can’t be certain because I didn’t focus on the women in the audience in Bombay because right before my name was called I was in the loo and I had to rush out in the middle of my business and try and look all cool and prepared even though in my head all I wanted to do was get it over with so I could go back to the loo. I blame you, Fil Fil restaurant Andheri West)

And there I did my set which talks a little bit about hypocrisy that creeps into our religious practices. I usually like doing that bit mostly to see how far the audience is willing to go with me on it even if they don’t laugh – but it invariably gets labeled “not mainstream enough”.

This is a curious condition given the baggage the word mainstream brings with it. The first is obviously whether what you say is acceptable to be put on air and in the paper so that when you get treated like a property/commodity by a corporate hack supposedly with your best interest at heart you don’t get them into political and legal shit. The second works on a more subjective, even moral level. Which makes me wonder what would have happened if any of the comics I’ve mentioned above would be in India right now – because the word instead of subscribing to the idea of bringing forth a point of view to a larger audience seems to take away from it the very things that would make it worthwhile to do so in the first place. It’s an inherent dichotomy. You want to take a comic mainstream but take his voice away in the process.

Let’s look at how we define a professional comic in our country. Given that there is no official definition, how do we classify this? One who has built enough of a reputation at open mics? One who has the credentials of saying they’ve performed outside the country? Is it having opened for senior comics or being in their company? Is it being seen at the Comedy Store, which is the only official ticket to legitimacy as compared to performing at pubs? Because there isn’t a system where you’re slumming it in comedy clubs day in day out – the lack of that infrastructure basically means you HAVE to get into these soft gigs I ranted about in my last post if you want to make a living, having to live with the fact that you’ve sold a little bit of your soul because that is the only way to get somewhere. And now that I think about this more – I am beginning to believe this might be damaging simply because if you’re even remotely good you’ll start thinking about making the switch and making big money and getting comfortable, leaving a vacuum inside whatever cultural push that you’ve tried to make.

This is also where that question of what is more important – getting the laughs or talking about things you want to talk about - comes in. I know comics can balance tackling real issues and ideas in their stand up while continuing to cater to that different “mainstream” audience, but does that change anything? Isn’t the entire grudge, (again what I was ranting about in my last post) that our mainstream is the one devoid of ideas, creativity, fearlessness and with the license and ability to talk about real issues and affect real change in terms of how people think? Isn’t the battle about changing that very narrative? Shouldn’t what we consider edgy now be acceptable and an accepted part of what we call mainstream discourse? Shouldn’t we be working towards that? Somehow I feel comedy and satire is the only tool we have to inflict that change in mindset and it is a powerful tool to capture people’s imagination. And we’ve seen it happen – through history we have seen that happen. And it is why we revere this same bunch of comics like Fox, Bruce, Mooney, Pryor, Carlin, Hicks, Kinnison who pushed and pushed and pushed a style of comedy, a way of being and ideas till they became acceptable.

To keep talking about subjects again and again and again till people realise there’s nothing wrong in doing so. That it’s okay to take a stand and call a spade a spade. To us the N word over and over again till it becomes devoid of power.

There is something to learn from the movie industry perhaps. Even though it is pre-dominantly driven commercially and by the need to be different, atleast you’re seeing subjects and talking points that aren’t happy existing in their own parallel world. Willing to appreciate the audience’s intelligence and maturity and not dumbing down or shying away because of it.

So what do we do? More comedy clubs? More writers? Writing being considered a legitimate occupation? Agitating against censorship? Being honest with ourselves and expressing our ideas without fear on the domains we have left? Getting investors to see things the same way? Maybe it’s true that people aren’t ready for it given how small a minority we are. But then again it’s always a few influencers who end up re-writing the rules so that everyone falls in line. We need all of the above, and so much more.

When you’re on stage and have hundreds of people look at you, all that is in your head at that moment is getting them to engage and laugh. When you’re an Indian comic you’re doing that AND battling perception, on some level society and your own instincts while trying to make a living. But then there’s what I spoke about – the need for a greater purpose. Somewhere, I wish we find it, because we have a long way to go.


P.S. I know Carlin's birthday is on the 12th - but Blogger was down and I could only upload this post today. Sushma Reddy's image courtesy www.nowrunning.com and there because she was the only Indian whose image showed up when I googled Mainstream Me. Imagine.