Rise of Stand-Up comedians in India

Almost every human in the world is leading a stressful life these days. One of the best medicines for stress is comedy. The trending style of comedy in today's generation is "Stand-Up Comedy". Clearly, now-a-days people are getting attracted to these kind of shows. What is Stand-Up comedy? Stand-Up comedy is a comic style in which a comedian performs in front of a live audience, usually speaking directly to them. The comedian is commonly known as comic. He receives the responses instantly from the audience. He/she immediately understands how good he is, at cracking the joke. There will be a lot of pressure in the mind of speaker. Yet he manages to make the people laugh.

This era of Stand-Up Comedy has begun long back. United Kingdom has a good heritage of this, which began in the music halls of 18^th and 19^th centuries. This is used as a weapon by most of the speakers during Second World War to attract people to wartime concert parties. Later, some of such speakers made this as their profession. With the rise of television and radio these shows has got a huge popularity. Many shows are running based on this concept in many channels. Simultaneously there is a huge growth in comics too.

But the revolution of Stand-Up comedy shows began in India during 1980’s (a bit too late ;p). Johnny Lever is one of the first Stand-Up comedians in India. He initially performed in some musical shows. Now, there are many other Indian comics like Kapil Sharma, Raju Shrivastav, Krishna Abhishek etc., in the field of television/films. There are also comics in YouTube like Vir Das, Abish Mathew, Kanan Gill etc. There are female comics too (quite a few but awesome). Some of them are Aditi Mittal, Vasu Primalni etc. The English Stand-Up comedy is new  and growing in India. Some of the best Indian Youtubers are Stand-Up Comics. Here are some of their channels.

1. AIB:Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Ashish Shakya, Rohan Joshi

2. TVF: The Viral Fever

3. East India Company: Sorabh Pant, Kunal Rao, Sapan Verma, Sahil Shah, Atul Khatri, Azeem Banatwalla

4. Kanan Gill and Biswa Kalyan Rath

Some of the best Indian comics are

1.Varun Grover

He mostly writes satires and writes for an online comedy show called Jai Hind.

2.Papa CJ

When we talk of Indian Stand-Up comedy, We cannot miss counting this person. Forbes called him “the global face of Indian Stand-Up”.

3.Aditi Mittal

She does some really awesome characters.

4.Kapil Sharma

No best Stand-Up comedy lists end up without mentioning his name.He becomes one with the crowd and appeals to all kinds of people from Ambani to Rikshawallah.

5.Abish Mathew

Abish Mathew has the potential to appeal to anyone between ages of 13 to 60.

Many festivals are being run taking this Stand-Up comedy as theme. Stand-Up comedy is the focus of four major international festivals: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Just for Laughs, HBO’s U.S. Comedy arts festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Some of the famous Indian Stand-Up comedy videos can be watched here

1.Kenny Sebastian's taking a bucket bath in India