My growth as a comedian coincided with the growth of comedy in India: Aditi Mittal

Aditi Mittal recently joined NewsX for an fun conversation as part of NewsX Influencer A-List. In the exclusive conversation, the comedian opened up about mastering the art of making people laugh, her journey so far, the impact of Covid on the comedy scene and much more. Read excerpts.

Speaking about mastering the art of making people laugh and how does she do it, Aditi said, “By having a lot of personal tragedy, and by learning to process it through the lens of comedy. You know the one reason that people say that comedy is so difficult to do or to perform is because it’s the only one of the few art forms that requires a very specific reaction. There, the only idea is to only make someone laugh. Whereas, other art forms are drama films or horror films. If it makes you smile occasionally, great; if it scares you, even better. The idea that you have to evoke a very specific reaction is where the challenge in comedy lies and it’s a beautiful challenge.”

Talking about her journey to master the art form, Aditi shared, “I am humble enough to admit that I was at the right place at the right time. I don’t think I would have been making money out of comedy as soon as I did. I started 10 years ago. I started making money 7 years ago. I also think that because my career and my growth as a comedian coincided with the growth of comedy and the internet at the same time in India. I happened to just be at that intersection, which is why I got this chance to grow and make it my living. As far as me becoming a master, I feel like I don’t want to be master of anything till I am dead, then I want everybody to respectively remember me as a master but till then I want to keep learning. I think I want to keep growing. I want to keep surprising my audience and people who watch me.”

Covid-19 has been a game-changer for a lot of comedians, due to the OTT boom. When asked how has been for her, Aditi responded, ”As I said, the coinciding of the growth of the Internet and the introduction of OTT’s and what they were doing in terms of putting out content. Earlier, there were standup comedians, who would tour their whole life, who would be on the road going from city to city, country to country, doing show after show after show. There would be no place to output, to be able to reach a larger audience. That has changed drastically in the past decade or so because we have Youtube and OTT platforms, where you can polish what you have and put it out there, for not only an audience that would be confined by, ‘I am only going to this city Jaipur. Only the person who comes or lives in the city can buy my ticket’. Now, it is everybody across countries, across cities, and across ages.”