What exactly is a stand-up artiste? This is what the billing read for Sanjay Rajoura who performed at the India Habitat Centre (“End the Occupation”) on Sunday.
The thesaurus meanings: “stand-up” means resist, contend, and solo, trustworthy, erect and also refers to a person standing alone and telling a story to an
audience. “Artiste” is not something complimentary, it refers to someone who aspires to be artistic or an artistic pretender, though the word often doubles for performer or entertainer. Why doesn’t Sanjay call himself simply a stand-up entertainer if he has any objections to the word comedian? Why the cuteness of artiste?
However, the performance itself was quite entertaining. Describing himself as a Jat from UP, Sanjay went on to flay his community with aplomb and some wit. He spoke about the jhing-jhang weddings in the family where a group of drunken guys will create obnoxious situations. And you will always find a young man with a sad expression hanging about the place. He is the unhappy lover of the girl to be married. Having gone so far, why does Sanjay not speak about the khap panchayat is rather odd. Well, not so odd either as most of his observations merely brush the surface of the issue.
How can he speak about the Jats without satirising their attitude towards love marriages, honour killings and the intractable gotra issue.
Sanjay approaches the topics directly. When he declares his unmarried status and his age (38 years), it unfailingly attracts the remark, “It is too late. You must get married. You will not realise it now but in your old age...”
Where is the companionship in old age? The wife is invariably so unwell that the husband has to hire a 25-year-old nurse for her. He talks about alcoholism in his own family in particular and the Jats in general. Of how his grandfather would drink in half bottles and never buy a whole bottle and how when he gave up imbibing, the venerable old man was shocked and begged him not to give up drinking. Even today his legs tremble when he comes on stage (sans alcohol).
Before embarking on religion, he asked for the audience’s consent but he said little on the topic, beyond it was an accident of birth that gives us our religions. Sanjay has a good presence and is obviously completely at ease with doing what he does. However, his style is too fragmentary. He has too many stations on his journey which was under an hour.
Rajneesh Kapoor, who is just setting out to become a stand-up comedian, preceded Sanjay. In the brief time he was given, Rajneesh came off with flying colours. He has a deadpan delivery which is evenly paced out. He does not stop once he begins. No gaps between topics or ideas. He spoke about the comments on YouTube, and how terribly dismissive they were. Burn this, burn that. And “If you want a hot and burning girl”.
This connection he made repeatedly raising spontaneous laughter. Facebook is making any kind of work impossible. Albert Einstein would have made no discovery if Marie Curie had been downloading Facebook every half hour.