Comic Anuvab Pal: 'I love that we can build bonds in comedy'

by LAUREN CODLING

AN Indian comedian has revealed how his stand-up material has enlightened him on the commonalities shared by audiences around the world.

Hailing from Mumbai, Anuvab Pal has become known globally for his funny take on everything from the British Empire to etiquette. Having performed all over the world – including gigs in the UK, Australia and the USA – he has discovered the ways in which international audiences share similarities with one another.

It is one of the most interesting aspects of his work in stand-up comedy, Pal told Eastern Eye. “[When I’m performing in different countries] it is interesting to see the commonalities,” he said. “Nowadays it is all about the boundaries and the barriers and how everyone is different, but I also believe, and I don’t want to sound preachy, that we aren’t all that different from one another.”

He joked: “We are all a bit unfit and lazy and duplicitous and we all have that shared side of wickedness.”

Some common ground between countries can also be surprising – and not all of it is morally correct. For instance, during a gig in Italy, he joked that the British are amateurs in corruption in comparison to India. After the show, however, he was approached by an Italian audience member who disagreed.

“She said okay, India is good at corruption but let me tell you how good we are at it in Italy,” he laughed. “I love that about comedy – that we can build these bonds.”

Pal has grown a substantial fanbase in the UK, as well as in his native India. His show The Empire had a successful run at London’s Soho Theatre in 2018 and he has made appearances on QI and the Big Asian Stand Up as part of BBC’s British Asian Summer.

Last month, it was announced the funny man would be performing at the annual Henley Festival in July, which will also feature musical performances from Madness and James Blunt.

According to Pal, there are not many comedians who live in India but work in mainstream festivals in Britain. He has some colleagues who do a lot of shows in the UK – but they tend to perform to first generation or second-generation people from Asia living in the UK.

“The way my career has oddly gone is that I’ve had a chance to do QI, a couple of Radio 4 shows and shows in Edinburgh, so it is geared toward a mainstream UK audience,” he said.

For the Kolkata-born comic, it is interesting to divide his time between his native country and the UK. He admitted that his material differs between the contemporary audience in India and the mainstream British audience.

“It has been quite an experience for me to literally have these two halves in my life – one in Mumbai and the UK,” he laughed.

Before he performed in Britain, Pal had visited on a number of occasions as a tourist. Looking back on his first impression of the country, it was the high level of politeness that initially struck him. The use of language in the UK was another challenge for the 43-year-old.

“For instance, if someone said to me and said, ‘they had a slight issue’, it could mean literally anything. It could mean they had murdered their whole family,” he joked. “It was something I thought about a lot. I come from a country where people almost overstate their emotions and are melodramatic when they don’t need that melodrama…It was a culture shock for me to find that contrast.”

As well as comedy, Pal has had experience in Bollywood. He was the screenwriter behind Loins Of Punjab Presents and The President Is Coming, both of which screened at leading film festivals around the world.

However, he admitted the Bollywood world has changed since he initially burst onto the scene in the late 2000s. For one, things were much less organised when he first began to work on scripts.

On one occasion, Pal had presented a 90-page film script to a producer – but was told he had “done too much work too soon”. “He said it was only once we had hired a Bollywood actor that we worked the script out,” Pal recalled. “I was like, anywhere else in the world, you’d need a script before you shoot a film. But the producer said, ‘this is India, don’t be crazy’.”

Since then, however, the world of Bollywood has changed. According to Pal, things have become a lot more organised. “The fun of it is gone,” Pal laughed. “There are storyboards, people with beards on a MacBook and everything is planned out – it is like anywhere else in the world.”

Anuvab Pal will be performing at the Henley Festival, Henley-on-Thames, on July 9. More info: www.henley-festival.co.uk