MUMBAI: Yours Sincerely, Kanan Gill creator: Kanan Gill
Yours Sincerely, Kanan Gill rating: 2 stars
We all have that one annoying cousin, who after one ‘phoren’ trip becomes an authority on everything western and firang, and to emphasise the contrast starts saying things like ‘This is a very Indian thing'. Kanan Gill in his latest stand-up special, Yours Sincerely, which is streaming on Netflix, will many a time remind you of that cousin whom you tolerate, because, well firang chocolates, duh. You also roll your eyes behind his/her back, even when the point in the conversation is well made, because, well the accent. Gill has been missing from the stand-up scene for the past year, as he was touring abroad. He is now back with his first special for Netflix, and though it’s a sincere effort, the laughs are far and few between. He also adds a blackboard to the stage, '...so Indian people will pay attention. Before no blackboard, everyone is texting. Now I have this, you guys are thinking, "Will this be on the exam?"' But even the blackboard can’t save this act.
He takes us through some ‘Indian concepts’ like ‘Big talk’ — where Indian aunties ask you your salary within the first five minutes of a meeting — vs ‘small talk’ — which Americans do while buying coffee. There is a whole segment featuring the difference between Indian timepass: 'It is a review as well as an activity', and Western pastime: 'It is something you do to pass time' and of course there are PJs — or poor jokes as we Indians call them — 'an embodiment of how much we as a country enjoy suffering'. We move onto goals in life, some even have hydration goals, and we laugh at the expense of people who have an application to remind them to drink water, cue in joke about pavlovian dogs and 'people are secretly plants'.
The audience is then finally taken to the main core of the act, Kanan Gill’s formal letter to his 15-year-old self, which discusses his 'goals for life', which include ‘health, education, love and also try his hand at being an athlete.’ And that sets the course for a meandering passage through Gill’s time in school, his brush with school bullies and him 'getting birthday bumps… even when it was someone else’s birthday'. There is a lot of talk about depression, suicide and the need to talk it out with your friends, and how we need such people around us. Heavy on nostalgia, Gill also spends considerable time on Julius Caesar, the 1599 play written by Shakespeare. Gill perhaps had a tough time with it, as he reduces the famed tragedy to the last words uttered by the Roman general, 'Et Tu Brute', and we segue into the importance of famous last words.
Sigh. Wish we could have had laughs about depression and mental health, especially given the current social climate of isolation. Gill’s effort to talk about these things is sincere and earnest, but the laughs are conspicuously absent. The punch lines are often delivered in a high pitched squeaky voice, and it just drives the point home. The special lacks the distinct spark and the spunk that was a trademark of Kanan Gill. Here the hour-long act drags many times and feels insipid. Gill is low on energy, maybe it is the hernia that he is diagnosed with, or the fact that he is performing after a while, we don’t know. Gill used to be quite comfortable with physical comedy. In Yours Sincerely, he is stiff and awkward, and we don’t see much movement on stage.
Many Indian and international stand-up comics have shown that nothing is sacrosanct anymore, as long as you can get the laughs in, you can joke about anything — depression, suicide and mental health included. Fine, your messaging is on point, but where are the mic drop lines? Gill’s last stand-up in 2017 was Keep It Real, and it was very much on point. The jokes and lines and his body language, all were in sync. It had jokes that ranged from cow slaughter, a spokesperson cow with the name of Nandini, and even with the phrase Directive Principles used multiple times, the act got laughs. This one is a timepass at best.
SOURCE – THE INDIAN EXPRESS
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