Comedian Amit Tandon: Stand up comedy is great catharsis

Playback singer Nikhita Gandhi says the song "Yellow wali Beetle" is the "ultimate" heartbreak anthem for 2020. The upbeat song from the "Happily Ever After" series is sung by Divya Kumar, Nikhita and Vivek Hariharan. It is composed by Parag Chhabra with lyrics from Shailender Singh Sodhi (Shellee). The song, which released on February 27 at The Zoom Studios YouTube channel, has a quirky take on marriages and heartbreaks. The cast including Naveen Kasturia, Harshita S Gaur, Shruti Das, Gurpreet Saini, Shivankit Parihar, Ravina Sharma, Meenakshi Sethi and Ramna Wadhawan, are seen shaking a leg together in the music video. What happens when a mic is given to 42-year-old stand-up comic who is a father of two teenagers? Well, he has lots of funny family stories! New Delhi-based comedian Amit Tandon has come out with an hour long special titled "Amit Tandon: Family Tandoncies". The funnyman is over the moon, what with Indian society finally learning to embrace stand-up as an art and a profession, and says that thsi form of comedy has emerged as a great form of expression. "It (stand-up comedy) has grown in the last seven to eight years and it is a fantastic movement. Stand-up comedy today is a great form of expression. It is you who is talking about your stories and there is no third person involved in the process. When you go for a stand-up show, it's your story, you brought it on. There is no censor in the middle. So, it is a very honest form," Tandon told IANS. Often tagged as the 'married guy' of stand-up comedy, Tandon added: "It is a great catharsis for a lot of us because if you watch comedy, 75 to 80 percent of it is written about things that frustrate you, that you find annoying." In the one-hour special on digital giant Netflix, Amit strikes a connection with the audience on problems he faced with the changes in the philosophy of raising children, the evolution of relationships and his "template" for a successful, peaceful and happy marriage. But how did he arrive at the name "Family Tandoncies"? "We wanted to say that it is about family because largely I am talking about my kids, wife, parents and brother. Then we wanted to keep it a little quirky so somehow we found a word we could use my name as well as still communicate about what we are talk about. "Tandoncies" is somehow a version of tendencies. It worked for us," said the comedian, who is popular for his reliability and clean comedy, something that makes his shows appealing across age groups. With OTT platforms giving a scope to stand-ups comics, Tandon feels the digital boom has made a huge difference for artists in the genre. "It (the digital boom) has made a huge difference. Earlier, when we were putting up stuff on digital (space) like YouTube, it was a big boon for us because suddenly, if you have talent you can showcase it on your own without depending on a third party. With the (OTT) platforms coming in, the advantage is that it is not just left on us to discover our market or our audience, but there is a set of ready audience that these platform brings to us. It's a big advantage. A lot of us have seen a difference after we launched our shows on OTT platforms. We get to do our one-hour specials in one go on these platforms," he said. There is a perception that stand-up comics are funny people round the clock. Is it true? "I am socially awkard. I will go to a party, sit in a corner and observe everyone because at that point of time everyone is a material for me. There are a lot of comedians who are not funny all the time," he said.