Last month, Vir Das won an International Emmy for Comedy for his 2022 Netflix stand-up special Landing—joint winner with the wildly popular sitcom Derry Girls, no less. This latest recognition caps off what has been a year of escalating global success for the comedian. In January, Das appeared on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast and in September he began the Mind Fool world tour, slated to cover 33 countries around the world (and 35 Indian cities), including venues like New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House. In his tweet acknowledging the victory, Das said, “For India. For Indian Comedy. Every breath, every word.”

It’s a fitting salutation, for in 2023 Indian comedy enjoyed perhaps its most successful year on the global stage yet. Not too long ago, it was just Das and a handful other big names that could boast of consistently selling out venues not just across big cities in America and Europe but also relatively smaller centres in, say, Australia or the African subcontinent. But as 2023 has proven, there are now literally dozens of Indian stand-up comedians performing well-attended shows around the world.

Urooj Ashfaq performed her show Oh No! at Edinburgh’s Assembly George Square and won the prestigious best newcomer award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; an impressive feat for the 28-year-old. Rahul Dua toured his new show Padhai Likhai at venues across Australia, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. He’s currently travelling across the Middle East with the show. Biswa Kalyan Rath’s Amazon Prime stand-up special Mood Kharaab, of course, was shot in London. Meanwhile Zakir Khan became the first Asian comedian to perform a solo show at the iconic Royal Albert Hall in London, earning himself a historic 20-minute standing ovation.

Comedians like Anubhav Singh Bassi, Aakash Gupta, Harsh Gujral et al are now staples at comedy venues across Europe, especially. Zakir Khan announced a show at New York’s Madison Square Garden in March next year—he’ll become the first Indian comedian to perform at this prestigious venue. Relatively new territories are also being covered; comedian Praveen Kumar performed a show in the African nation of Ivory Coast (which has less people than Kanpur or Indore) in April.

As DeadAnt’s Rohan Krishnan reported in August, a significant role is played by diaspora cultural organisations in these countries. In that article, Praveen Kumar had confirmed that ‘Tamil Sangams’ had helped him get shows in places like Bahrain and Hong Kong. Manan Desai said something similar about the role of Gujarati organisations in the United States. Generally speaking, diaspora from the Indian subcontinent, especially Indians and Pakistanis, have been well-represented in recent years in the West.

Films like Polite Society and shows like Never Have I Ever and Ms Marvel (not to mention its recent movie sequel The Marvels) have normalised a very desi mode of comedy—the never-ending family drama. Indian and Pakistani teenagers dancing to Bollywood songs at weddings, quarrelling with their parents over quintessentially desi things. That a large number of these scenes are now available on global streaming platforms, of course, helps the cause of Indian comedians. White audiences are now that much more likely to be familiar with these themes. Not to mention, comedians like Hari Kondabolu, Hasan Minhaj and Zarna Garg (all of whom have released new specials in the last 12 months or so) have covered all this and more in their material.

And it hasn’t been one-way traffic either. 2023 also saw some top-shelf international talent performing sold-out shows in India. Okay, so the Trevor Noah Bengaluru situation was embarrassing and should have been better handled by the organisers. But Noah had a much smoother ride elsewhere, especially New Delhi where his show was met with no small measure of enthusiasm. Daniel Sloss performed in Bengaluru, New Delhi and finally, at DeadAnt’s Laughing Dead Comedy Festival in March. Last month, Jimmy Carr announced his first-ever India shows. He’ll be bringing his show Terribly Funny to India in January and going by recent evidence, there’s every chance it’ll be a big commercial success.  

What we would like to see more of when Indian comedians perform abroad — smart, well-written jokes that feel contemporary. Not necessarily in the ripped-from-the-headlines sense, just jokes that feel immediate and tactile and resist binary modes of thinking. To circle back to Vir Das’s Landing, it has a hilarious routine about his mother confronting the teenaged Vir with the fact that he does not have a girlfriend. The conversation starts with his mother saying things like “Are you gay? We’ll take you to a doctor, fix you!” and Vir responding with “I’m not gay, I’m just a loser”.

This would be tragicomic enough on its own, but Das actually goes a couple of steps beyond the average desi comedian. Talking about a stylishly dressed gay friend called Shashank, he says that gay men “are winners” and do everything better than their straight counterparts — better-dressed, well-spoken, impeccable taste. “He dreams better than us!” Das says, “Dreaming of sorbet, like even your dreams are gluten-free and upper-middle-class!” It’s a fascinating moment at the intersection of many sociological phenomena in India, and it’s the kind of thing we’d like to see more of in 2024.