An HR expert tamed his destiny to be the ‘married man but chased his dreams with his better half’. A corporate desk to center-stage, he fearlessly donned formals to informal look with a re-creation of instances through memories and experiences. From little laughter sessions to a ‘star-dad’ to his superstar kids, Amit Tandon says it all in an exclusive interview with team TMM.
Amit Tandon is the ‘married guy’ who honestly shares little incidents from his life. What was your wife’s reaction the moment she got to know you would be sharing your ‘married life’ on stage?
Like every other married man, I was petrified to walk up to my wife and share my dream of being a ‘comic’. (•laughs•) To my surprise, she did not react the way I expected her to. She smiled and wished me ‘luck’. The moment I started to talk about our life ‘together’; people turned curious and wanted to know more about her. There have been instances when people have congratulated her on being the ‘talk of town’. The irony is that people wish meet her more than seeing me. With time, she is a celebrated face when people want to get clicked with her. I am glad she has been on my side for all such difficult times. My lady has surely kept me grounded but eyes to reach the sky.
How do your children react to seeing their father hitting stardom? How do you make up for having missed a few days due to your schedule?
It becomes very difficult at times. Whenever I go for their Parent Teacher Meetings, their teachers want to take pictures with me. I hope they don’t get additional marks of it. (•giggles•) As they grew up and began understanding me as a stand up comic, they got really excited. For the first show they watched me perform LIVE; I asked them to announce my name from the backstage. Their sparkling eyes and head held high on seeing their father being cheered by hundreds of people sitting in the audience was truly an achievement. The more I like to spend time with them; the lesser moments I get to spend with them. Whenever I am home, all my time is theirs’. For all the time I am with them, I make sure I irritate them enough so they don’t miss me whenever am not around.
Your entire life has been a diversion from what you were ‘supposed to do’, to something that you believed and decided to ‘do’. What made you have a strong belief in the idea of being the funny man?
I have always been ‘the child’ of my family who took the unconventional unknown path. I only followed the unsaid and did what I was NOT supposed to really do. Once did I listen to my parents and successfully completed my engineering followed by two years of ‘investment in Management’ with an MBA. Seeing my parents unhappy with the results, I was asked to re-appear for the tests. I was put to trial for another month only after taking 30 days of off-tenure. All of this had put me under a radar. Fortunately, during the same time I met somebody who said,‘if you do not do it NOW, you would always live with a regret throughout your life that you did not even TRY. If you fail, you know it wasn’t meant to be’. A true believer of the statement has changed my life for good. I began with working with a start-up; followed by venturing into being an entrepreneur with an HR consultancy while we were expecting our second child in sixty days. It was the most arduous moment for us to take a plunge.
In both your professions from being an entrepreneur to a comic, you have done commendably well. Was gliding from a rigid corporate structure to center stage a comfortable transition?
Nobody begins a business to close it at any point in time. From two of us to a strong team of fifty; we grew from a small venture to one of the best HR firms in the country. Nurturing an endeavor like that took endless hours of work, sweat, and blood off us. There came a point where I even had to mortgage our house. Fortunately, we accumulated funds, cleared those. Both Sonal and I had seen the best and worst times with it. Leaving it all took a lot of persuasion to self for Sonal and myself to bid farewell to our ‘little child’ now that my comedy gigs have been doing a decent business. All of that takes good care of the rest of things. Comedy came naturally to me. Thus, came easy on the scale. However, it has probably taken almost a decade of mental conditioning for my parents to accept the profession I have finally ‘found’ myself in. Somewhere, they still feel that I should have kept the company because it came with a good cash inflow.
You have performed on three major mediums, radio-television and stand up comedy. What according to you is the most challenging?
Nothing beats a LIVE show in being the most challenging yet satisfying. It is priceless to see the audience laughing, falling off their chair and having the best time. Also, an instant response from them communicates if you are not doing well. Then begins a struggle to play another innings of trying to curl them up and push to laughter-fits. A good show marked with a ‘standing ovation’ for thirty seconds marks an ‘evening done right’.
Has there been an incident which was a pat on the back saying, ‘well done!’on being spreading ‘happy moments’?
This happens every single time. Getting messages like ‘ I have had the best 90 minutes of my life.’ suffice it well. There was one show when a couple came in and the lady was almost seven months pregnant. She was all smiles and said ‘I am going to have a happier child, all thanks to you’. There have been incidents when socially abled people make an extra effort to come to the show and insist on watching a show. All I want to say is that I am ‘humbled’ with all love that people every single one of my audience-family has showered me with.
You have very strongly put your wife and being Punjabi on edge and moved the world on laughter fits. What made it ‘click’ with the audience?
Honest observations. I perfectly fit into the bracket of ‘middle class married Indian with middle-class values’. This resonates with a lot of people. In most of the cases when I narrate my real-life experiences on stage, people say, ‘this is exactly what happens with me’. The performance breaks out from the realm of a staged content but goes back home with the audience. Even after a long time if a similar episode repeats, they recall the joke I performed. The ‘empathetic association works wonders.
What does it take to build on a concept?
Everything that I see around has a story or other attached to it. I pick a few, ignore many. The things that irritate you the most are funniest. Some of my sets are straight out of my life but are ‘illogical’. For instance, I have a set where a middle-class guy goes to a five-star hotel. That came from our annual family holiday in Goa. Later we wondered why we were under the unsaid pressure? Other is when you don’t get something and you find something that irritates you for a while to live through a life cycle for a while. For instance what you plan to shop versus what you finally shop. These minuscule perceptions work wonders.
Your show reverse gear was a nostalgic ride into time. Tell us more about it.
‘Reverse gear’ was something I wanted to do outside comedy. I am 42 years of age and come from a different era. I wanted to re-create space for a time-travel to possessions of old times. Being Fortunately, my audience is in the same bracket who grew up watching all of that. For instance, ‘Flop show’ only had 10 episodes. which was nothing . Even today people remember every single episode that was aired for two months.
The post The brave-heart daddy dearest : Amit Tandon appeared first on TMM.