Varun Grover

“There's a lot of ordinariness, and people tend to play to the same regressive tropes - sexism, patriarchy, unkindness to the oppressed. Comedy shouldn't fall into these traps - by its very nature comedy is supposed to be edgy and anti-establishment.”

“Revolutions can be messy but they can't be perceived as unjust.”

“Comedy as dissent or any art form as dissent is going to be our last safety valve.”

“I am primarily a comedian. Sometimes I also do comedy about my cats. Now unless you find metaphors in cats, there is nothing political about those and I love doing such jokes as much as I love doing political content.”

“I was writing stand up comedy for TV for around 5 years and just wanted to attempt it myself. Vir Das started an amateur comedians' night in Bombay in 2009 and I went for the very first one. It was a competition and I won the first prize.”

“We critique all politicians who are in power, whenever there's a talking point.”

“I am Hindu, upper-caste, male, and able-bodied. So everything is on my side. That gives me the extra cushion that Swara Bhaskar won't get.”

“When a new government comes, even the detractors want to give them a chance because they have been voted in by the people of the country.”

“I don't think changing minds is possible with just comedy. It's too much to expect from your own art.”

“I'm okay with anybody interpreting my work anyway because I don't take it seriously.”

“Sometimes people don't want to laugh because it's wrong to laugh at their own establishment.”

“British comedian Imran Yusuf is fantastic and so is Shazia Mirza, also London-based.”

“If you start imagining an audience for yourself, you don't do justice to the job. You fall into that trap of a self-image.”

“In any show, not everybody is completely with us on all the topics we talk about. We talk about Hindutva, and we talk about the problems with Islam also. If there are Muslims in the audience, laughing at the jokes on Hindutva, they will have to confront the jokes on Islam too.”

“I think both comedy and dissent are liberating, for the listener as well!”

“In general, even when I'm not doing political comedy, I want to be clever and find the least confrontational way to say the most offensive things.”

“My only success is that I am alive.”

“I like to dissociate myself from the person I was even three hours ago. It's a natural requirement to be a writer.”

“You cannot have the same kind of character again and again in every season or every stage of your life. You change, people change.”

“I don't think stand-up comedy is becoming too serious, in fact, I wish it was. We are still mostly doing frivolous stuff.”