Mumbai-based comic Aditi Mittal finds humour across cultures

by LAUREN CODLING

INDIAN comedian Aditi Mittal has said that her Edinburgh Fringe debut this summer was a “comedy bootcamp” that changed her approach to the craft.

Mittal, 31, who is among the few successful Indian female comedians, was among performers at the renowned festival in August.

“It was like being at comedy boot camp. Wake up, watch comedy, do comedy, go to sleep. “Eighty per cent of the time I felt like I’d stumbled into the best situation in the world,” Mittal recalled.

“[The experience] changed the way I see comedy. Seven years [into my career] and I feel like I’m still in a phase when I’m still processing the world around me through my comedy.

“To see people, do such unique things, whether it is standup or improv or the street performances… I’ve never seen anything like it on the scale like that.”

Mittal is currently in London where she is halfway through the run of her show Global Village Idiot at the Soho Theatre. She has been working in standup for seven years.

One of her first big breaks came in 2009 when she was the only Indian female comic to be featured in an Indians only standup show called Local Heroes in Mumbai.

Since then, her international career has gone from strength to strength – her first Netflix special, Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say, was released in July and is one of her “proudest” moments thus far.

Working between two continents can be a challenge, the comic found.

She learned to adapt her humour to different audiences, having realised that material that one audience may love could flop with another.

“Now I have an hour in India and an hour in London and it’s two different shows,” she told Eastern Eye in an exclusive interview. “I do a show in India that gets applause and I do the same material in the UK and they’re like ‘…and then?’”

Mittal also found that the more personal and emotive her material is, the more universal it becomes.

“If you zoom in on something, not your nationality or your context, you zoom in on the human experience,” she explained. “I do a bit about my sister when she passed away and I realised that it is an emotion that anyone can identify with, anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows what that feels like.”

Mittal’s love for her job is clear but she has experienced a backlash.

One male audience member tried to spit in her face (an attempt that failed as the spit failed to project, covering the perpetrator instead) and threats of acid attacks, one of which was so serious that her show had to be cancelled.

“I have a terrible reputation. I am known as a man-hating, boob and bra-talking comedian,” she laughed. “But you know, well-behaved women seldom make history.”

Her material is stark and honest; she covers everything from sanitary napkin anecdotes to her first experience using a bidet. Nothing, it seems, is too personal for the blue-haired comic.

She wants to talk about these things and normalise them. Talking about taboo topics in India can be shocking to some, but it won’t stop her, Mittal said.

“I’m not going to act like these things don’t exist. I’m not telling lies. If it isn’t for you, it isn’t for you.”

The past year was a “weird” one, Mittal said. Two days before her Netflix special was released, her sister died. Mittal also lost her father, one of her biggest supporters and “a big influence” on her humour, this year.

“When my dad came to watch me for the first time in 2012, he had tears in his eyes after the show. He was just very proud,” Mittal reminisced. The day her parents saw her perform was one of her proudest and it was then that she stopped caring what anyone else thought of her.

“The day I got their approval, I thought the rest of the world can go **** itself,” she explained. “The people I care most about approve of what I’m doing, so I’m set.”

Whatever tragedy she has gone through, Mittal knows that eventually it will distil into something funny. Her inspiration comes from everyday life – even the moments that hurt – and she explained anything that “cuts down deep” will eventually become a source of comedy.

“Comedy is tragedy plus time – the more it hurts, the funnier it will be when it comes out,” she said. “Pain and death is the source of my material. While you’re living through s**t, it just takes a while to process it.”

In her Soho show, Mittal performed a skit about the time she was propositioned for a threesome after a show. It’s a funny yarn, the audience roared with laughter at the story as she told it, but Mittal admitted that at the time, it was “terrifying”.

It was a story she refused to tell her mother in fear of her worrying about the career path she had chosen.

“It is one of those things, it needs to brew for a bit, but that’s why older women are always funny,” she laughed. “This job, it doesn’t depend on looks and as you get older, you get more stories and give less s**ts.

“I’m really looking forward to ageing. I can’t wait. I want to live long and be on stage and tell more jokes and more truths and that’s something I’m so excited about.”

The conversation turns to her experiences of being a woman in the industry; it doesn’t sound like it has been a particularly easy ride, but Mittal is eager to encourage more women to take it up.

“There is a lot of drama; the producers, how you get slots, the way you get announced on stage, you know ‘the best tits in the business’, whatever,” she said. “Even if someone is talking over you or abusing you, my advice to any aspiring comedians would be just stand right there and stick with it.”

The hashtag that has been making news in the past week, #MeToo – a symbol of support and acknowledgement of sexual harassment directed at women since the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal has come to light – sparked strong emotions in Mittal.

She said women face discrimination and harassment in any field, no matter where they are in the world.

“I think now EVERY interview with any powerful male should have the question ‘have you seen sexual harassment and discrimination in your field and what do you think should be done about it?’” she said. “That should get the attention of the men in power and maybe something can change.”

Mittal is from Mahim, a “really old” neighbourhood in Mumbai. She lives with her mother in a building that was originally home to her grandparents in 1937, when they moved from Pakistan to India.

She described the archaic structure as having high ceilings, thick walls and old tiles that are chipping away.

“I love it,” she said. Some of the many YouTube videos posted on her channel are filmed at her home – a place she and her friends love to hang out in.

Mittal hopes to keep touring and venture into television. A US tour is in the pipeline and she is in talks to continue her shows in the UK on a wider scale. However, she insisted that she would not leave India to live abroad. “My home is my mum,” she smiled. “I’ve become all very much about my mum."