Prashasti Singh is in that strange space between finishing one chapter and figuring out how to begin the next. Her latest standup show, Divine Feminine, has been with her since late 2024, taking her across the world, evolving with every performance and eventually becoming the first show she felt deserved to be released as a full-length special. Now, with the special recorded and slated for release on 20 August, Singh is doing something harder: letting go of the material.

“I think there is a bit of sadness,” she says. “It is like a big phase in my life is coming to an end. And I’m supposed to enter the next phase.”

Divine Feminine began taking shape in October 2024 and was officially toured from December that year. By the time Singh recorded it in April 2026, she had spent roughly a year-and-a-half living with the material, taking it through rewrites and trial runs until she felt she had taken it as far as she could.

That makes the special particularly significant for Singh, who has previously released Door Khadi Sharmaaye and Man of the House in multiple parts on YouTube. Divine Feminine will be her first special as a single-release. “You reach a point where you’re like, ‘Oh, now I understand what a special means,’” she says. “This whole show has come to me as a monolith instead of smaller bits.”

At its centre is a question familiar to many women: the idea that acquiring the things traditionally associated with male privilege will somehow make life easier. “A lot of women like me, we actually grow up with this idea that once we acquire everything a man has, life will be great,” Singh says. “And then we get there and we’re like, ‘Oh my god, these men are also so sad.’”

From there, the show becomes an exploration of what went wrong, who she has become and what it means to be a woman in a world historically built around men.

Throughout the special, Singh weaves together stories from her past, recent experiences and observations about navigating the world as a woman.

“A lot of women like me, we actually grow up with this idea that once we acquire everything a man has, life will be great,” Singh says. “And then we get there and we’re like, ‘Oh my god, these men are also so sad.’”

The decision to release the show in one piece is deliberate. When Singh released Door Khadi Sharmaaye in parts in 2023, her YouTube channel was newer—she was thinking about audience acquisition and shorter clips meant more people sampling her work.

Three years later, she feels differently. Her audience has grown and, crucially, Divine Feminine was written as one interconnected piece.

“When I performed live, I could see that this is a show where the standing ovation that I get, or the applause I get, is a function of the entire 75 minutes, not the last bit or one bit,” she says. “So that’s why I wanted everyone online also to have the same experience.”

Now, after years of doing standup, Singh finds herself confronting a different kind of fear: writing something new.

The problem, in hindsight, is that Divine Feminine came to her unusually naturally. “Once something comes to you so organically, you’re like, ‘Wow, man, maybe I’m a genius now,’” she says. “The second time you’re back to square one, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m really back to the beginning.’”

“Whatever skill I have, and whatever I have to offer, it comes out best in a standup show.”

She has been through this cycle before. After completing a show, she says, the next phase often involves feeling like an imposter again, wondering whether there is actually another hour of comedy somewhere inside her.

“What gets easier is that you get used to the ebbs and flows,” Singh says. “I’ve done it three times, so I don’t feel scared of these feelings.”

That uncertainty is part of what she values about being an artist. The tools don’t disappear, but using them to create something that she is genuinely excited by—and that can make an audience equally happy—is a different challenge every time. “That’s the process,” she affirms.

It also explains why Singh has remained relatively uninterested in chasing every format the comedy ecosystem offers. She has experimented with other forms of content, and featured on other artists’ format shows, but standup remains the medium in which she feels her abilities come through most completely.

“Whatever skill I have, and whatever I have to offer, it comes out best in a standup show.”

During the pandemic, Singh felt the same pressure as everyone else to produce online content and reels. She tried. Eventually, she decided it simply wasn’t her thing. “Why do we all have to do everything?” she asks. “Experimenting with things, and failing, and deciding to not do them, gives you a lot of clarity.”

That clarity extends to how Singh sees the Indian comedy scene itself. She describes herself as part of the “second wave” of Indian comedians: a generation that benefited from the systems built by those who came before them, but has also had to figure out what happens after the initial streamers boom receded.

For Singh, one of the biggest changes has been diversity—not simply in who is performing, but in the audiences different comedians can build. She points to distinct audiences around women, queer performers, comics from smaller towns and comics whose material speaks to specific communities. India’s sheer size, she believes, means there is room for those niches to become viable audiences.

That may be the most fitting place to leave Singh as Divine Feminine prepares to go out into the world. The show itself is about reaching a point where you realise that becoming the person you thought you were supposed to become doesn’t necessarily solve anything. Its creator is now facing a similar question in her own work: what happens when you’ve made the show you wanted to make?

For now, Singh doesn’t have a neat answer for what comes next. She’s writing, experimenting and trying to let the next idea arrive without forcing it.

“I have all my doubts, all my fears back in my head,” she says. “But it’s again a very interesting phase.”