Laughter costing comedians more & more: Kunal Kamra after Munawar Faruqui’s B’luru show gets cancelled

PTI, Nov 29, 2021, 8:14 AM IST

Bengaluru: Popular stand-up comedian and activist Kunal Kamra on Sunday said the laughter is costing comedians more and more with every passing year. His statement comes on a day comedian Munawar Faruqui’s show in Bengaluru was called off by the organizers after the city police served them notice.

In their letter to the organisers of the show, the Bengaluru Police had cited the law and order situation in the city while also claiming that Munawar was a controversial comedian who had complaints registered against him for hurting the religious sentiments of people.

The cops had also cited that several organisations in the city were against the show and the comedian was banned in several states of the country.

Reacting to the development, fellow comedian Kunal Kamra shared a note through a Facebook post stating that laughter was costing comedians more and more with each passing year.

“With every passing year I feel laughter is costing comedians more & more. It’s costing them their spontaneity and its costing them their impulse. I have even heard some comedians telling jokes to their lawyers and showing their video to a legal team before they release it online,” (SIC) he wrote in his post.

“The impulse of any artist to be so calculative, a move in itself is the slow death of the art from. Laughter is beautiful, honest & most spurred by spontaneity – if a comedian is calculating what should they present to the audience for the audience to laugh at, the audience will also soon think what should they laugh on.” (SIC) he added.

He then quoted a Zen master and further wrote “A zen master once quoted “when you’re laughing you can never be in the past or the future”. That immense, confounding, timeless beauty of laughter is being penalised & criminalised. Imagine you reaching out to a comedian for a quote and comedian is not even trying to joke & is giving a serious calculated response, not a ephemeral, human reaction.” (SIC) he further added.