The Outsider, page 27
* * *
A person came to Mumbai with basically nothing. A person sold out a stadium. A person who is about to shoot a Netflix special in four seconds. A person who will have fifteen cameras pointed at him. About 180 people are working on this person’s show right now. Twelve thousand people have paid to see this person. This person came to this city as a complete outsider. Now people know this person.
People… this is about people… not a person. The person feels like he can breathe again. The person feels heat between his eyes. That’s the only way I know how to describe the flow state. To me, stand-up is warmth. When it’s going well, I feel the heat. Like the audience and I have the same body temperature. I feel it between my eyes, and on the back of my neck. My eyes are warming up.
The massive LED screen says VIR DAS.
And then…
AUGUST 29, 2024.
I’m sitting in a suite at the Taj St. James’ Court hotel in London. I’m in the living room area. It’s this uber-luxurious hotel that combines old-world charm with rich carpets, colonial furniture, and good old Indian service and hospitality. Maybe one of my favorite places to stay in the world. They’re happy to have me and take great care of me.
I’m crying. Silently. Because a voice will not come out of my body.
I did twenty-six shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and I woke up on day twenty-seven without a voice. No signs leading up to it. No warnings. No vocal fatigue. I just woke up without a motherfucking voice. I can make sounds, but it feels like my throat is broken by a massive lump inside it. I sound damaged. I sound old. I sound tired, and I sound like there is not enough air and, more important, not enough soul in my body.
No matter what I do, a voice will NOT FUCKING COME OUT OF MY MOUTH.
I have not lost my voice. That has happened before, so I know what that feels like. This is different. This feels like I will never be okay again.
Oh yeah. I just sold out the NSCI stadium in Mumbai in twenty minutes. A record for an Indian artist. The show is in seven weeks. It’s the second part of my new Netflix special; the London concert tomorrow night will be part one.
I have spent the entire Edinburgh Festival Fringe obsessing over this show. I had just won an Emmy for the last one. This one has to be better, tighter, more craft, less sympathy, louder laughs, no fat, all heart. I have spent twenty-six days going to the national library of Scotland and sitting in a room obsessing over every single word of this special. I haven’t been drinking, not eating carbs, no smoking, no sugar. The show is ready, I am fit, I am at my fighting weight. I am also ready.
SO WHY WON’T A VOICE COME OUT OF MY USELESS, BROKEN BODY?
I have made a video telling folks that the London show has been pushed. I hit upload. I cry some more. People are amazing about it. They send me thousands of DMs of kindness saying things like, “We will come back for you whenever the new date is announced, just be well!” or “Hey man, it happens to all of us.”
NO, IT FUCKING DOESN’T! Because I do not know what is happening. I cannot cancel a stadium in Mumbai that I waited fifteen years to sell out. Netflix is on board, the crew is hired, every seat in the arena is gone. So many people will lose their jobs if I cancel.
Shivani is in the hotel room with me and takes me down to the Chinese restaurant. She orders, the staff want selfies, and they try to talk to me. She has to explain that I have no voice. They all look at me sympathetically. Then the funniest thing happens. As they talk to me, they start talking softly too. I realize that silence is contagious.
Later, we fly Air India, land in Mumbai. Then the countdown begins. The second part of my new comedy special for Netflix is going to be shot at the NSCI stadium in Mumbai, in the dome, for twelve thousand people, in seven weeks.
Dr. Nupur and Dr. Zainab are sticking a camera down my throat. Telling me I have vocal cysts and I need surgery. I’m grateful I’m not naked on an operating table telling lies while singing the national anthem. This feels very true and very real. I begin vocal therapy and medication. I will spend the next seven weeks largely in silence.
Five weeks to go and I am walking around my office rehearsing stand-up comedy in my mind because I am not allowed to use my throat. Every inch of my jaw aches. I have something called TMJ, where my jaw is locking up and I am told that my jaw is connected to my hips. So if I want to loosen my jaw I have to relax my hips. I am reminded how my jaw is usually the reason for trouble in my hips. Ever since the days of boarding school lashings, my jaw, my mouth, has been the problem.
Four weeks to go, and the team comes to me and asks if we need to cancel the NSCI show. I still do not have a voice. Netflix is paying us a lot of money to do my special. I am supposed to perform this thing and direct it? Both impossible without a voice. Also maybe spare myself the humiliation of looking weak in front of twelve thousand people? I’m on heavy medication and not allowed to work out. Even worse, I sound weak. I remind them that the poster has already been printed.
Two weeks to go and I break. I can barely get a sound out. How the fuck am I going to do two back-to-back hundred-minute shows for a taping? That’s three hours and twenty minutes of stand-up comedy in one day, and I haven’t been onstage in a month now. I was so fucking tight a month ago; now nothing feels right. I’ve gone through every joke I’ve ever written in the last three weeks in my head, and I’m CONVINCED I’ve been using my voice wrong this whole time. I cry while I pray, silently. I am not going to be ready. I don’t feel ready. I am reminded that I have NEVER felt ready. Not for my first film, not for my first kiss, not for my first date, not for Mumbai, not for Delhi, not for Alabama, not for the wedding I canceled, not for the material at the Kennedy Center, not for Brown Men Can’t Hump. I just WAS. I was there, unready, and it happened. How is this any different?
Eight days to go, and my voice comes back… for an outsider. A food delivery guy hands me a parcel and I say, “Thank you, bhaisaab,” without thinking. It just comes out of me. Maybe that’s the trick. Not to think about it. Any of it. Just to live it. I try to remind myself to do that from this point on. My whole life has been words. It’s the only good I know how to trade. Do not think about the words, but trust I’ve put in enough time that they now live in me and will find their way out. Can I do that for the next half of my life? What kind of book is that gonna end up being? Will I want to write that book more than I did this one? Probably not.
Three days to go and I can hear my voice fully. In seventy-two hours, I will shoot my new special. I am not ready. The maximum length of stand-up I have done so far is fifty-five minutes. I now have to do only a little less than quadruple that duration magically without running out of voice or breath. I have taken to rehearsing with a sixty-six-pound weighted vest on and leg weights so that hopefully when I do the stadium without them it feels easier.
But I can hear my voice.
I HAVE a voice. And it is different.
It does not sound the same. There is a tiny crack there that you may never notice, but I think may never go away. I’m not mad at it. It’s my kintsugi. I’ve changed.
Kintsugi is an art where you fill the cracks of a plate with gold. And it then becomes something broken, but new. Alchemy. That’s what makes comedy truly beautiful to me—at its root it is alchemy. This peninsula of words, breath, and idiocy that turns pain into thoughts, thoughts into words, words into jokes, jokes into laughter, laughter into memory, memories into headlines, happy headlines into bullshit, bullshit into thoughts, thoughts into words, words into jokes, jokes into laughter, laughter into memory… on and on. Burnt effigies into love.
Alchemy.
October 2024.
I wait in the dark. On one knee at the stadium.
The massive LED screen says VIR DAS.
And then…
I step onto the stage.
The ground is shaking. Mumbai is here. I am… afraid. I breathe, and I think of Watson, and then I think of who is in this room. Fellow wanderers, complete vagabonds, utter idiots, committed clowns, and lonely people looking to belong. Always looking, never knowing. Here to see a fool.
I belong to them, as much as this book belongs to you.
And now I have a job to do.
I know because I see golden orbs, and stage dust, and the temperature is just right.
It’s warm, so warm, almost like we’re outside.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is in no particular order. To my manager, Reg Tigerman, for convincing me to write this book and that books in general are a good idea. People still read books, right? To my entire team at United Talent Agency for allowing me to have a career while living on a different shore across the world.
To Shivani Mathur, and Watson, Stupid, and Lucy Das for giving a constant traveler the feeling of home. To my parents, Ranu Das and Madhur Das, for always being in my corner. Priyanka Khirmani, of Khirmani and Associates, for keeping me a free man. To every employee who worked at Weirdass Comedy and helped build the Mumbai comedy scene, thanks for making me laugh while we were working to make other people laugh. To Akash Sharma for being my strong, unshakeable right hand. To Rakshita Swami who fearlessly led Weirdass Comedy through a very tough pandemic. To Kavi Shastri for being the amazing other side of my creative brain.
To Delhi Public School Noida for recognizing that I was different and pushing me. To Knox College for giving me the audacity to be something different. To Collective Artists Network for helping build and rebuild this crazy India career that has ended fifteen times. To Trisha Das for being the voice in my head. To Siddharth Singhal for being a consistent cheerleader and manager. To Ivan Davidson for telling me I was good enough.
To Netflix India for creating a place for my comedy to live. To the Comedy Cellar for giving me a comedy home in New York City that makes me want to do better. To the Habitat Mumbai for being Mumbai comedy’s ride or die and the place I try out all my new ideas. To Aamir Khan Productions for Delhi Belly and Happy Patel, two very different kinds of film schools. To Dennis and Sharon Coehlo for giving us a home in Goa to escape to. To Mrs. Surjeet Khanna for standing up for me more than I ever stood up for myself. To Kaizad Gherda, Sidd Coutto, and all the other members of Alien Chutney for teaching me how to write songs and what it means to be in a band.
To the cinema of Mel Brooks for showing me that silly is best. To George Carlin for telling it like it is, Richard Pryor for turning pain into comedy, Eddie Izzard for making it seem like it was all made up on the spot. To the people at CNBC for allowing a scared-shitless twenty-four-year-old to tell jokes. To Zoom TV and The Times of India organization: Sorry, I still don’t know what a VJ is.
To Dina Gachman for helping me pull all these ideas and feelings out of my head. To my grandfather B.S. Das, otherwise known as Baba, for teaching me the value of stories. To the city of Mumbai for giving me a quintessentially Mumbai “dream come true” story.
And finally, to anyone anywhere across the world who ever bought a ticket to come see me and gave me the privilege of their laughter. It is absolutely insane to think that somewhere across the world right now sits another person who is interested in the madness in my mind. Thank you for showing up, even if I was occasionally fifteen minutes late. Thank you for Ubering. Thank you for walking. Thank you for taking a train or a flight. Thank you for getting babysitters. Thank you for skipping a college class. Thank you for saving money. Thank you for booking the row that you couldn’t afford. Thank you for booking the only row that you could afford. Thank you for always keeping me humble and making me scared to disappoint you.
What a privilege, what a life, what a journey! Thank you so much.
More in Personal Memoirs
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Shoe Dog
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
Year of Yes
An Invisible Thread
Primates of Park Avenue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© VIKRAM PATHAK
Emmy-winning comedian and actor VIR DAS has emerged as one of the most beloved voices in comedy worldwide. The New York Times says, “No artist embodies the globalization of stand-up like Vir Das.” Vir has released five comedy specials on Netflix, and clips online have amassed hundreds of millions of views. He was nominated for his comedy special Vir Das: For India in 2021, and in 2023 he won his first International Emmy Award for Best Comedy for Vir Das: Landing. In addition to his success on the stand-up comedy stage, Vir has created, produced, and starred in multiple series, including ABC’s Whiskey Cavalier, Netflix’s Hasmukh, and Amazon’s Jestination Unknown. He also starred in Judd Apatow’s Netflix feature The Bubble, and he is currently developing various film and television projects.
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Interior design by Hope Herr-Cardillo
Jacket design and illustrations by Shivam Agnihotri
Jacket photograph by Rohan Shreshtha
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025939427
ISBN 978-1-6680-6632-4
ISBN 978-1-6680-6633-1 (ebook)
Vir Das, The Outsider
