Make Chai Not War Interview: Hari Kondabolu, Rajiv Satyal, Azhar Usman

“Connecting two nations via laughter is priceless. If you don’t like it, maybe it’s not your cup of tea,” says Rajiv Satyal, one-third of Make Chai Not War. Courtesy of the US Dept of State, three comedians of Indian origin (born and bred in America) have been on tour in India since January 4. The cities en route were Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Patna, Kolkata, Durgapur, and Mumbai. In order of height, the three men are,

Rajiv Satyal – According to his website bio, he is “the fun-size Indian comedian from Ohio whose witty, universal, and TV-clean act resonates with Middle America by covering everything from racial issues to soap bottles to his favorite topic – himself.” He is a former engineer/P&G marketer who has repeatedly opened for the likes of Dave Chappelle, Tim Allen and Russell Peters.

Hari Kondabolu – A former immigrant rights organiser from Seattle, Kondabolu is born and raised in New York, and his comedy teeters on the confrontational and potentially offensive (yeah, we hate that word too). Hari has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham and his Comedy Central Presents half-hour television special debuted on February 2011 (check out this hilarious promo video for the special). Kondabolu also co-hosts the mostly improvised monthly talk show The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project with his younger brother Ashok Kondabolu aka Dap from hip hop group Das Racist in New York City.

Azhar Usman - “Intellectually white; emotionally Japanese; spiritually Indian; psychically Persian; physically Arab; artistically southeast Asian; romantically Latino; and psychologically black.” Azhar Usman is the co-founder of an internet startup, and practiced law too. By the way, he’s also the comic that founded the ‘Allah Made Me Funny—Official Muslim Comedy Tour’ which toured over 20 countries. During Usman’s sets he delves into topics such as spirituality, faith, atheism, America and the rest of the world.

We caught up with the trio at the lobby of the grand Trident Hotel at Bandra-Kurla complex, Mumbai to chat about being in India, the Ramayana, inappropriate jokes, Patna, silk, and “the cold-hearted Indian stare”. Azhar wasn’t feeling too well so he joined us mid-way.

M: So how has it been, coming to the ‘Motherland’? Did you get any advice from your parents, like, ‘You must meet aunty Meena’?

Rajiv: That’s really funny, you always have to call when we’re in town. (points to Hari) You got that advice about your joke.

Hari: I didn’t get advice or guidance about what I should do, because they knew it was a business trip. We went over jokes, my mom especially wanted to go over jokes, my dad wanted to go over what to say, what not to say. So it was like, don’t talk about Ramayana, don’t talk about religion, don’t talk about anything that has too much personality. Don’t talk about it. There is this one thing they told me about. I had this long joke, about an English girlfriend in London, staying over my place, three nights a week, four nights a week, five nights a week. But then anyway, at the end of it, I realize that she didn’t love me, she was trying to colonise me. And that’s the joke. But my parents, my mum especially said, ‘Avoid the part where a woman is staying over at your place because it might make the audience uncomfortable.’ Well, keeping in mind my mom’s India is a different India, from a different era, and a different place. So she’s been disconnected from…

Rajiv: It’s frozen in time, from whenever you leave any place. My parents, to them, India is India 1971. That’s it, they left 40 years ago.

Hari: It’s not like they are not aware of the fact that things have changed.

Rajiv: But they don’t internalize it. Their point of view is still 1971.

Hari: … I make Ramayana jokes, no one knows what the hell I’m talking about. And whenever I make the jokes, it’s always older people that laugh. It’s because there is a generation that just doesn’t have the same connection to it.

Rajiv: Our parents were around, it’s an old story, so they were closer to when it occurred.

Hari: I mean keep in mind that then there was just Doordarshan. It was just one channel forever. Now, it’s like I don’t want to watch Ramayana, I wanna watch something else.

Rajiv: American Idol.

Hari: Now it’s like, I’ll watch MTV instead of Ramayan.

Rajiv: Mahabharath television.

Hari: Mahabharath Television (MTV). So she asked me to be conservative about it. So I changed the joke in Chennai to be about a male roommate who stayed and kept taking up my space and I used the same colonial analogy to make it less awkward. And it worked ok, but afterwards the audience came up to me and they were like, ‘Why’d you hold back?’, I was like, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we saw your stuff online, and you were clearly holding back, you were clearly not being natural. The colonialism joke I had seen on the internet wasn’t the way you told it.’
My mom said that people might be offended that a woman was staying at my place. This guy looked at me and said, ‘Hari, you know we have sex in India right.’ Yeah I’ve seen some statistics. I’d skimmed a book.

Rajiv: I’ve seen the numbers.

Hari: I think there is an India that I didn’t know existed.

M: But that was quite amazing, that people actually realized that you were holding back.

Hari: The audience senses that. They’d seen my stuff online ahead of time and they knew what I did. And an audience senses when a performer isn’t being true to them. Like when they’re doing a joke they’ve done a million times and they don’t care about, they know they don’t care about it. They’re faking the passion. They know when they’re not really connecting, making eye contact. They know when it’s not real. And comedy, part of what makes it work is the real connection. It looks improvised. It looks like it’s happening in the moment. It looks like it was prepared or written, because we’re in the space and with the audience. They know we’re elsewhere and I was in my head. I was like, ‘Ah, don’t offend them, go this way. This is too interesting, must steer away from that.’ And so after that Chennai show, I loosened up and it’s been better. That Chennai show was good, but I became myself, especially in Kolkata. That city is so great.

Rajiv: Kolkata embraced Hari.

Hari: They were so good to me.

M: They are exceedingly well-read in Kolkata.

Rajiv: Well, they are exceedingly well-red, because the Communist party had been there for so long. Seinfeld joke.

Hari: That’s funny. Well-read, read, red. Umm, two weeks of that.

Rajiv: Two weeks of pun-ny Indian.

M: What about you, Rajiv? Did your family give you any sort of bizarre advice?

Rajiv: My dad actually came with me, that was his advice… ‘I’m coming with you.’ I’m going to give you something to remember, I will just stay by your side for the entire trip. So he is here in the hotel.

M: Are there any Indian idiosyncrasies that you have seen here that are quite different from…

Rajiv: Staring.

Hari: Yeah, staring, staring.

Rajiv: It’s quite funny and it’s weird to me that I’ve done so many desi shows in the States and I noticed that desi’s stared but it’s a different stare here. And I just assumed it was because I look so different you know. But they stare at that guy too (points at random person in lobby).

Hari: It’s like they’re staring at your soul and they’re uninterested.

Rajiv: That’s really funny.

Hari: It’s not like they’re inquisitive, like – how does this person exist? Or why does he or she look this way. Look at that freak. Look at that long-haired mustachioed South Indian freak (referring to himself). The cold-hearted Indian stare.

Rajiv: Totally. Well I think Indian’s here are so thin because they’re stairmasters.

Hari: Because of the exercise equipment, staremasters, stairmaster.

M: Don’t explain it.

Rajiv: It only makes it worse.

M: I know!

Hari: Staremasters, that’s good Rajiv.

Rajiv: It’s so (laughing, and slapping thigh), oh God. It’s awful.

Hari: Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks of this.

M: How did you survive?

Hari: I sleep a lot, or I pretend to sleep, so that no one speaks to me.

M: Why don’t you just give him the stare?

Hari: Stare at him? That’s not going to help.

M: No?

Hari: No. Playing dead is better.

M: Have you taken any material from here that you really want to use?

Rajiv: Back to the States, that’s a good question. That you think people would get there, from here. Besides the staring thing.

Hari: The only thing I have is – I’m digging the whole Amy Jackson business and the Hrithik Roshan thing because I talk about racism in the States and colourism in Indian culture or just dark-skinned seen as less-than or lack of representation in the media of dark-skinned people… I think that could translate in America, because I think there are lots of minorities in America who have similar themes in their communities. Black community, Latino community, where dark is considered negative. You know Amy Jackson, this actress here, she’s like a white English woman, no Indian heritage, who’s gonna come down here and they’re gonna dub her in Hindi, and they dubbed her in Tamil last year. It’s a humiliating kind of thing, that we somehow see ourselves as less than… I mean she’s not even an actress, she’s a beauty pageant contestant. But she was pretty enough and that’s all they’re looking for. It’s both sexist, and self-hating. So, you can’t have dark-skinned women in Bollywood movies, but a dude with six fingers on one hand is perfectly acceptable?

M: There are a lot of beauty pageant covert actresses that are here. They win the Miss India or Miss World pageants, like Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, and there are so many. Lara Dutta? There are loads of them. You’re pretty, now you can act.

Hari: There is that phenomenon and there’s that compounded with like the racial aspect of it. They bring these woman down and all Bollywood films now seem to have it. I mean the random white dancers. Who are these people? Where are they? Why are they dancing? I love the idea of making white people dance, I think that’s where tables have turned.

Rajiv: Tables have turned shovin’ and jivin’.

Hari: Now you entertain me white people, you dance behind Hrithik. You do that. But it’s a bizarre thing. And so there’s that whole dubbing business. I mean, we already ruined Lagaan with that white lady’s singing.

M: What’s next for you guys?

Hari: I’ve spoke about this in Andhra a great deal, but I want to make a film from Tollywood, that is the Telugu film industry, (with) superstar Mahesh Babu.

Azhar: Boom

Rajiv: Babu-m

Hari: I wanna make a film based on the Eddie Murphy film, Beverly Hills Cop. It’s going to be called Banjara Hills Cop, where I will play Judge Reinhold, and he (Mahesh Babu) will play the Eddie Murphy character. I mentioned this in the Hyderabad papers, and I’ve gotten no response from Mr Babu. I also tweeted him. Nothing.

Rajiv: Write him a letter.

Azhar: What do I wanna do? Umm, sleep. Well in my career?

M: Yeah.

Azhar: Well I just want to be an extra in that film. It sounds very interesting.

M: What kind of extra?

Azhar: I want to be security for Mahesh Babu.

M: His bodyguard?

Azhar: I’d stare straight at the camera, while the action is going on behind me.

Rajiv: Like those guys at rap concerts. The big guys that just stare out in suits.

Azhar: S1W. I mean that’s actually one of my dreams when I was a kid, was to become an S1W.

M: What is the difference you’ve seen between audiences here, and an audience in…

Rajiv: In Durgapur? I like Durgapur, that was great. That was your strongest set (points to Hari).

Azhar: Yeah, it was.

Hari: I have always said that my audience have been children in school uniforms aged, 12-15 and any old man over the age of 70. If you get me those two poles. I’ll dominate.

M: Was there anything you were looking forward to when the India shows got booked?

Rajiv: Indians. I love Indians.

M: Do you just walk up to them and hug them and go, ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

Rajiv: They’re staring at us and that’s how we break the stare. We should do that next time. Just walk up and hug them. Hello, aunty.

Azhar: Hey dude, I had a breakthrough about the staring thing. The truth is, Indian people are just being way more honest about the situation that they are in. Basically, eastern people are just more honest than western people. What I mean by that is, western society has created this fictitious notion that’s a collective delusion, that everybody accepts and agrees that we’re all going to indulge this illusion. There is delusion, and illusion – delusion is the deception inside yourself, and illusion is the deception outside yourself. Which is the notion that, we’re going to go around pretending that people have private space, even though we are in a public space. You can’t do that. If I stand and you get into an elevator, we just ignore each other completely! Like, no! What’s up? I’m standing here. This is the world, this is a public place, I’m standing here on the street too, what’s up. You’re a dude too, I’m a dude.

Hari: In their own head they are in a private space. Publicly, they can treat it like this is a museum of freakish people to stare at.

M: What kind of material do you guys have that is accepted no matter where you go in the world?

Rajiv: Silk, silk breathes very easily, so I try to wear silk.

Azhar: Boom. Material.

Hari: So good.

M: So smooth.

Hari: You’re like a machine that makes things nobody wants.

(laughter ensues all around)

Rajiv: That pretty much sums it up. What nobody wants. Like the US military.

Hari: Please don’t print that.

M:Will anyone answer the question?

Rajiv: Anything that is personal and about you. They say that which is most personal, is most general. That will translate everywhere, because we all do the same little things. Once you start getting bigger and bigger, people have different points of view. If you do stuff that’s really your own idiosyncrasies, we are all very, very similar.

Hari: I have a joke about chocolate and Jesus, that has worked everywhere. It has never failed except in Patna, Bihar. I’ve done it for years, in multiple countries, and only in Patna has it failed. And that’s my first joke too, so I’m like, ‘Oh no! That’s the bullet proof joke that never fails and that’s my first one,’ and I still had to do 29 more minutes.

M: Would you come back to India again?

Rajiv: We’d love to come back. It would be great to come and perform here regularly. It’s great that it has been an event. We would come back on occasion.

M: Would you come back just for a holiday?

Rajiv: No.

Hari: Absolutely not. Are you kidding me, without these hotels (Trident, BKC), I’m not interested.

Rajiv: I’m not paying for this myself. Are you out of your mind? Stick it to the taxpayer.

Hari: This is the first time I’ve actually properly come to India. I feel like when you’re with family, you’re sheltered. You see a version of India. I want the real India. This is the real India, that looks just like the States (remarks on the Trident hotel, BKC lobby). I mean, just the typical Indian breakfast you get – beans and French toast, cut-fruit smoothies, like all Indians do.

M: Anything else?

Hari: Just a big shout out to Chinna, my tailor in Tenali, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh and his Flarex brand.

Photos by Naman Saraiya. Location courtesy of Trident Hotel, Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai.