After winning over fans with her appearance on Comicstaan’s first season, Prashasti Singh is by now firmly established as one of the most promising new comedic voices in the country. Singh recently made an appearance at the SpokenFest 2019, a Mumbai festival that celebrates words, at which she performed an eight-minute set. The set is now up on YouTube and is an easy pick for our video of the week. (Keep those tissues handy.)

Singh defies expectations in the set. A minute or so in, you realise that she’s not doing a straight-up comedy set, but telling an intimate story about her family. It’s a simple story, beginning with how Singh always aspired to be like her father. Midway the story takes an unexpected turn, as does Singh’s life, and her ideas about parents. As with her comedy, here, too, Singh’s disarmingly simple style conceals just how well crafted her work is. This is a masterful piece of spoken word, with a powerful arc and a deeply moving ending.

Singh, who is from Amethi, brings a smalltown sensibility to her material, but undercuts it regularly with a razor-sharp cynicism and wit. Her clip from Comicstaan “Relationships and Fuckboys” was one of our favourite YouTube videos of last year.