Anand Rathnam
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Bengaluru-based comedian Anand Rathnam says he has “the most common backstory a comedian in India can have” — a boring job, an unpleasant employer and watching late-night stand-up comedy videos after a night out with his friend.Lured by the art form, Anand began watching more stand-up on the internet until he stumbled upon a Quora query asking for regular comedy open mics in Bengaluru. Upon discovering one of the venues, he reached out to the organisers and performed his first-ever stand-up comedy spot that evening in 2015. The following year, he quit his job to pursue comedy professionally.Over a decade later, he has released his first stand-up comedy special on YouTube. Titled Bollywood is Racist on the platform, the special is part of a show called Stupid Philosophy, with which he toured 16 cities in India for over a year.“The special is based around things that bug me or have bugged me in the past. It deals with instances where people tend to philosophise things, which are not that deep,” says Anand over a call from Bengaluru.The comedian, who previously released two 30-minute clips on YouTube, says dropping a special was the next obvious step in his career. “Once I felt that my material was funny enough, I thought it was the right time to upload it.”The special features observational and anecdotal humour, as Anand weaves in jokes about relationships, Bollywood’s representation of South India, and male aesthetic norms. The comedian incorporates his reflections on the topics with episodes in his life.
