DeadAnt

The Essential Guide to Quarantine Content (Part 1)

By DA Staff 16 April 2020 7 mins read

Spread the love

With the COVID-19 lockdown now extended for at least three more weeks, India’s stand-up comedians find themselves stuck at home twiddling their thumbs, with only housework and Netflix to distract themselves from the monotony of life in quarantine. Live shows, festivals and even international tours have been cancelled in the thousands, shoot schedules are now postponed indefinitely, and the threat of The Shining style cabin-fever looms ever larger. In response, comics have taken to the internet, transforming their kitchens, balconies and couches into virtual stages as they attempt to distract themselves (and us) from the endless horror of being stuck with only ourselves for company.

Grateful as we are for any content that isn’t “made-in-china virus” conspiracy theories or “flatten the curve” line graphs, much of what’s being pushed out is low effort, low quality rubbish, stuff that would normally be banished to the edit room floor. To save you from throwing your devices out of the window in frustration (after all, you can’t just go out and buy a new one), we’ve dug through the endless stream of videos and picked out a few safe bets. Here’s the Dead Ant guide to this summer of quarantine content.

Atul Khatri: โ€˜Only Positive Newsโ€™

Atul Khatri has been working on an IGTV series called โ€˜Only Positive Newsโ€™, and itโ€™s what it says on the tin. A break from the horror of coronavirus updates, 8 pm speeches, economy forecasts, and the overall gloom and doom that 2020 has mainlined into our lives. A roundup of only the best news headlines of the day, so you can recharge and reset yourself with a little hope before you have to pay attention to the aunties doing socially distanced, hyper-choreographed jagrans on their balconies again.
Happy bonus: Check out Khatriโ€™s โ€˜Highlightsโ€™ on his Instagram page for some puppy love, featuring the adventures of Butter Khatri, the family pooch. Follow him @one_by_two

Shashwat Maheshwari: 40 Coronavirus Jokes

Shashwat Maheshwari first caught everyoneโ€™s attention on the first season of Indian standup comedy competition Comicstaan (Amazon Prime Video), following which he has become a familiar name on Mumbaiโ€™s live comedy circuit. Online, heโ€™s big on Twitter for his super weird, relatable-max 3 am thoughts; on Instagram, he takes things up a notch with short format videos. This week, thereโ€™s also 40 Coronavirus Jokes (Quarantine Edition)โ€”one-liner zingers based on headlines that we could very well be real, we just canโ€™t tell. โ€œCoronavirus aa chuka hai,โ€ he declares, sitting in front of a mic setup at home. โ€œIsse pehle ki yeh chala jaye aur mere saare jokes barbaad ho jayein, sunn lijiye.โ€ With a pandemic, thereโ€™s no such thing as โ€œtoo soonโ€. Find him @kaatilkabootar, he isnโ€™t going to be able to take it easy during this period of self-isolation.

Varun Thakur: Quarantine Cooking

Varun Thakurโ€™s alter-ego โ€˜Struggling Actor Vicky Malhotraโ€™ shows up all the time on the comedianโ€™s feed these daysโ€”and we are so here for itโ€”but Thakur seems to have become equally enthusiastic about cooking at home. Every day this week, heโ€™s shared images and recipes from his kitchen, where he seems to be happily quarantined with his girlfriend. Sometimes itโ€™s photos of fish fry, a few days ago it was a very pretty funtastic-looking four-step masala aaloo, complete with the recipe. On Day 1 of the 21-day lockdown, he announced heโ€™d be putting out one piece of content a day; worth keeping an eye on. Meanwhile, here’s Vicky on the lockdown extension.

Tanmay Bhat: YouTube live streams

Tanmay Bhat has been going blue in the face for ages saying live-streaming is the future of digital content, but everyone just nodded politely and kept making podcasts. With quarantine kicking in, Bhat is having a smug moment. After a year-long hiatus following the allegation-riddled-legally-unclear #MeToo debacle, Bhat came back online with vlogs featuring his comedian friends. Big on PUBG (how is that damn game still going?!), he has also been live streaming his late night sessions with online players on his YouTube channel, and hosting conversations with fellow comics. During a charity mega-stream last weekend, he announced that he’s bringing sketches back. Whether he’s serious or not, we’ll find out, but he is using this time in quarantine to boost his YouTube channel. It’s a clear strategy for short format content that leverages his giant network of comedians, YouTubers, and gaming celebrities, so thatโ€™s where you should hit the bell icon and subscribe for a steady stream of entertainment.

‘Cute Roast’ segment from the Stay Home For India charity mega-stream

Aadar Malik: Musical Comedy

Yes, heโ€™s from that Malik familyโ€”son of Abu Malik, nephew of music composer Anu Malik. And the apple doesnโ€™t fall far from the tree (though it should maintain at least six-feet distance for a while). Aadar Malik is known for musical comedy, and is one of the only artists exploring the space. The last couple of weeks, heโ€™s been showing up every other morning, gorgeous guitar in hand, with #TheMorningSongโ€”a daily ditty about the little things that are on our mind these daysโ€”social distancing, living in isolation, washing your hands and not panicking. 

Sumaira Shaikh: Standup Clips

Sumaira Shaikh is a Mumbai-based standup comic and one of the writers of Sumukhi Sureshโ€™s web series Pushpavalli, which she also briefly stars in. She normally shies away from social media, and is frustratingly stingy about putting out her standup bits online, which we always look forward to because sheโ€™s got such a unique comedic voice. This week, however, sheโ€™s promised us a series of videos, the first of which is already outโ€”an otherwise non-starter thought about paperweights sees her spiralling into a rant about their existence thatโ€™ll make your sides hurt so bad, itโ€™ll feel like a home workout. 

Gaurav Kapoor: ‘Saturday ki Rasoi’

Every Saturday, this Delhi-based comedian will be taking us into his kitchen for a series heโ€™s experimenting with with his wife Shreya Sharma called Saturday Ki Rasoi. โ€œIn this show, we try to capture the essence of how me and my wife cook sometimes at home and dish turns out to be a surprise. We try a lot of stuff and trust me, it’s not tasty every time,โ€ the show description reads. The first episode featured a recipe for Chivda-Bhuja and Chai, neither of which weโ€™ve tried yet ourselves, but โ€œitโ€™s actually nice,โ€ Sharma insists at the end of video, while Kapoor affirms, โ€œBachelor log ke liye best cheez hai yeh!โ€

Vir Das: ‘The Bright Side’

Vir Das has no idea how to sit still. Which means that through this trying period of social distancing, heโ€™s announcing a new content experiment every day. He just dropped a new series called The Bright Side, in which he takes โ€œthe darkest thought in your head and goes someplace silly, so that the next time you think itโ€ฆdoesnโ€™t seem that bad.โ€ In the first episode he addresses the thing thatโ€™s crossed everyoneโ€™s mind: โ€œWhat if the coronavirus gets worse and worse and worse?โ€ To make you feel better about being in lockdown, he draws your attention to how this has actually worked out for musicians, that itโ€™s a great time to be a balcony, why confused pigeons are looking for Raju, and a reminder that everything online is getting watched. Like this show. Immune up, man!

Varun Grover: Topical Monologues

Varun Grover is an important voice in the comedy scene. He doesnโ€™t shy away from asking difficult questions and helps understand whatโ€™s going on without the aggressive melodrama of a regular media channel. Using hilarious analogies and basic logic, he articulates some of our own thoughts back for us and offers fresh perspective on things you thought youโ€™d already made up your mind about. Marvelling at the things our members of parliament and WhatsApp forward enthusiasts are propagating, he has spent the last week talking about the coronavirus and the importance of social distancing in three separate rants, with only his cats to interrupt him. Main takeaway? Only science and compassion will see us through. But you should hear his arguments for it yourselves.

Amit Tandon: Comedy Workshops

If you think youโ€™re funny, or your friends have said โ€œyou should do standup comedy, yaarโ€ enough times to actually make you consider it, Amit Tandonโ€™s conducting standup comedy workshops online. And heโ€™s using the proceeds to raise money for daily wage earners, among the worst hit by the ongoing pandemic. Email him at amit@tandonamit.com to sign up for a session (Rs. 2,500, currently conducted on Zoom), in which heโ€™ll take you through how to write a setโ€”where to find inspiration, how to build a single-line idea into a five-minute set, and how to go about building material from three to 30 minutes. Once youโ€™re done, you can even send him a video for feedback on your delivery and performance. This weekend, heโ€™s got three workshops lined upโ€”for India, Europe and the US, respectivelyโ€”which have only a couple of spots left, but if you donโ€™t make it to this one, donโ€™t sweat it, heโ€™ll be doing this every weekend for a while. 

Supriya Joshi: The Instagram Stories show

You may recognise her from Comicstaan 2, and by the end of this weekend, youโ€™ll also know her from the Netflix comedy special, Ladies Up, on which sheโ€™s one of the four comedians, each performing a 15-minute set. On her personal social media channels, she keeps her growing fanbase engaged with her PhD-level knowledge about k-pop, her makeup tutorials and this weekโ€™s special deliveryโ€ฆrunning commentary on how sheโ€™s (barely) surviving self-isolation. Itโ€™s all being documented on her Instastories, and there a new one added every few hours, so itโ€™s a fun account to tap through in the seemingly endless scroll of our quarantined lives.

An edited version of this story first appeared in Mumbai Mirror on 7 April 2020.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


DA Staff

Damn straight. Dead Ant has staff. You’d better believe it.

comments

comments for this post are closed