Comedian-actor Raju Srivastava has died at the age of 58. Srivastava will trigger different kinds of nostalgia for people who have seen him performing in the popular show The Great Indian Laughter Challenge that made him a household name.
To understand the phenomenon of Raju Srivastava one has to understand the history of comedy in the popular forms in India.
Hasya sammelans go on air
In the early days of Indian cinema, there was a clear distinction between the comedian and lead actors. These comedians would have their own small laughter track in the script. They would randomly appear in the film to loosen up the plot and entertain the audience with the joy of pure randomness. Tuntun, Mukri, Asit Sen, Keshto Mukherjee, Deven Verma, Mehmood and Asrani were among the most famous comedians. In the post-1990s, liberalised India that prioritised having fun, a different kind of cinema emerged. The Govinda-David Dhawan comedy films made serious box office business and ended the separation between a hero and a comedian. Many stars started working in the movies as comedy heroes. The same success model was then picked up by director Priyadarshan, which created even more comedy stars. The comedian no longer remained on the margins of the film or a digression from the main story.
At the same time, satellite TV boomed and popular channels were on the hunt to find new forms of entertainment. Before that, comedy events in India were limited to hasya sammelans, where the middle-class and lower-middle-class population—mostly in small towns—would go to catch a glimpse of comedians mimicking popular stars. Sometimes, comedians would be seen in between performances in circuses or magic shows, which were the prime events in these small towns.
This is where The Great Indian Laughter Challenge came into the picture. It repackaged the idea of hasya sammelans. The producers knew that the audience was desperately waiting to laugh while gazing at the square-boxed television inside their house. The show took the idea to a majestic level, reaching every household with a cable connection. Finally, the comedian was provided with a mic, respected as an important entity who can entertain and influence the taste of the public badly waiting to get entertained and distract themselves from the everyday complexities of life.
The Great Indian Laughter Challenge became a huge hit in 2005. This show launched many comedians such as Sunil Pal, Ahsaan Qureshi and Raju Srivastava. It also launched Bhagwant Mann, who is currently the chief minister of Punjab.
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Small-town comedy
The format was simple. Comedians will come on stage and entertain the judges—one of whom was Navjot Singh Sidhu, perpetually ticklish, jumping from his seat and laughing uncontrollably, even at jokes that weren’t remotely funny. The audience nevertheless loved the over-the-top laughter of Sidhu. And the audience loved the comedians. Raju Srivastava became the most famous of them all.
In that era, Raju became the brand ambassador for the anxieties and concerns of small-town Indians. His comedy would often point at the most random small-town event and find humour in it. He would sometimes pick the saddest of events, such as the farewell ceremony of a daughter at a wedding or a messy funeral procession, and find something ticklish. He would also find humour in the point of view of a bored cow sitting in the middle of the road, a wedding videographer roaming the event like a vagabond ghost or the angry and vengeful mango pickle buried under a heap of food at a wedding buffet. He created a character called ‘Gajodar’ who was an average awe-stuck small-town man who would observe urban life in Mumbai and then come back to town with stories about his peculiar experiences. These included how rich people behaved in restaurants or the fake English accent they spoke in while buying vegetables from local stalls run by people from Uttar Pradesh.
Srivastava’s style taught many to look for humour in one’s own setting—to find the absurdity in the mundane. Humour can often dilute the misery of existence through the balm of laughter. Raju’s relatable comedy relieved many small-town families. They saw their daily tensions depicted in a form that could be laughed at. These acts became a wild hit because many popular comedies are based on the idea of relatability.
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The last act of Raju Srivastava
The phenomenon of the Raju Srivastava, however, didn’t extend beyond a point.
The social and economic realities of the audience changed as did their taste. Raju Srivastava’s comedy remained the same, and over time, became repetitive without any innovation. The new middle class now found relatability in the world of Kapil Sharma who ruled this genre by profitably mixing comedy with Bollywood stars, who would often visit his show. Sidhu also made the switch.
Younger generations had little interest in Raju’s style of comedy.
Nietzsche once said: “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” The idea that comedy was invented due to suffering has now changed due to internet surfing. New urban generations feed on a diet of popular culture on the internet. They watch Western comedy giants performing in the US. This also led to the emergence of comedy venues in urban centres and a new crop of comedians emerged. There was aspirational value in it—the audience felt that the act of going to these venues was ‘cool’ and a sign of social progress in cities.
Even small-town audiences found relatability in the new small-town internet humour that created grounded content with greater speed. Creators such as Bhuvan Bam and Amit Bhadana repackaged this genre of rustic humour with themes of everyday life and tensions between the middle-class rural/small-town India and urban India, which Raju Srivastava ruled once upon a time.
Raju Srivastava became obsolete in this setting and never really came back from it. He slowly became a memory of the past, often reduced to 90s’ kid nostalgia. The present had nothing special to offer him. Neither did he have anything special to offer to the present.
His legacy as the cultural archivist of a certain era and class will remain in the archives of the internet—in 720p videos on YouTube.
The final images of Raju Srivastava that popped on TV were the repeat ads about relieving constipation where he would be seen overacting to sell a laxative. Therein lies comedic irony—the comedian who was the ambassador of relieving the middle class from their mundane existential crises, in the final days, became the ambassador of solving the most mundane problem of the middle class—constipation.
Anurag is a multimedia artist and host of Anurag Minus Verma Podcast. He tweets @confusedvichar. Views are personal.