





Kapil Sharma is flopping around inside his vanity van, belt unbuckled and jeans hanging below the waist, bemoaning the agony of stardom. As three men with cascading paunches - whom Sharma has invited to go shirtless for a gag - wait outside, he bellows in Hindi, "Poora din bas photo hi kheechata rahu? (Should I just keep posing for photos all day?)" A production assistant who appears to be mostly legs and collarbone shivers anxiously. "I feel hungry and tired too," Sharma grumbles, throwing a towel onto the dresser. "Ok, sorry, bring them in," he finally concedes.



It's past midnight in Film City, a strange place in suburban Mumbai reserved for television and film shoots, safe from the spell of irony. Sharma, 32, has just finished shooting another episode of Comedy Nights With Kapil, the most-watched non-fiction show in India, where he makes people laugh and gets to kiss the cheeks of famous Bollywood stars. He's let the mantle of most-watched show slip only twice in the seven months since his show launched in June last year, and is often greeted with overtures like "Comedy King," "The Ruler of Hearts," "Laugh Riot," and "Indian of the Year".



"I don't know how I became so famous," Sharma says to me, sinewy with a square face and neatly parted hair. "This is the fruit of blessings. All of India's blessings."



Sharma grew up in police quarters in Amritsar, fantasizing about making it as a singer. His father, a police officer, and mother, a housewife, would watch dreamily as he whipped out his guitar at family functions, and as aunties in embellished saris and uncles in safari suits scurried across halls with praise and tips to ward off the evil eye. He was in his early 20s and not getting much farther than singing at local college youth festivals when he heard that a local TV channel was recruiting comedians for its Punjabi stand-up show, Hasde Hasounde Ravo. He showed up with a backpack and a wry smile, and made it to the final round.



"My father would pull my mother's tail, and my mother would pull my father's tail," Sharma says to me tonight, sitting on a bouncy faux leather couch inside his van. "So basically, our house was full of pulled tails."



Even though he didn't win that first TV contest, the sight of audiences bending with laugher inspired him to move to Mumbai in 2007 to participate in The Great Indian Laughter Challenge on Star One, a Hindi stand-up comedy show judged by actor-comic Shekhar Suman and cricketer-comic Navjot Singh Sidhu (the latter is now a fixture on Sharma's show). By now, Sharma had mastered the character of Shamsher Singh, the arrogant, paan-chewing, occasionally drunk Punjabi police officer. Shamsher gave him a ticket to another hit show called Comedy Circus on Sony TV, in which he participated in seven seasons and won six.



Last year, Sharma hosted the dance reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, compered the "Colors Golden Petals Awards" for TV stars, appeared 93rd on Forbes India's Celebrity 100 list and was named 'Indian of the Year' by the news channel CNN-IBN. He's growing used to the cameras trailing him these days.



His show Comedy Nights With Kapil on Colors TV is an unofficial adaptation of the British show The Kumars at No. 42, complete with a libidinous grandmother, an unmarried aunt, a dangerously fat neighbor and a nagging wife. While a chunk of the show is solo stand-ups and sketches between the characters, at least a third usually involves interaction with members of the audience, who happily line up for their public flogging. In one episode, a good-natured gentleman told Sharma he had travelled from Indore to attend his show. "Look at him," Sharma crowed back. "Do I ever show up in Indore to see your factory?"



"I started doing really well, but I [still] wasn't getting to sing," Sharma tells me. And so, he says, he began slipping in the odd song before opening his act. In August, Lata Mangeshkar tweeted about his "good singing". "Lataji, I can't believe you said this about me. My life is now complete. I bow down to the Queen of Melody," he tweeted back in his typically polite hyperbole.



Sharma's face crumples into a mix of innocence and insidiousness when he laughs. But he strictly reserves self-deprecation for the screen. "I have many, many offers. Other channels want my show, producers want me in their films. I've lost count," Sharma says to me in his vanity van, looking into his own eyes in a mirror. Recently, he reportedly demanded more than Rs. 1 crore to host the Celebrity Cricket League; his appearance on the opening night prompted further reports wondering if he was now the highest-paid comedian in India.



He speaks with a noticeable Punjabi accent and has no compunction about slipping in the occasional cliché or tired marriage joke. The appeal of his jokes seems to be all about finding the predictable 'snicker' button in his audience - and pressing hard. "At fancy restaurants, even a cup of tea is for 500 rupees because it comes with 4 or 500 utensils," he said in one episode. "Sir, this is hot water, here is milk, this one is from cow and this one is from buffalo, there white sugar, here brown sugar, and here some toothpicks in case the tea gets stuck in your teeth," he continued in his high-society voice, imitating a waiter. "But people like us, we like roadside dhabas because the tea is cheap. There is always one man in filthy knickers, pouring tea in five glasses at once, with one finger dipped in each cup."



The reason his show is doing well, Sharma argues, is because India needs comedy more than ever. "There is so much corruption, rape, price rise. Everyone roams with tension on his head. My show takes some of that stress off for a little while," he says. "But let the government also do something, or have I taken responsibility for all of India's problems?"



But Sharma may have unintentionally added another problem to India's 'issues': fairly unintelligent but socially acceptable humor.







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