With everything that is happening in the world and in our personal lives, most of us are just going through the motions. But it’s necessary for us to take a beat and check in with ourselves because our mental health takes a beating with the overstimulation and stress. That’s largely what comedian Aravind SA is trying to highlight with his latest special We Need To Talk (available on Paytm Insider for INR 500), which focuses on the importance of therapy, opening up to our close ones and checking in with each other.

Having been in therapy for 14 years, Aravind has a lot to say on the subject. In the process of writing this extremely personal special, the comedian “opened the Pandora’s box” and uncovered new sides of himself and his community. We spoke with him to know more about the hour, how it evolved over the years and where he looked for inspiration.

Your latest special ‘We Need To Talk’ focuses on mental health. How did the idea come to you?

I think the idea has always been there because I’ve been going to therapy for about 14 years. So I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that this is something that I want to do. Especially because I saw Western comedians do it often too. That’s when I realised that this could be something we can venture into when we eventually build enough confidence and conviction in our craft and in our body of work. Because it does seem intimidating to be diving deep into that.

So, the idea was always there because of my personal investment in the process but the conviction came from watching Nanette where I really felt moved by someone putting their story forward in a way that was vulnerable and entertaining. That kind of made me feel I should do this. So I sat down post-lockdown to write. At that point of time my thoughts were pretty heavy too with everything that was happening. So I decided it might be time to actually open the Pandora’s box.

In the process of opening the Pandora’s box, did you end up having any particularly vulnerable moments? How challenging was it to write a special that focuses on something that is so personal?

The process of writing was excruciatingly painful because even though I opened the Pandora’s box, I never did dive into anything because of the insecurity surrounding it. When I look back at this show and the writing now, I realise that I have merely hovered over everything rather than actually go deep into explaining why does the mind overthink, what are all the sorts of zones it gets into and all that.

But I told myself this is the baby step. Maybe we’ll do more with the next one. You can’t create a Nanette on day one, can you? So you have to do what you are capable of doing with the right intent in mind.

So I would say I’ve only done a surface level job of it due to my own fears around it. The challenge was therefore continuously asking yourself, is this enough or not? Am I being truthful enough or not? Truthful enough is such a delicate question there, right? Because how much do you share? Is this oversharing or not? Things like that. So the continuous tussle between being pragmatic as an entertainer and being personal as an artist was going on. That was the part of writing that I struggled with most.

How did you come up with the name ‘We Need To Talk’?

This is funnily the only time in my life where I actually wrote the title before I wrote a single joke.
Earlier, all the titles came after the jokes were put together in an ad hoc manner to collect 80-100 minutes of material and then you call it something. That’s how it used to be because you never had the foresight to writing under one theme. This time around when I sat down, I refused to take any help from previously written material. So I wiped the slate clean and I wanted to write under the specific theme of mental wellness or mental health.

When I sat down to write, I was feeling so nervous, embarrassed and just overwhelmed. And I realised that I’m not going to be writing an out and out hilarious entertaining show. I’m going to be writing a mindful show rather than a mindless one.

That insecurity made me feel like I should put a disclaimer at the start. So I thought why not put the disclaimer in the title itself and say—Hey, ladies and gentlemen, we kind of need to talk because I’m going to tell you something about myself that I probably haven’t told anyone before. That’s how the whole thing started.

How did the show evolve as you took it out on the road?

Like I said, the idea came from having to confess to the audience about this side of mine. But as I continued to write and perform, the messaging of the show ended up becoming that we all need to open up. We all need to talk to each other. We all need to listen to each other. We all need to convert the negative connotation of “we need to talk” to a positive one. So, it was a wonderful discovery that I made along the way.

But I would be lying to you if I knew that when I wrote it. I just wrote the title from a point of view of confessing to the audience and making them sit in the discomfort that I was feeling.

While touring with such a personal special, did you have any memorable moments with fans?

Oh, yes. I have never received this sort of engagement from any show of mine previously. Like, people have written in with so much thought and effort. And that kind of made me realise that even if I didn’t hear the amount of laughs that I’m used to hearing and the insane applause breaks I used to get every few minutes in my previous shows, this sort of connect and engagement was missing there. So there is a trade off in this case.

But it was incredibly nice and restored my faith to see this community of people who have stuck by my side over these years appreciate this evolution as well. And it makes you feel like there’s always going to be an audience for you as long as you put your heart and soul into creating something. There are people who appreciate every bit of that.

As someone who has been in therapy for 14 years, how would you describe it to someone who is considering it?

There’s this phrase—the unbearable lightness of being. That’s pretty much how I would describe therapy. That’s how it feels, if you do it consistently, hopefully with a professional. If you can’t afford a professional, then at least the exercise of sharing your thoughts with someone who you trust and through whom you can take strength and kindness with which you can work on your own self that lessens the burden you’re feeling.

I can’t place any value on that because the sort of things that I have managed to do in life today as a performing artist are things that I never would have thought I would do given my extremely anxious personality growing up. The only way I can articulate it is by saying that having this support system through therapy was how I was able to anchor myself during this journey. That’s very important and I think that is the reason why people should do it. We all need that anchoring given how we are pulled in so many different directions.

According to you, other than Hannah Gadsby, which artists have explored the theme of mental health extremely well?

I can recommend two artists whose work I connected with a lot—Chris Gethard and Neal Brennan. Their stuff also gave me some ideas about how I can explore the subject.

In addition to that, I go to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh every year. It’s a ritual that I do to expose myself to the greatest artists that are out there hustling. Some of them have given me incredible inspiration. Jordan Brookes is one of them. The sort of weirdness that he normalises in his own act, making you feel extremely uncomfortable with the way he is portraying his internal weirdness but being incredibly funny at the same time is commendable. He keeps reminding you that he just wants you to laugh and not feel sorry for him. Jordan Brookes is definitely a name that I would like to point out right now.

You can stream We Need To Talk here.