MUMBAI: Comedian Munawar Faruqui opened up about all the ‘tedhe-medhe kaam’ that he did before becoming famous thanks to his standup videos on YouTube. He also looked back on the many financial hardships that he faced growing up in Gujarat, before moving to Mumbai in 2007.

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In an appearance on Mashable India’s Bombay Journey, he opened up about the odd jobs that he did before hitting the big time. He said that he would illegally exchange foreign currency for a small profit. 

He would hang out in areas frequented by foreign tourists, who’d approach him with money they needed to be exchanged for local currency. Munawar said that sometimes he’d make as much as Rs 700 profit on big notes.

Another hustle that he ran was selling bone marrow in large quantities. “It’s a rare item, I don’t know why, but it is. You don’t get it very easily,” he said in Hindi. Munawar said that he would sell one spoon of bone marrow for as much as Rs 125, and sometimes, he’d get orders for 100 spoons. 

Because his buyers would be so convinced of the value of bone marrow, they wouldn’t realise that Munawar was buying it for around Rs 3 per spoon. “It was my service charge,” he said.

But not every job that he did was a hustle. Munawar also worked at a samosa shop. “We had a restaurant, but it didn’t work out. Dad lost all his money, was under massive debt… I worked a couple of months at a gift shop, I made Rs 850 per month for working 11 hours a day. I didn’t like it, which is when we decided to do something else. My mother and grandmother would make samosas at home, and I started a stall outside our house where I’d fry them up and sell them… I burned my fingers, had hot oil splutter on me, everything.”

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Munawar gained notoriety when he was arrested in 2021 for allegedly making a joke about Hindu deities. In 2022, he appeared as a contestant on the reality show Lock Upp, hosted by Kangana Ranaut, which he won. He has also released rap music on his YouTube channel, where he has nearly four million subscribers.

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Credits - The Indian Express