Stand-up not serious business for women

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Neeti Palta

Internationally, we have a few names to boast of when it comes to stand-up gigs by women, like Sarah Silverman who became a household name with her stint on Saturday Night Live, Miranda Hart whose shows have got good response at the Edinburgh Fringe, Sarah Millican who grabbed attention with her explicit material about sex and relationships among many others.
Back home, sadly, we barely have women associated with comedy. At a time, when the comic industry in India is booming at a high pace with regular stand-up events and other comedy events, it’s dismaying to find no woman’s name in the list of performers.
It’s a completely male-dominated area, believes Neeti Palta, who, till now is the only woman stand-up comic in Delhi who has been hosting her shows since two years now. “There’s one Aditi Mittal in Mumbai and Vasu Primalani is other one who does shows off and on,” shares Neeti, who also organises comedy events in the city under her company Looney Goons. Surprisingly, Neeti says that the chances of more women coming up to do comedy are grim. “I had to struggle to get where I am today as my parents were skeptical about this idea initially.”
Today, she performs on the stage and also juggles as a TV scriptwriter. She shares, “After I did few shows, I started getting more offers and it was then I decided to leave everything else and focus on this,” she further adds that not many girls take it up because they are concerned about their safety.
“As it is, girls in Delhi get far more than their fair share of attention from the opposite sex. We don’t really have to go out and stand up on a stage to get more attention, that too by cracking jokes,” she says.
Astonishingly, men in the business think that the Indian audience isn’t mature enough to accept jokes from women. “Somehow, the chauvinistic mindset still rules in a big way in this arena,” says Sanjay Rajoura, a regular at comedy events in Delhi. He thinks the space that Indian women have in our society is not very appreciable. “We are a very intolerant society. We deny accepting that it’s right on a woman’s part to be unconventional,” he says.
However, Sharmila Bhatia, happily married and a mother, loved her small stint as a comic artiste on stage. Sharmila took to the stage briefly, did few gigs for fun and then moved on to her business. “I did it because I knew I had a witty, funny side to me and I wanted to try it. The perceptions or reactions of people didn’t bother me much. But I know it gets really annoying at times. The reaction of men in the audience becomes intolerable. Delhi is not an easy place to do stand-up,” she remarks and says that may be that is one reason more women don’t pursue comedy seriously.
However, Raghav Mandava of Cheese Monkey Mafia asserts that the numbers are a testimony to the fact that “women can’t be comedians”. “One has to accept this. Like men can’t be supermodels, women can’t be comedians,” he says.
He reasons that it’s not impossible for a woman to become a good comedian. “It’s just that their jokes have to be funny. Most women who give it a try go down the feminist way. They limit the audience that way. If women give a fair try of just being comedians and not feminists, they will add a lot of versatility,” he concludes with a hope of more women joining the serious business of comedy.