EVAM - Standup comedy troupe

Being part of CBC has its own benefits. The very first get together was a photo walk on old Elphinstone bridge. The second meet was even more interesting. We all gathered for a stand up comedy show. To be honest I never really had high opinions of the show, for the simple reason that, like majority of people who had never attended such shows and've only read about them on Friday news paper supplements, I was of the opinion that it was for some eccentric patrons and out of work movie stars and no one from general public even bothers to turn the side such events happen. How wrong was I !! First thing, tickets were priced at 300 rupees. Why am I revealing the amount first hand? well...just to stress the point that is following. The show was HOUSEFULL. Jam packed the auditorium was. It was so full that people didn't even mind sitting on the floors and pathways and whatever inch of free space available to park their butts. Another point to note was that the average age of the crowd wouldn't have been a day over 28. There were couple of oddball maami's here and there whom I later got to know that were parents of some of the performers.

Evam- as some of you might've known already are a drama troupe, known for their offbeat English plays and interestingly the stand up comedy show that we went to, was their 101st show. There were 4 performers and one of the acted as the compere. That guy was pretty neat and almost all of the jokes were xxx rated and many of them really brought the house down. Next performer was Karthi Kumar, the niranthara America maapillai of Tamil cinema who is well known for his bridesmaid who gets dumped at the altar roles. His theme was about abuse words. It was an interesting take on bad words and usage and ceiling for verbal abuse beyond which it goes physical with DETAILED explanation of all the bad words related to mom, sis and every other singleton word that you can think of, followed by his humorous take on Sex education and save tiger/save world campaigns. There was another guy who spoke a million words per sec. Again down right vulgar jokes and all related to tam brahm's and software engineers. The last guy who came up on stage pretty much had given up after those 3 rocking performances and was outright jealous of the applause that the other 3 got and which his hi funda jokes didn't garner.

The surprise factor for me was the gumbal that turned up for the event and also the applause and acknowledgement for some of the jokes that were R rated of the upper case R of the biggest font category :) Our Chennai is opening up for sure and considering that these fellows have quit their well paying jobs for following their passion, it feels happy to see that such vocations are also happening to find favour among general public.