We are out of the world clowns who are trying to find humour: Cyrus Broacha

Mumbai: Cyrus Broacha- a modern-day George Carlin, the eternal prankster, funnyman, these are few words which sum up the stand-up comedian. After a series of messages, we set up an interview to talk about his show, The week that wasn’t.

Blending satire with social issues is the flavour of the season, does it really influence the mind-set of people? Cyrus mulls over it a bit and says, “Difficult one to say. But what it can do is at least allow people to discuss things. It creates awareness, gives voice to what people are thinking especially during political or social issues. There are broad issues, which are easy to cover, but some things like Ebola, inflation or third world requires a lot of thought process in it. We are out of the world clowns who are trying to find humour.  Some genres of comedy are still not evolved, some films are refined and some are not. Some might create awareness whereas some are just for laughs. I don’t want to be judgmental as then you start over analyzing things.”

Moving on to his show, The week that wasn’t where he takes up political and social issues, presents it with humour, subtly highlighting the problems. Ask him if he receives negative feedback from the political parties, “We do receive negative feedback but that’s very rare because we apologize in the beginning, during and end of the show. We don’t intend to make people feel bad. The big politician, big industrialist, celebrity…not them but their chamchas tend to be more upset. Chamchagiri is a huge issue in India. Most people come up and tell me that they like my show and the gags…even politicians enjoy the humour we put out.”

He does criticize prominent personalities but who are Cyrus’ greatest critics? To this he laughs and adds, “Oh, my wife doesn’t want to comment as we want to remain married. But my kids are very critical. They are at a point where they are exposed to all kinds of humour. So if you want to survive, you need to please them. They are the ones I turn to get feedback. During MTV days, I met all kinds of people, the thing is not to ignore them but listen to them.”

How does he tackle the love problems put forth by people to him in his columns? He quips, “In India, people are just lonely and want to connect to someone. They will easily talk to strangers, radio jockey or to a newspaper more freely because they can’t talk to friends or family. In that sense I feel they are really being honest...sometimes they even ask questions 7-8 times! The questions include their future, their career, their parents, their love-life…I feel that’s too much of responsibility.  I mean I hardly can handle my own life and then this!”

With few projects in pipeline but nothing finalized yet, Cyrus seems to be focusing all his energy on the ongoing show.