World Laughter Day special| Six stand ups reveal their first original joke
Six popular Indian stand ups- Papa CJ, Aaditya Kulshreshth, Sorabh Pant, Aditi Mittal, Punit Pania and Aakash Gupta share their first original joke with us.
They are all well-known stand ups today. But did you know they were funny from the word go? Here are six of your favourites on World Laughter Day today, revealing the first ever original joke they came up with:
PAPA CJ- I started my comedy career in London in 2004, and always tried to represent India in a positive light. The first line I wrote was, “Don’t mess with us Indians. We come from the land of the Kama Sutra, we can f*** you in more ways than you can count!” Also whenever I was heckled, I found the biggest, toughest, meanest guy in the room and destroyed him in front of the audience.
SORABH PANT- My first one stemmed from my school years. It went like- In the ninth standard. I was 14, a very shy kid, never got my bearings in school at all. The teacher told one of the students ‘so you are going to be in the tenth standard next year’, and I just said ‘hopefully’. That’s it, and three boys around me started giggling. Nobody else heard what I said, but one of the boys sitting behind me took my joke and said it loudly, the whole class started laughing. I was like ‘I have already made a joke and it’s already been plagiarized!’ I feel this is how it feels to crack a joke on stage- some Instagram handle, without giving you credit, does the same joke, and you are just like ‘that’s my joke, but it has just been said in a louder manner’! That’s why I am always loud as a comedian- so I get credit for my jokes.
AADITYA KULSHRESHTH (KULLU)- My first one was inspired from my college days. So this is what I wrote ‘There used to be a plantation drive in my college, it was considered a co curricular activity. But you can’t hit on girls during that time, varna ladki kya bolegi? ‘Yeh ladka kitna achha ped lagata hai’. It landed when I said it for the first time, the maximum laughter came from girls in the audience! One joke that fetched me the maximum laughter, I can add, was this ‘My girlfriend of a few months wants to talk for hours on phone. My conversation with my best friend of 15 years on phone is only ‘bhai aa raha hoon, bhai aa gaya’.”
PUNIT PANIA- My first joke in life was inspired by my passion for poetry in college. I said ‘When I was in college, I used to like doing poetry to deal with my depression. I have now started doing comedy to deal with my poetry’. It landed, and still does with newer audiences too.
ADITI MITTAL- My dad’s obviously the funniest person in my life. The first joke thus was ‘My dad’s Punjabi, so he couldn’t pronounce ‘bear’, he would say ‘beer instead’ So my entire childhood I thought it was ‘Goldilocks and the three beers’ I thought yeh Punjabi terms stories mein kahaan se aa rahe hain?! I thought Goldilocks was drinking beers.’ I delivered it at Cafe Goa in Mumbai at an open mic.
AAKASH GUPTA- I used to work in a corporate firm, and did stand up as part time earlier, I was not a comedian then. I went to my first open mic in formal clothes. I used to travel by the Delhi Metro frequently and observed things. My first joke was ‘ Metro mein coaches ke intersection pe couple khade hote hain, romance karte hain. Yeh voh part hai Metro ka jo hilta rehta hai. Ladke ne girlfriend se poocha ‘golgappe khaaogi baby? Haan bol rahi ya na bol rahi ho kuchh samajh nahi aa raha’.” I got cosy with the mic on stage to enact it.