Biswa Kalyan Rath’s latest special Mood Kharaab begins with a ‘cold open’ sequence, with the comedian spoofing Amrish Puri’s iconic patriarch from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. That Rath chose this particular character is telling. His comedic persona is cynical, even combative at times (at one point during the show, he jokes about being better at pessimism than Sachin Tendulkar was at batting). But this (superficially) bitter, curmudgeonly self is only the means to an end for Rath; the conclusions to his jokes (and multi-joke setups) are generally more optimistic and wholesome than you’d think at first glance. I’d go as far as to call them ‘hopeful’ at times.

Mood Kharaab, in fact, uses the curmudgeon trope very cleverly across its taut 50-odd minutes. The show has a fairly simple starting point: that in middle-class India, almost everybody you come across will be in the throes of a “kharaab mood”. The only questions are who, why and exactly how bad it is. Your parents will be in a foul mood approximately six seconds after looking at your report card. Your local cop will be mood kharaab because he hates his job almost as much as everybody hates him. The chap on the road you ask for directions will be mood kharaab because he has all but forgotten any other mode of existence. Basically, Rath is telling us, you’d be surprised how much of your life so far has been guided by the bad vibes of strangers and family members alike. It’s almost like Rath views middle-class India’s dysfunctions as various flavours of mood kharaab.

Take the hilarious routine at the beginning of the special, where Rath takes us through the contrasting experiences of seeking directions in India and the UK, respectively (“4, London? Nearby what, brother?”). I quite liked this routine because Rath does the cinematic/theatrical trick of stretching the ending out well beyond anyone’s expectations (see Anurag Kashyap’s filmography, for example, it’s littered with darkly funny, seemingly interminable set pieces like this one).   

At one point he says, “Yeh hamaare special feature hai. Kabhi kabhi left hotaa hai, par nahi maarega toh nahi dikhegaa. Desh hamaara Narnia hai, agar tumhaara dil sachha hai, toh left turn dikhegaa. (This is our specialty. Sometimes there is a left turn but if you don’t actually take it, it’s invisible. Our country’s basically Narnia— you can see the left turn only if your heart is pure).”

Rath views middle-class India’s dysfunctions as various flavours of ‘mood kharaab’.

There has always been a healthy streak of Luddism in Rath’s comedy. He seems to be genuinely concerned about the extent to which technology has influenced millennial behaviour. But he’s also conscious of the fact that the internet isn’t the source of our misery, it’s merely an amplifier. I quite liked his routine about the Metaverse — perhaps the leading contemporary example of the hubris associated with Silicon Valley.   

“Why do we need the Metaverse?” Rath asks. “I know three things for sure: I am here, I am me and I am sad. But now with the Metaverse I am not here, I am not me and I am sad at two places.”

Even more enjoyable is the mini-set where Rath frets about all of our future kids and just how spoilt they will turn out to be. I liked this direction especially because it reveals a softer side to his persona. In other words, Biswa Kalyan Rath is self-consciously pivoting to ‘age-appropriate’ material and I’m here for it. Rath also has the happy knack of oddball collaborations, like his cameo in the Netflix film Brahman Naman, his fictionalised-self role in the series Afsos—or the end credits EDM joke-song he has coaxed out of Nucleya here.

I do have a significant complaint against Mood Kharaab, but it’s really more of a complaint against Amazon Prime Video. The English subtitles for this special are not just bad, they’re embarrassing. Clunkers include “so less entertainment”, “blant” (as opposed to “bland”) and my personal favourite: “We suppressed desire for seven days” where it should have been “We suppressed the desire for seven days.”

The former sentence sounds like Rath fighting his own horniness, whereas he’s actually talking about himself as a child, trying to suppress his desire for a brand-new cricket bat. I think non-Hindi speakers would be genuinely puzzled if they rely on the English subtitles. I’ll be blunt: this is unacceptable laziness from a multinational corporation with the deepest of pockets. And it mars the viewer’s enjoyment of what is otherwise a breezy, well-written special. By all means, watch Mood Kharaab but steer clear of the English subs.