Ending 2018 with his highest note so far, the Indian American comedian hopes to reinvent the late night talk show with the Patriot Act

Like most Indians abroad, Hasan Minhaj appreciates the value of a good lota. The “manual transmissions of bidets”, as the Indian American comedian calls them, features hilariously in episode two of his Netflix show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. The sophomore instalment took on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Like most other late night hosts, the 33-year-old too focussed on the atrocious hit on journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, who was dismembered by 15 assassins inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. But unlike anyone else, Minhaj worked a surprising, yet seamless, segue to a much lighter topic: imploring his audience to treat their bodies with the same respect as they would a pair of expensive albeit soiled Air Jordans. You would not use only toilet paper to clean them, right? So Minhaj laid down some “booty hygiene tips”.

Political comedy high

The Patriot Act — the latest to jostle for eyeballs among the oh-so-crowded pecking order of late night political comedies — dropped on the streaming giant’s website three weeks ago. A “woke TED talk”, as he puts it, the 20-something-minute show highlights a single topic with a generous dollop of humour. Contrarily, Minhaj’s peers — from Late Night with Seth Meyers to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — devote a mere segment of an entire episode to news. “There’s a lot of tweet chasing that’s happening right now and I think this show is one of the few in the marketplace that provides insight and an in-depth look at really big issues,” he says. “But I think it’s awesome for me to do a huge geopolitical deep dive and then also do a different run on lotas.”

So far three episodes have aired, each featuring a wildly-gesticulating Minhaj in his trademark performance style. He goes through a gamut of emotions on stage, embodying sass, wide-eyed wonder and even outrage, while talking a mile a minute. The carefully-planned tirades are only amplified by an incredibly cool set, thanks to production/set and lighting designer Marc Janowitz. Surrounded by screens that double as walls, Minhaj stands on a stage that projects in 4K high-def. As images and graphics whoosh in and out, the comedian deftly uses every inch of space available, capturing his audience’s attention. Take, for instance, this writer’s personal highlight of episode three, Amazon, featuring Bill Gates’ possible worst nightmare. The founder of Microsoft, along with former CEO Steve Ballmer, proudly stars in a parody of the 1998 cult comedy, A Night at the Roxbury, replete with shiny disco suits. “Bill Gates wants us to forget that video so bad, he’s trying to end malaria,” sasses Minhaj to audience cackles.

Deeper focus

Despite the many jibes and comic tangents, he stresses that the focus is always on large political and cultural topics that often do not get covered in mainstream news cycles. “This is a news-driven show. It starts with news, facts and a take that comes from our senior news team,” says Minhaj, about his colleagues who comprise former reporters from illustrious publications like The New York Times and The Associated Press. “They’re print journalists who’ve spent years cutting their teeth on hard news. They’ve been waiting for the opportunity to put [news] in a format that is easily digestible.”

Once the dossiers of information are collected, a unique peg is established. Minhaj has declared that the Patriot Act needs to be simultaneously current and with a long shelf-life. A paradox, if we have ever heard one. But he is confident he will successfully pull it off. Take, for example, the episode on Affirmative Action, which was actually about meritocracy and the rising anti-black sentiments in the Asian community.

Minhaj’s late night picks The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Late Night with Seth Meyers

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

“As an [Indian] American, I can have a unique perspective on that,” he says. “India has programmes like that too, where there are seats reserved for under-represented groups. It is a heavily debated thing that’s both topical and evergreen.” Similarly, Amazon was about understanding monopolies and anti-trust laws; important issues that will not vanish any time soon. “Every single headline that we talk about ties into a larger fundamental question,” he emphasises, adding that whenever possible, he would like to run the topic through the prism of his own experiences. “I want it to be both broad in terms of its topical subject matter, but niche in terms of ‘this is how I feel about it’.”

Rise to the top

Before Minhaj brought us Patriot Act, he appeared on The Daily Show from to 2014 to 2018, first working with Jon Stewert and then Trevor Noah. As the show’s senior correspondent, he gave us gems like ‘Halal Things Considered’, a segment that addressed racism against Muslims. It was spurred from an incident where a woman was denied a canned beverage aboard an airplane for fear she would transform it into a weapon. Another memorable bit was highlighting American ignorance when a wave of racial intolerance and Islamophobia was hurled against the Sikh community. Among a collage of images which included a Sikh person, several US citizens picked the least likely representation of a member of the community. Often, they even chose a bird instead of an actual human being.

But what skyrocketed his rising fame was his set at the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. US President Donald Trump, who famously boycotted the event, was the ‘elephant not in the room’ according to Minhaj. “The leader of our country is not here,” he ribbed. “And that’s because he lives in Moscow. It is a very long flight. It’d be hard for Vlad [Putin] to make it. Vlad can’t just make it on a Saturday.” His likening of the President to the HBO show Game of Thrones’ vicious King Joffrey and the dinner akin to the Red Wedding bloodbath elicited a lot of applause.

Desi by heart

Later that year, Minhaj released his Netflix special, Homecoming King, recorded in his hometown of Davis, California. The hour-something show cemented his definitive rise to become one of America’s best comedians. With savage anecdotes and other poignant stories, Minhaj hung his heart out for the world. “I think audiences are really savvy. It’s an insult if you try to put on a front or present a different version of yourself,” he says, about the need to be vulnerable on stage. “I want people to feel like I’m speaking to them and hanging out with them.”

The Daily Show ticket Racism got Minhaj his senior correspondent gig and the chance to work with Jon Stewert. Revved up by an episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher — where he talked about containing Muslims — Minhaj wrote an original piece for his audition. But it was the horror on guest Ben Affleck’s face at the time that really encouraged the comedian. His bit, titled ‘Batman vs Bill Maher’ (Affleck played the DC superhero in a slew of films), impressed Stewart. Minhaj even included a joke about host’s then latest film, Rosewater (2014), cinching the deal.

In this vein, we got to know Minhaj was slapped in a department store aisle after his father checked that no one witnessed it. Plus, his encounter with the eternally-beloved Hindi phrase “log kya kahenge” when seeking his father’s blessing to marry a Hindu woman. “I can kick it with all my American friends, but the Indianness is entrenched in who I am,” says Minhaj, who danced to ‘Saajan Ji Ghar Aye’ from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai at his wedding. He also travelled back home from New York to Sacramento a few months ago to watch Dangal with his dad, Najme Minhaj. “What’s beautiful about art is that it travels very quickly,” he laughs. “My baby [dances] to the latest Bollywood hits. I am kheema roti, dal chawal and rajma chawal.”

As the first comedian of Indian descent to pull off something like the Patriot Act, Minhaj is expected to end Netflix’s bad romance with talk shows. They have cancelled Chelsea Handler’s Chelsea, The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale and Michelle Wolf’s The Break citing low viewership. Fortunately for Minhaj, the streaming giant has already ordered 29 more episodes, giving him plenty of time to hone his act. In an endless sea of similar formats, his series aims to push the boundaries of political comedy and we really like what we have seen so far.

Streaming now on Netflix.

Creating dialogue

Varun Grover first saw Movers & Shakers on New Year’s Eve, 1997. The comedian and screenwriter recalls feeling an instant connect — even as a 12th standard student, he knew he would pursue comedy someday. “The show was talking about things I had not seen about my state and my city [Lucknow],” he says.

Today, despite the state of political comedy being incredibly variable (it is often “safer not to do it”), Grover feels comedy is the only discourse in India that is bridging the gap between the left and the right. Journalism is not creating the dialogue and everything is bracketed. He cites East India Comedy’s ‘The Aadhaar Song’, and the video dedicated to Prime Minister Modi and demonetisation, as examples. “They reached spaces where the Aadhar discourse was not reaching.”

However, he believes it will be a long time before political discourse with humour permeates mainstream television. “We don’t put our edgiest stuff on YouTube for fear of someone taking two lines out of context and circulating it,” he says, adding that controversial material is reserved for live shows. The apprehension comes from censorship imposed on artistes. “We’re too scared to even attempt a show like John Oliver’s [The Week That Was].”

New Delhi: From (L-R) founder of All India Bakchod (AIB) Tanmay Bhat with stand-up comedians Kaneez Surka, Biswa Kalyan Rath and Abish Mathew during an interview with PTI, at PTI office in New Delhi, on Thursday, June 28, 2018. (PTI Photo/Arun Sharma)(PTI6_29_2018_000087B)

India’s truth tellers

“We live in the golden age of satire,” said journalist and public intellectual Malcolm Gladwell in 2016, on the season finale of his podcast, Revisionist History. “It’s almost to the point where we seem to conduct as much of our political conversation through humour as through the normal media. Comedians have become our truth tellers,” he said.

It is true that more people around the world are getting their news from comedians than ever before. But will the trend, which has exploded in the US — where the late night talk show circuit is peppered with politically-opinionated stars such as John Oliver, Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah — find its way to India, where censorship poses challenges? While Shekhar Suman’s late-night talk show, Movers and Shakers (1997) did include social commentary, it was not political. Other television examples are hard to come by. “For the longest time, the Holy Grail was not to touch politics and religion,” says Zulfia Waris, VP, Premium and Digital Networks, at Discovery Networks, Asia Pacific. “But comedy bloomed in India because, when we moved digital, a few checks and balances were removed.”

Thanks to the (relatively) more democratic world of online streaming, comedians such as Kunal Kamra, and companies such as All India Bakchod and East India Company, have brought political commentary into the fold of their comedy. However, they have felt the backlash too. Last year, for instance, the Mumbai police filed an FIR against AIB for tweeting a photo of the Prime Minister with Snapchat’s dog filter. “There is some material in this space, but it’s few and far between,” says Gaurav Lulla, co-founder of Loose Cannons Content Studio. “Till we are able to have conversations without the worry of consequences, there won’t be enough effort made in the space of political satire.”

Waris believes that India could use a dose of John Oliver-style news delivery — factually correct, incisive commentary. “Shows like these are very talent-led. If we are able to hone talent without curbing their freedom of speech, I really think we have a future in that space in India,” she concludes.