Thought Behind Things · Oct 13, 2025 · 1:38:14
Dayyan Atif lost 10,000 Indian followers in one day
At sixteen, Dayyan Atif has done what Pakistani comedy has struggled to do for a decade: sell out a cinema, mainstream a stand-up brand, and survive a one-post loss of 10,000 Indian followers without softening his voice.
with Dayyan Atif
12 min read
A sixteen-year-old as the first crack in the wall
The episode opens with Muzamil setting up a long-standing question he has been chasing for years through conversations with Tabish Hashmi, Danish Ali, Saad Haroon and others: why has stand-up comedy never gone mainstream in Pakistan the way it has in India? Indian comics sell out arenas across the world. Pakistani comics, almost without exception, do not. The standard answers — audiences are too prudish, the country is too hard to joke about, the structures are not there — have stopped being satisfying.
What pulled Muzamil into this specific conversation was a single observation. Scrolling through reels he assumed he was watching a twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old. He was not. Dayyan Atif is sixteen. And earlier in 2025, Dayyan announced he was going to do a live show. Muzamil’s first reaction was the standard Pakistani reaction: this is going to get cancelled, this is going to get him in trouble, somebody is going to throw shoes. Then the show happened. It sold out. And the moment it sold out, an entire wave of younger comics in Pakistan started moving.
“In my opinion the first link of that chain, the first mainstream one in that wave, was Dayyan Atif,” Muzamil tells him. “Who is a sixteen-year-old.”
An upper-middle-class Lahori childhood with a fourteen-year age gap
Asked about background before content, Dayyan describes an upper-middle-class family in Lahore with a striking sibling structure: fourteen years between him and his brother, ten years between him and his sister. He was effectively raised inside adult conversations from the beginning. His exposure to content, to comedy, to the world, came not from peers but from siblings already in their twenties.
Content arrived in grade four. He had just shifted to a new branch of his school, was watching Instagram, and decided to make his own page. He went to his mother and asked what to call it. “I randomly went up to my mom and I was like, what should I name it? And she said, ‘Just use your own name.’” That casual answer is the entire branding decision behind a Pakistani creator now sitting at roughly 400,000 followers.
The first sketches were about school — seniors, rumours, exaggerated characters built around classmates. One sketch about a girl got reported to the principal. Dayyan was lucky in his principal: she was supportive, asked him to remove that one video, asked him to get consent for future ones, and then gave him a piece of advice that quietly shaped the next three years. She told him to stop making content about school and shift to mainstream content. He did. By grade five he was writing about wider school life, and one of those videos — a double-meaning piece he says is still on YouTube under a name he laughs about — took him from one or two thousand followers to seven thousand overnight.
He could not have explained at ten what he was doing right. He just knew it was working.
The first stand-up set: a 100-person room and a blank mind
By the time he had around 60,000 followers — grade seven or eight — Dayyan went to his first stand-up show. Laugh Out Lounge, started in 2017 by Zain Qazi, was the venue. Junaid Akram was performing. After the show, Dayyan walked up to him and asked if he could do the next one. He was told yes.
He went home and wrote his entire set out, word for word — school-life material, the same observational territory that worked on Instagram. A week later he was on stage in front of about 100 people.
The opening joke landed harder than he had prepared for. “Because of my opening joke there was such a big applause — because it was a completely different dynamic, and now I think about it, a thirteen-year-old kid coming and saying something really edgy. People lost it. And I just went blank. I forgot my entire set.” He told the audience out loud that he had forgotten his material and needed a second. They waited. He found it again. The show recovered. He came off stage understanding something he had not understood from the screen: stand-up and Instagram are not the same game. On Instagram, the algorithm pushes your work to people. On stage, people have paid to see you. The stakes are higher and the feedback is immediate.
Mom as the first content restrictor
Muzamil pushes on the family dynamic. A thirteen-year-old is doing edgy stand-up. What do his parents think?
The answer is unusually grounded. Dayyan’s mother is a stand-up fan — she watches Vir Das and Abhishek Upmanyu — and when Dayyan told her he wanted to perform, she sat him down and gave him a single piece of advice. “She told me, ‘I’m not telling you not to do edgy comedy. I know it’s part of it and you’re allowed to do it. But make sure the audience doesn’t get uncomfortable.’” That instruction — keep them on the edge of their seats, but never let them fall off — is, three years later, still the line he writes against. His mother is the person who screens his videos before he posts them. His father, who is in his seventies and still on a feature phone, occasionally tells him to tone something down. His sister edits him in real time.
The result is content that, as Muzamil notes, sits at an unusual midpoint: it goes far enough that mainstream Pakistani sensibilities flinch, but it pulls back at exactly the right moment — sometimes mid-word — to keep the family in the room.
The Cue Cinemas special: 500 people and a financial loss
The pivot moment in Dayyan’s career arrived after a friend of his older brother — referred to throughout simply as Mahad bhai — pushed him to do a one-hour solo special. Dayyan had no idea what a special even was. Then he watched Matt Rife for the first time, fell in love with the format, and started writing toward it. His O-levels intervened. After the exams, Mahad introduced him to the owners of Uniformers, who agreed to sponsor the entire show on the back of one pitch: imagine a fourteen-year-old kid selling out Cue Cinemas in Lahore.
They went for it. Dayyan stitched together a forty-minute set from material he had been recycling and refining across five or six small shows. He archived all his old YouTube uploads — most of them had only a couple of thousand views — and cut the best moments out of each set, then assembled them into a single special. The booking, the lighting, the marketing all came together. The show sold out. About 500 people came. He stood inside a cinema as a sixteen-year-old, looked at the screen showing his own face, and could not process how he got there.
The economics are worth pausing on. The cinema cost roughly six lakh. Lighting brought the total to around eight lakh. The initial ticket price was 2,000 rupees; after slower-than-expected sales he dropped it to 1,500. The cinema took no cut of ticket sales — only the ticketing partner took its standard ten to fifteen percent. With the sponsor covering the venue, Dayyan was not exposed to the downside. But on paper the show took a loss.
That was not the point. “This show was not even an economic opportunity,” Muzamil reflects back to him. “It was largely you testing out the idea: can I pull 500 people? Can I make them laugh? Can I have them stick to their seats?” Dayyan confirms it. The 500-seat sell-out was the product. It was the proof, for him and for everyone watching, that a Pakistani stand-up brand built on Instagram could move people from the feed into a paid room.
”I lost 10,000 Indian followers in one day”
Later in the discussion, Muzamil asks about the audience split. The answer is the sharpest claim in the conversation and the one the headline is drawn from. Roughly sixty percent of Dayyan’s audience is Indian. Forty percent is Pakistani.
That cross-border audience is both his largest growth lever and his largest exposure. During a recent flare-up around tourism and tension between the two countries, Dayyan posted a reel. “I was the only creator in the world that wasn’t banned in India,” he says, “even though I lost like 10,015 followers in one day. For one post. In one day, I lost — because the majority of my audience is Indian.” He woke up the next morning, saw the number, assumed it was a glitch, refreshed, and watched it climb by another ten. It was not a glitch.
Muzamil asks if it made him reconsider. The answer is short. “I was the same. I’ll say what I feel like.” He notes, almost in passing, that he tried adding self-deprecating jokes about himself to balance the set, and that even those were not enough for the people who had already decided to be offended. He has not adjusted his voice. The cost has been absorbed.
Why comedy hasn’t gone mainstream in Pakistan
Muzamil returns to the framing question of the episode and asks Dayyan directly: why hasn’t comedy taken off in Pakistan the way it has in India?
Dayyan’s answer is unsentimental. “It’s not a content problem. Our comics are equally good and equally equipped with content that resonates with people. The only problem is they can’t market it properly.” Teach them how to run Instagram, he says, teach them how to sell a show, and once the audience walks in once, they become repeat customers. The hard part is the first ticket. That is why, in his reading, the comics who can pull a crowd — Junaid Akram, Abbas, himself — are the ones with an existing digital footprint. The ones without one cannot fill a room no matter how good their material is.
His second point is structural and more uncomfortable: there is not enough risk-taking in the scene. Going from a fifty-person room to a five-hundred-person cinema requires a leap of faith. If he had spent the months before the special hesitating, the special would not have happened.
Muzamil pushes back gently. He thinks the bigger problem is infrastructure rather than marketing — booking a cinema, doing lights, ticketing, security, all of it falls on the comic in Pakistan because nobody has built the apparatus around the artist. Indian comics have it. Pakistani comics do not. They agree the two diagnoses are layered, not opposed.
Digital scale, crowd work, and what Pakistan still won’t let comics do
The conversation moves into a thoughtful exchange about the relationship between stand-up and digital. Most major modern stand-ups, Muzamil notes, exist as world-touring acts because of their YouTube presence. Matt Rife and Maxi Mini are his examples. The thing they actually post is not the joke-driven set; it is crowd work. Crowd work has retention. It feels real, it loops back to itself, and people binge it.
Dayyan agrees with the logic and adds the missing half. Pakistan does not yet allow crowd work to function. “We are too egocentric a society,” Muzamil says. “If a comedian makes a joke about you in the audience, the person flips. ‘How dare he say that to me? I’ll see him outside the gate.’” Dayyan does not contest it. In his own special he did a short five to ten minute crowd-work segment, with a mic passed around to the audience, but he is honest about the result — it was not real crowd work in the sense that the international comics he studies do it. He was protecting his set, because he is still young in the form and a transition off-script risks him forgetting the material. He says he would love to learn it properly. The medium needs the society to grow up around it.
What he is and isn’t outside the work
Throughout the conversation, Dayyan is careful to describe himself as more than his content. He talks about helping Mahad bhai run a restaurant in Lahore — learning logistics, supply chain, brand work — and treating himself, in his own words, as a jack of all trades. He took eleven subjects at O-levels. He is a serious student. He plans to study abroad — likely the UK, possibly the US — and to come back. “It’s the country that’s made me what I am,” he says of Pakistan. “Even if I go abroad, there will be no disconnect.”
The portrait that emerges, by the end of the episode, is not the comic-as-clown archetype Muzamil deliberately argues against earlier in the conversation. Comics, he tells Dayyan, are some of the smartest people in any society — they are not court jesters, they are pattern-recognition machines who can find commonalities in a culture and reflect them back. Pakistan’s habit of dismissing musicians as mirasis and comedians as masakharas is, in his framing, a category error.
Gen Z, attention spans, and an unapologetic culture
The interview closes on a question Muzamil says he asks every Gen Z guest: what does a Pakistan run by your generation look like?
Dayyan’s reply is mixed. He is honest about what is broken — attention span is gone, he says, including his own. He cannot sit through a long podcast. He admits he had not watched Muzamil’s episode with Tabish Hashmi before showing up. But he is clear about what is intact. “There is a certain hunger in kids,” he says. “Everybody is passionate.” The willingness to be unapologetic — which he sees as both Gen Z’s biggest social cost and its biggest cultural asset — is, in his reading, what eventually moves the culture forward.
Muzamil agrees, with a softening. He thinks Gen Z is unfiltered in a way that is sometimes ugly, but he also believes the previous generation has not given them the structures they needed. By the end of the conversation, both of them — a thirty-four-year-old podcaster and a sixteen-year-old comedian — are landing on the same instinct: the culture is not stuck, it is just early. The Cue Cinemas show was a single proof point. The 10,000 Indian followers were a single cost. Pakistani stand-up is finally in motion, and Dayyan Atif is one of the people pushing it.
“None the less, Dayyan bhai,” Muzamil says to close, “thank you so much for taking the time out, and thank you so much for being open to having a conversation with a thirty-four-year-old.”
Full transcript
सामने ख़बतीनों आज़रात. Welcome back to another episode of thought behind things. आप लोगों को बताएं आजकल मेरी series चल रही है with Endeavor where we're going around and trying to find Pakistan's most exciting startups and businesses और उसके अंदर बड़ी मज़े मज़े की कहानियां भी आ रही हैं. बहुत सारे लोग जो हैं वह Pakistan में जो हमें पता भी नहीं था. Tens of millions of dollars के revenues कर रहे हैं, उनकी valuations भी बड़ी ज़बरदस्त हैं. But while I'm obviously exploring all of that, I think beyond just the standard conventional startups or otherwise जो business आपका होता है, Industries बहुत सारी different type की होती हैं और एक area particularly जो कि मेरे लिए historically बड़ा interesting रहा है that has been comedy. Pakistan में comedy कभी उस तरह से grassroots में नहीं कहकर सकी. Technically करती भी है. मैं थोड़ी सी privileged और disconnected बात कर रहा हूंगा क्योंकि वह जो आपके stage shows and a lot of your sort of 8PM, 9PM जो आपके political satire type के dramas, वह जो live shows आते हैं, उसमें comedy historically exist करती रही है. लेकिन I feel like कि जिस ना India के अंदर ना ऐसे comics आए हैं, ऐसी एक industry nurture हुई है जिसने cross cutting across different demographics, different segments जाकर के पज़िराई भी हासिल की है, उन्होंने उसको mainstream किया है and they've grown to be quite big कि जो India के comics सब निकल रहे हैं, वह इस वक़्त पूरी दुनिया में चाहे हुए हैं. They they sell out, like, tens of thousands of लोगों के shows and it's incredible. And so I've been personally interested in trying to see कि Pakistan में क्यों क्या वजह है कि comedy उस तरह से mainstream नहीं हुई. मुझे पंद्रह साल हो गए digital media space के अंदर बहुत सारे. In fact, पहले तीन चार साल हमने भी जब content बनाना शुरू किया था, हमने comedy type content बनाया. We couldn't call ourselves comics because it's जो actual stand up comedy है, that's in itself a huge domain altogether and it's incredible. उस पर I've been I've spoken to a bunch of people. तावेश भाई से मेरी बात हुई, दानेश अली से मेरी बात हुई, साधा अरुण से मेरी बात हुई, जुनेश भाई से मेरी बात हुई. And I always ask them, you know, why has stand up not been as or or or has grown as much as it has elsewhere? बहुत सारी different reasons आते रहे. बहुत सारी ऐसी बातें आती रही कि यार यहां की audience फार आ गए, उनको समझ नहीं आती. Pakistan में बोलना मुश्किल है वग़ैरह वग़ैरह. But over the last year, actually earlier this year, maybe late last year as well, I actually saw this particular creator जो कि मैं बहुत शौक से follow करता रहा हूं पिछले दो तीन साल से. मैं मेरी life में ना दो चीज़ें होती हैं. I'm passionate about business and startups and economics, and I'm passionate about binging on reels, brain dead reels on Instagram. And उसके अंदर जो है this one creator who, by the way, I never thought. I heard he was probably 22, 23 years old. I just found out he's just 16 years old, and he's been doing this incredible work with last two, three, four years. And he announced कि जी मैं एक live show करने लगाऊं और मैंने उस time देखा. मैंने कहा यार पता नहीं यह कर तो रहा है. क्या होगा Pakistan में? कुछ आगे लोग जूते मारेंगे. You know, cancel हो जाएगा. Successful होगा नहीं होगा? Then the show happened. Then he, And so I was like कि यार यह this is the start of something incredible and I need to have an understanding of कि यह क्या चल रहा है? Because उसके बाद से मैंने देखा कि अब एक sudden boom start हो गया. A bolography जो कराची वाले भाई हैं उनसे भी हमारी कराची वाले उसमें इंशाला बात होगी. He also did a stand up thing. वह चला नहीं चला. I don't know कि market क्या बोले, but मेरे हिसाब से जो पहली उस उस wave के अंदर जो पहली mainstream वह उसकी कड़ी थी, that was started by दयान अतिफ़ who is a 16 year old. दयान भाई, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time out and joining us on the show. Sir sir, it's an honor आपने मुझे बुलाया, मुझे इस काबिल समझा. ठीक है. नहीं नहीं, definitely. The, your your work is absolutely incredible. I love it. Pakistan loves it. थोड़ा सा just want to, before we get into comedy and your content and what you what you're doing, I want to get a background of who you are, where you're from, where did you grow up, and what were some of the themes growing up that have made you the sort of person that you are today?
Sure, ठीक है. तो I belong from a upper middle class family, लाहौर से, ठीक है? And we I have, like, a very big age gap with my siblings, ठीक है? तो I think जहां से from the very start ही मुझे एक exposure मिल गया था adult life का क्योंकि सारी conversation ही मेरी मेरी भाई के साथ चौदह साल का gap है, बहन के साथ दस साल का gap है, ठीक है? तो फिर I think I just drew up उनके साथ ही तो that played a crucial part and I'd say content के साथ मेरा जो रिश्ता बना था वही from started from a very early life क्योंकि grade four में I shifted from one school to another उसकी दूसरी branch and वहां पर I was like, I am all new to this and I started watching stuff on Instagram. I was like, ok यह fit है, यह fit है, यह fit है. I I could do this and मेरी अम्मा ने मुझे friends दिखाया था उस time पर and मैं फिर Maths थी ऊपरी को देखकर. I was like, oh, यह तो बहुत है. खीर काम कर रहा है. मैं भी यह कर सकता हूं. तो I just randomly went up to my mom and I was like, four की बात यह है क्या? I randomly went up to my mom and I was like कि मैं page बना रहा Insta पर और अम्मा काम कर रही हैं कि जन्मे और अम्मा मुझे कहती हैं कि क्या मैंने कहा नाम क्या रखूं बोलती हैं कि ध्यान की चीज़ से रख दो. यह होते नहीं हैं कि अम्मा site पर करने के लिए. So I just I was like wow very fun name. रक्ति कारण है. I just try to initially it was videos on the school, ठीक है? School में जो हो रहा है, school में seniors के क्या scene चल रहे हैं, क्या rumors हैं. तो I I would make skits on that कि एक angle ऐसे भरे धड़बड़ बट्टा डालकर ऐसे लड़की बनाऊं कोई, ठीक है? और initially ऐसे थे school के लोगों में हां हां हां बहुत funny यह वह उधर उधर कि यह देखो यह छोटा बच्चा तुम्हारा अब्दा अकड़ा रहा है यह वह, ठीक है? Eventually I I think I teased about a girl, ठीक है? जिसके ऊपर मैंने skit बनाई, ठीक है? And उसने उसको हल्का सा offensively ले लिया and she went up to the principal and she she showed it to her. तो मेरी principal was a very supportive woman to some extent, ठीक है? उन्होंने कहा कि देखो मैं तुम्हें बोल रही हूं यह वाली remove कर दो, ठीक है? और बाकियों से अगर बनाएंगे तो consent लेकर बना लो, कोई मसला नहीं है मुझे, ठीक है? लेकिन मैं तुम्हें अपना एक personal बोल दूंगी कि what if you switch to mainstream content, ठीक है? School से हटकर ज़्यादा mainstream content बनाओ, उस पर तो ज़्यादा views भी आऐंगे, ठीक है? I am not telling you to stop. तो I just took took her advice and I switched to अपने school से ज़्यादा mainstream content और फिर grade five में I remember I started creating videos on school life ही कि शायद DAD book है, यह देखो यह है वह वाली सारी maths की DAD book oh my god. यह तो यह वाला content मैंने बनाने शुरू किया and just started creating creating creating creating creating Eventually मेरी एक video kind of blew up, ठीक है? और I think वहां से फिर मेरा एक हल्का सा jump start मिला था मुझे. I went from 1,000, 2,000 forwards to एकदम से 7,000 overnight, ठीक है? और वह भी I think I was 10, 11 उस time पर भी and it was उस पर मेरी हल्की सी वह double meaning video थी. It's up on YouTube, ठीक है? Small black coke के नाम से वह video है, ठीक है? और मैं remove भी नहीं कर सकता क्योंकि उस time पर मुझे अब account का password भी नहीं पता लेकिन वह video jump start थी, ठीक है? And I was like oh यह तो चल रहा है, यह content चल रहा है and I had fun making that video. ठीक है तो I was like ok, people like this. So I think मुझे हल्का सा वह tangent मिल गया था I started going in that direction वहां से फिर ऐसा ऐसा content बना बना बना बना बनाकर. I was doing something right. I had no knowledge कि मैं क्या कर रहा हूं but मेरी videos में कुछ write हो रहा था कि hook सही जा रहा था, retention सही जा रही थी. अब मुझे अब जाकर इन चीज़ों के बाद चला था लेकिन at that time 10, 11, 12 year old me had no idea. फिर I think by when I had 60,000 followers, ठीक है? In grade seven या eight तो I went to my first stand up comedy show, ठीक है? और वहां पर Laugh Out Lounge का show था वहां पर मुझे जैन काज़ी भाई perform कर रहे थे and after the show I just loved the show and I went up to him and I was like कि मैं next show कर सकता हूं? I was like हां हां ज़रूर आओ करो. तो मैं घर गया मैंने foreign पर लिखा, वह भी मेरे दिमाग में था I just wrote something down और वह भी मेरे सारा क्या कहते हैं school life related ही सारा set था कि अच्छा boys might stay भी क्या होता है, यह क्या होता है and वहां से बस stand up start होगी अगले तो उसके हफ्ते बाद show था and I just did it and it went really well. इस समय मैं ध्रियान में छोटा सा pause लूंगा. I do wanna give a special shout out and thank you to दफ्तर ख्वान जहां पर हम यह तमाम लोहौर वाली episodes shoot कर रहे हैं. You can check out more about them in the description. वहां पर हमने link डाल दिया है. They they exist in लोहौर, कराची. I'm not sure in इस्लाहौर,
Interesting. There's a lot to unpack here in terms of what conventionally most पाकिस्तानी families go through, right? So, पहला आपने यह बोला कि you have a huge age gap between your siblings. I think fourteen years with your brother, ten years with your sister. And so that's in itself a very unique dynamic in terms of how you're exposed to the world and how even your parents, right? Well, so I'm the youngest in my family. We're six siblings, and my oldest sister is sixteen years older than I am. My oldest brother is thirteen years older than I am. So I can very easily understand the difference in power dynamic when you have siblings that old. The difference in exposure that you have versus your peers क्योंकि वह आपके दोस्त यार जो हैं उनके generally sibling दे रही होती दो तीन चार साल का difference होता है. But more importantly वह भी बड़ा एक interesting होता है कि आपके parents जो है ना वह आप तक थक Most parents would be like, oh my god, बच्चा पता नहीं क्या देख लेगा Instagram के ऊपर. I have seen the content and the content is, I think the beauty of your content is somewhere in the middle where बहुत सारे early दस बारह पंद्रह साल तो इतने edgy हैं कि हम दुनिया की सबसे गंदी बात कर देंगे और फिर उसके ऊपर you know people are forced to laugh because it's uncomfortable. But you were somewhere in the middle where it's not. मैं भी देख रहा था आपकी you know आपने मां बहन की गालियां भी दीमी हैं but you cut it at the really at the right time. And obviously that's, it's a tough ask because your parents are now probably watching that content. Your family is watching that content and and so I'm I'm trying to understand the dynamic. What's the dynamic at home? You know, 13 year old is going out there to a stand up comedy show, I will definitely talk about the feelings at the time standing on stage. But I wanna first start off with the family dynamic. Family. That helped curate Family
dynamic ऐसा था कि मैं जब I went to the show with an adult, ठीक है? जानने वाले से, भाई के best friend से, I went with them, ठीक है? And अम्मा used to know कि मैं stand up देख रहा हूं, मेरी अम्मा is pretty chill about stuff, ठीक है? But she is also acts as my biggest content restrictor अभी तक के मैं उनको सारी videos दिखाता हूं कि यह देखें, यह सही है, डाल दूं, ठीक लेकिन उस time पर यह था कि I remember I used to watch a lot of stand up comedies. मेरी अम्मा खुद बसी और अभिषेक अंबानियों की बहुत बड़ी fan है, ठीक है? और वह भी देखती हैं, ठीक है? And she used to love stand up comedy as well, ठीक है? तो मैंने जब उनको बताया कि मैं भी हफ्ते बाद show करने जा रहा हूं तो she made me sat down and she was like देखो, मैं तुम्हें मना नहीं करनी कि तुम date ही comedy करो, ठीक है? I know it is a part of it and you are allowed to do it. बस make sure कि audience uncomfortable now, ठीक है? And that tip 13 year old दयान जिसको मिली थी वह अभी तक चल रही है मेरे साथ कि इतना गंदा होना है कि audience edge of seats पर रहे वह seat से गिरे ना, ठीक है कि इतना इतना इतना I think golden advice थी वह अभी तक चलती है. हां. ठीक है and मेरे अब्बू is like बहुत ही I think he is 70 तो he is very उनके पास बटनों वाला phone है क्योंकि उनको पता था कुछ कर रहा है. उनको अम्मा दिखाती रहती हैं कि यह यह है, यह यह है और अब्बू भी मुझे जाते फिर से करते रहते हैं कि अच्छा चलो अब इसको हल्का सा tone down कर दो content को या फिर वह भी, ठीक है? But for the most part अम्मा is all connected in it और अम्मा का यही था कि इतना retaining होना कि हम comfortable हो जाए audience. No, that makes sense. What about your siblings?
What's your relationship like with them with that sort of an age gap? मेरा relationship
सही है अपनी बहन के साथ मेरा बड़ा strong relationship है. वह भी मुझे बहुत ज़्यादा गाड़ी करती रहती है कि नहीं यह जो तुमने बात कर रहे हो यह ज़्यादा वह हो जाएगी या फिर यह बात नहीं करनी. यह contracts दोनों साथ ही चल रहे हैं. Very interesting.
But beyond content, I'm trying to understand again the themes of what built you, right, before all of this. Mhmm mhmm. Generally and and obviously, I have a I have a small son. He's four years old. I have a daughter. She's six months old. And so, as a father, I'm obviously reading up these days quite a lot on कि बच्चों को कैसे आपने वह करना है? Siblings की relationship dynamic कैसी होती है? When when you have a an older sibling who's 10 years old, the old the the immediate one is 10 years and then the other one is 14 years. Mhmm. तो power dynamic का बहुत massive difference है in terms of that family, right? You more often than not are the bottom of the food chain. You're the kid जिसको हर किसी ने आकर बोलना कि भाई वह glass ला दो, पानी ला दो, वह बिजली, वह button मत कर दो, पंखा क्यों चल रहा है? You know, you're you're constantly around and about. And that in itself, that's a very normal, healthy relationship, but that's just how it is, right, because you're the you're the small one. How much of those relationships do you think has had an impact on the sort of person that you are today? And that's what I'm trying to understand कि what those relationships beyond your work has have been?
क्या कहते हैं इसका यही है कि मेरे जो relationships थे क्योंकि अपने बहन भाइयों के साथ, अपनी अम्मा के साथ उनका बहुत बड़ा impact था क्योंकि मेरी अम्मा से अगर मुझे मज़ाक की भी यह खद होती है तो that मज़ाक की यह खद होती है वाली line has also played an impact on my content life as well, ठीक है? And
यह वाला scene है. Were you a comic? Interesting, were you a comic in your family as well? Were you that small छोटा भाई जो कि जो है ना मज़ाक करता है, joke करता है, he is the class
clown and the हां, in my family as well and in the school as well. Grade four, grade five मेरा भी यही था कि बस you can still find videos of me कि मैं बस भाई की को जो बैठा माऊं और उनको वह जो jokes अनारोंगे, आपने उसकी बेटे फिर क्या किया? किसकी? हौक, किसकी? तो वह वाली videos भी मेरी पिढ़ी हुई हैं full छोटे वाली. So it has always been that way.
Interesting. From that 13 year old, for that 13 year old to go and do that stand up comedy आपने कहा कि you did it at Laugh Out Lounge anymore, right? And I I this is the first time I'm hearing about it. I'm curious कि कितने अंदर से दिख रहा है and and how is that overall sort of?
Think we're based in 2017, ठीक है? Zan भाई ने बनाया था and initially क्या कहते हैं हम? Business model ही था, school के business events में नहीं होता जैसे university वगैरह के. तो he he planned it as a cafe but then it became a troop, ठीक है? That consist bunch of comics जो आ रही अपना नया नया material test कर रही हैं, ठीक है? And it just caught on shows पर shows होने लगे कि co working spaces पर shows होने लगे, दफ्तर ख्वाह में भी show होने लगा, इधर उधर show होने लगा. फिर eventually early auditorium, फिर पूरे specials one hour, ठीक है? And
that is when I Just found these guys, it's not like a cafe जहां पर यह regular Saturdays को लोग वह कर रहे हैं. It's basically like a Troop. Club. Club type बना रहा है. So, what was that? I mean, जो आपका 13 year old would be what? Twenty twenty two? 2022,
हां, I think 2022.
2022 का जब पहला आपका show था, what was that experience like? What was that feeling like? कितने लोग थे सामने? Had you ever done performance in front of people? बड़ा different experience होते हैं, लोगों को समझ नहीं आती. Camera के ऊपर दस दबा take करके perfect shot निकालकर निकालकर फेंकना बड़ा आसान होता है. जब आप live जाते हैं और सबके expression सामने होते हैं और आप दिमाग खड़े होते हैं आप कह रहे one long word. It's a different world altogether. And so what was that feeling like? वह
ऐसी थी कि I think 100 people की audience थी और मैंने अपना पूरा set जो था word to word लिखा हुआ था कि अच्छा यह मैं ऐसे बात करूंगा क्योंकि usually जब मैं videos भी script कर रहा होता हूं तो मैं like script तो करता नहीं हूं लेकिन जो thought आती है video की तो यही होती है कि अच्छा क्या मैं अगर मेरी feed पर यह video आए मेरी तो would I laugh on it? ठीक है और उसी फिर उसी की basis पर फिर I decide कि अच्छा यह बनाता हूं या नहीं नाभ रहा हूं. तो वैसे ही I was writing my set कि as if I am listening to a stand up comedy I had no idea लेकिन वह सही जारी थी. Something was going right and वह मैंने पूरा word to word लिखा and it was 100 people का show and I just went on with it and initially तो पहले ही हुआ कि मेरे opening joke की वजह से इतना बड़ा applause आया क्योंकि it was completely different dynamic and now I think about it. तेरह साल का बच्चे आकर एक बहुत ही edgy बात अगर कर रहे हैं, ठीक है? तो people lost it and people were एकदम से इनके claws break आई and I just went blank और मैं अपना set ही भूल गया ना पूरा, ठीक है? तो I had to फिर मैंने बोल दिया कि मैं अपना set भूल गया हूं लेकिन एक second मुझे याद करने थे then I took my time, ठीक है? फिर मुझे set याद आया वापस and then I went on with it and it was an amazing show, ठीक है? I had done theatre once before it, ठीक है? In my school, ठीक है? लेकिन वह school plays ही थे. Stand up it was completely new experience, ठीक है? और बहुत ही amazing था. I think वह वाला set and वह वाला show is completely different league क्योंकि we experience So 2022
is when this sort of happened and I am assuming कि that is when in a lot of ways the way that you approached all of this doing random online content for shits and giggles and for impressing a senior girl must have sort of changed because you would have been like, यार, यह तो this is legit. Like, I'm, there's a certain power that comes with it. Right? But you have the mic and you can control an audience, a room full of audience. Mhmm. And you can make them laugh. You can bring the emotions down if you want That makes you realize कि, okay, this is not just having fun. There is very real value to it. And अगर मैं आपका देखूंगी तो real mainstream rise भी आपका पिछले फिर तीन साल में ही हुआ है. हां जी. Since twenty two to twenty five. हां जी. So, run me through that story के. Since that that stand up, what changed? How did you begin to approach your content differently? And what were some of the major breakthroughs जिसके बाद आपने, you know, वह होता है ना कि बंदा कुछ करता है और उसके बाद फिर वह suddenly बहुत अच्छा response आता है and you start to evolve in a, in a better way. अच्छा,
तो उस show के बाद what massive change जो मेरे में आया था was कि मुझे यह realize हो गया था कि दोनों तो बहुत ही different game हैं, ठीक है? इधर stakes बहुत high हैं, और इधर लोग आपको पैसे देकर खुद देखने आ रहे हैं और इधर basically algorithm आपको feed कर रहा उसने scroll कर देना है if he does not like it, ठीक है? But इधर stakes बहुत high हैं तो मैंने हल्का सा यह change किया था कि मैंने अपने content पर Insta वाले पर I started putting a little more thought into it. उसकी वजह से आप अगर आप देखेंगे तो initially मेरी twenty twenty two में बहुत ही heavy increase आया था इन followers द्वारा, ठीक है? और rapid growth हो रही थी but ever since that show I started putting a little more thought into it. उस वजह से consistency कम हुई तो वह growth भी slow हो गई. Eventually जाकर आगे around 200 k के mark पर जाकर growth slow हो गई थी मेरी, ठीक है? क्योंकि that played part और उसके बाद I started doing more and more shows. I eventually watched more and more shows और े इस दौरान के अंदर I'd say कि I I was sitting with महाद भाई जिनके साथ मैंने पहले वह show देखने गया था and he was like कि he is a very visionary person, ठीक है. वह मुझे पूरा pump करते हैं and he is like a brother to me and he was like कि तुम्हें पता है ना this is not it, तुम्हारा special करना है and like 2022 के show के बाद उन्होंने मुझे यह कह दिया था कि this is not it, अभी special करेंगे. लेकिन मैंने कहा special क्या होता है? ठीक है? And then that's when I watched Matt Rife for the first time and I was fell in love with his content. I was like कि अच्छा यह एक boy है जो कि he's pushing इतनी ज़्यादा boundaries, इतनी ज़्यादा boundaries and I was like totally impressed by him कि यह इतना आगे जा कैसे रहा है, ठीक है? And that's when I was started experimenting with my content में. हल्का सा उसको और ज़्यादा edgy वाली side पर लेकर जाना शुरू हो गया and properly, क्या क्या चीज़ें करनी हैं, कितनी देर का set होना चाहिए, कैसे आपका set होना चाहिए, ठीक है और कैसे आपके set का layout होना चाहिए तो वह सारी चीज़ें started focusing on that as well, ठीक है और फिर beach में मेरे CIs आ गए. तो सारी मेरी break लग गई. फिर मैंने CIs दिए and CIs के फ़ौरन बाद I think महाद भाई got me one of his friends इनके थे old university के. He owns uniformers, ठीक है? And uniformers पर जाकर like marry पहली meeting थी and we were just like कि ऐसे भाइयों का नाम, यह uniformers के owners है and उन्होंने उनको बस idea pitch किया कि सोचेंगे एक चौदह साल का बच्चा stage पर आकर बहुत गंदी बात कर रहा है, ठीक है? और आप अगर कह रहे हो कि एक चौदह साल के बच्चे ने Cue cinemas, one of the largest cinemas in Lahore sold out कर दिया, ठीक है? तो how would that go down? And he totally went on with it. उन्होंने आंखें बंद करके he loved the idea, he loved everything about it, ठीक है? And it was उसके बाद ही हमारी फिर special पर काम शुरू हो गया, started working on my content. मैंने content मैंने अपना over the time कर ही लिया था क्योंकि I did four to five, six, seven more shows, ठीक है इस time पर और सारे sets को मैंने मिलाकर एक forty minutes का piece बना लिया, ठीक है? And then ऐसेन भाई के साथ, उनके साथ मिलकर सारी meetings करके Q book करवाकर रात को जाकर सारा lightness item हाथ भाई किसी help के साथ, ठीक है? It all came together and eventually बस मैं एक दिन खड़ा हूं cinema के अंदर और मुझे realize नहीं हो रहा कि how did it went from 100 people to यह छह, साढ़े छह सौ people, यह कैसे हुआ है? तो that was a major एकदम से jump जो आया.
Fascinating. Just for the uninitiated, what is a set? What are specials? Comedy में जो industry है उसमें काम किस तरह से करता है? पहले जो आपने मैंने चार पांच shows दरमियान में किए. Obviously we didn't get to see any of that on Instagram, right? So, how, what were they? क्या वह पांच छह comedians कुछ आ रहे थे? दरमियान में आ पा रहे थे? You weren't marketing any of that, so उनका size का, crowd का size कैसा था? Has it always been a hit और दरमियान में वह भी हुआ है कि, you know, you tried something and it didn't work? And that, so so I, what I'm trying to understand is कि जब मैं बाहर देखता हूं Matt Rife की अपनी बड़ी अच्छी example दी. Matt Rife की जब आप story सुनते हैं और आप देखते हैं कि कितनी दफा वह misses करने के बाद, you know, it's one thing to know what works, but actually I think the biggest genius is to know what doesn't work. What doesn't break. And that comes with a lot of experience and getting booed and you know all of that. So so I am curious कि वह जो shows थे, what was the experience like over there? So इसका यह वाला scene था कि
जो पिछले shows थे जो हुए थे they were like whole comedy show जिसमें घंटे का show हुआ है and like six comics आ रहे और उन हर किसी के पास ten ten minutes है. लेकिन that's how the format would go कि आप हर बंदा दस दस minute and every show I would like एक set को दो दफा perform कर रहा हूं और उसके बाद नया नया ad कर रहा हूं jokes पर फिर 10 से fifteen minutes पर जा रहा है time, 15 से 20 भी चला गया है, ठीक है? फिर उसके बाद यह एक completely different set try किया, उसके बाद एक और different set try. Set आपका basically जो ten minutes का period होता है वह आपका set खिलाता है, ठीक है? और आपका like आपका bits हैं और bits को जब आप साठ डालते हो तो आपका एक पूरा set वन जाता है, ठीक है? तो I was doing these sets स्वरा और यह अभी तक होती है in fact अभी मैंने एक और show भी किया और उस पर भी the people did not have fun with it. People were not enjoying कि उसका फ़ायदा format और demographic ही different था. ठीक है? तो यह चीज़ मुझे realize होगी थी कि अच्छा मेरा जो set लिख रहा हूं मैं, there's majority for the younger people, for the younger audience, people in their twenties, people in their 17 और late twenties, early twenties तक जाता है उसके बाद ज़्यादा से ज़्यादा thirties तक चला जाएगा लेकिन उससे ऊपर नहीं जाएगा मेरा content. यह मुझे बात eventually समझ आ ही गई थी, ठीक है? और I had jokes जो कि bomb करे थे, ठीक है? People did not enjoy them, ठीक है? लेकिन I think I still had that factor थोड़ा सा कि अच्छा चलो बच्चा है, ठीक है? तो I think people were laughing थोड़ा बहुत, ठीक है? लेकिन अब I completely do not have that factor and मेरे लिए भी एक एक learning curve है कि अच्छा पहले I used to get away with it, ठीक है? But क्योंकि 13 था, अब 16 है, ठीक है? अब उतना easy नहीं है to get away with it and I am really sure कि when I will be 18 तो it will be completely harder game as well क्योंकि अभी अभी मैं stage पर जाकर अजीब बात कर रहा हूं तो when I am 18 वह same चीज़ नहीं hit करेगी और तब तक वह चीज़ भी absolute हो जाएगी. लेकिन नहीं हूं. यह एक बहुत सीखने को मुझे मिला था कि not every show was a hit, not every bit was a hit. उसमें वही recycle कर करके I sat down. I had my videos on YouTube मैंने डाली हुई थी, ठीक है? And उनको फिर जब I planned for the special तो I archived them all, ठीक है? एक तो number one चली भी नहीं थी, ठीक है? लेकिन I had a couple thousand views on them तो I archived them all क्योंकि मैंने उनको सबको फिर देखा बैठकर एक रात and I compiled the best of all the videos. ठीक है? क्योंकि उस video में bombs भी थे, वह videos ऐसी नहीं थी कि वह पूरा ten minute का set था तो it had every single joke. ठीक है? उसमें फिर मैंने उनके ten minutes के हर set के best पकड़े थे and then I put them into a special. So, yeah, यह वाला scene. Interesting.
मैं I'm assuming जो आपने कहा ना कि मेरा जो अभी recent show fire हुआ है, वह स्लाहाबाद वाला show होगा because स्लाहाबाद the audiences are tough nut to crack. Like, it's, they tend not to, I don't know. They're they're they're they're weird and they're they're not impressed by anything. I don't know what they want in life, but I hope you don't let that bring you down. नहीं.
But इसका यह that's a beautiful part ना देखें क्योंकि nobody is gonna remember. आया मैंने बीस minute के लिए perform किया, ठीक है? Everybody has their own life. इसमें digital footprint नहीं है जैसे content में होता है, ठीक है? Nobody is gonna remember for that long. अच्छा hardly two weeks later even अभी हम conversation कर रहे हैं. I'm pretty sure most of them would have forget about it. तो I think that's the beautiful part. अगर अच्छा ही रहता है तो it sticks along. हां. अगर इतना अच्छा नहीं भी जाता तो they'll just get over it.
Makes sense. Tell me about that that that February 22 वाला. Right? So you've you've spoken about it. You've marketed it. And then after that as well, you you you spoke about you've you've done a lot of content around celebrating that and that's something that we didn't see, from दयान coming out इससे पहले, where it was just comedy and you didn't showcase a lot of your own feelings and comics are generally like that. They're they're they're they use comedy as a way to guard themselves against the world. Mhmm. But I saw that a certain vulnerability. I saw Diane showcasing his happiness and its his pride in his work. Mhmm. So what did that show mean to you? Like you've done this quite a few times before. What why was this why was this special so special? Number one, obviously special that that was me for all forty minutes. Completely ten minutes से जब आप forty minutes पर jump मारते हो तो वह भी
ठीक है? तो it had so many moving parts तो यह सारा एक नया मेरे लिए learning experience भी था, ठीक है? तो that show is यह था क्योंकि it made me realize कि अच्छा I am caught more to me than just skits and 50 people and 10 people, 15 people के shows. I can pull the crowd, ठीक है? क्योंकि if I go all in तो मुझे यह वाली बात realize होती है कि if I go all in और मैं अगर जान मारूं अपनी पूरी the whole cinema was filled, even सीढ़ियों तक filled था, बंदा बंदे पर चढ़ावा था, इतना filled था कि अगर चार सौ capacity का तो we had around like 500 people in there, ठीक है? तो at fifteen seeing myself on a cinema screen, ठीक है? That was amazing experience, है? Interesting. What was the, what was the price of the ticket? Ticket I think it was initially 2,000, ठीक है? But then बिक नहीं रही थी तो I switched it down to 1,500, ठीक है? And then I joked about it on the show as well कि तुम लोगों का तो पांच सौ. तो yeah, यह वाला scene था. For the first two days it was 2,000 then I switched it back to 1,500, ठीक है? Do you think it was the price point जिसकी वजह से फिर चिट्ठे में इतना शुरू गिनती है और बस वह generally अब आप announce करते हैं तो people are slow to convert so eventually. People are slow to convert as well लेकिन मुझे एकदम से quite a few messages भी आए थे कि 2,000 is too much, 2,000 too much. Although I I agree I shouldn't have switched it down to 1,500, 2,000 पर ही रहनी चाहिए थी क्योंकि जितनी hype create हो गई थी, ठीक है? और जितना इतना प्यारा market हुआ हुआ था, ठीक है? वह वही थे कि हल्का सा self confidence उस time पर low था तो इसलिए we just gave into what people were saying, ठीक है? But price point का कोई वह नहीं था. जो show की cost थी and sponsors आज थे तो we had nothing to worry about इतना price का. We could have sold it for 10,000 as well लेकिन उसका यह था कि अच्छा you're coming in a cinema at least pay 1,500
for sure. Yeah yeah yeah. So, to my understanding is कि this show was not even an economic opportunity. It was largely basically just you testing out the idea कि यार can I pull 500 people? Can I make them laugh? Can I have them stick to their seats and not leave midway कि यार हमारा time's आया हो रहा है? बिल्कुल. But and add to this the fact जो Pakistan में एक बहुत बड़ा मसला है जब हमने like I've been doing content for fifteen years for a vast majority of that period whenever I've done something we've always been the first one doing it, right? So वह फिर आपको हर चीज़ ही ख़ुद करनी पड़ती है. Generally आप बाहर जाते हैं तो a lot of the things that you would have done in terms of logistics and this and that with different partners होते हैं that help you sort of catapult yourself and you're focused on your work. Mhmm. तो जाहिर है कि वह चीज़ भी Pakistan में उस तरह से तो नहीं है. आपने ख़ुद ही टिकने बेच नहीं है. आपने ख़ुद figure out करना है operations वगैरह. Mhmm. But when you got that sponsor basically the idea for that sponsor was कि वह मेरा cinema की जो cost है वह cover कर देगा just in case कि अगर पांच टिकते बिकती हैं तो मैं कहां से cover करूं? हां, exactly. यह यही था कि he was like he'll fill in all the cost and I will have to go and perform.
ठीक है? That was a huge huge help and वह वाला idea जो आप बात कर रहे हैं कि कि can I pull 500 people? Can I actually do this? यह वाली उस उसके ऊपर based ही था सारा, यह show. It was not an economic opportunity at all. I think उस पर बहुत loss भी हुआ था show पर क्योंकि the cinema itself was really expensive. अच्छा. Like छह लाख. हां मुझे था cinema में? छह लाख था per like queue. अच्छा और उसके अलावा जो lights and Light, I think the cost went up to $8.08, तो ठीक उस पर भी अगर आप कर लो तो.
The ticket sales, did the cinema make a cut on this ticket sales as well या that money you you you took all for yourself?
Ticket sales का, cinema का cut नहीं था. Ticket sales का ticket वाला का जो cut होता है. We had ticket वाला as our ticketing बांटने तो उनका जो cut था वह वही था. क्या होता है ticket वालों का cut? Think 101015% था उस time पर.
I see. उस time के ऊपर जो जो यह चालीस minute का आपका finally set था, what did you learn personally from that? कि यार, I mean, again was it was definitely a success. And I I was hearing something about a documentary potentially that was coming out as well. I don't know if a friend of yours covered it properly, and were you hoping to release it at some point? Because I'd love to see, really, the the behind the scenes, how did it sort of happen. I'm not sure if you're releasing it. Mhmm. But क्या flow है? Will we see more content from that show? I understand, obviously, उसके अंदर आपके core content है, and releasing that means you might not be able to do more shows. But, how was that experience? Generally beyond the idea that you were able to pull these people and make a successful show, दयान के लिए personally, both professionally in terms of learnings and vibes and feelings wise, what was that show?
I think अगर मैं एक word से describe करूं तो it was wholesome क्योंकि show के बाद I just went and I hugged, like I saw मात भाई and he was like ऐसे देख रहे थे मुझे. ठीक है? And my friend came up to me and my friend was like आज से कोई छह सात महीने पहले we were watching Mattress सात में and he was like I told him कि यार मैंने कुछ special करना है and he was like आज से छह सात महीने पहले तूने बोला था कि तुम्हें special करना है जो बना है वह show को जब बाद में निकला show तो जब मैंने देखा तो I realize कि यह सारा digital content है, ठीक है? यह content बना ही digitally scale करने के लिए, ठीक है? And that is what helped me as well क्योंकि stand up अगर आप Wire India में भी देखो तो it's usually done in smaller venues, ठीक है? और main उनका earning point और economic opportunity YouTube है, ठीक है? तो मेरे लिए it was a blessing in disguise ही कि बस मेरा जो content था वह सारा digitally scale करने वाला था, ठीक है? और यह वाली बात थी कि I need to learn how to market it more properly क्योंकि age demographic के हल्के से और different लोग आए हुए थे क्योंकि obviously पांच सौ का अगर कोई show हो रहा है तो people in their late sixties, 60 भी आए हुए थे and I remember कि एक aunty को मैंने मेरी जो entrance वाली जगह थी मैंने वहां से दरवादा खोला और मेरे सामने एक aunty और uncle बैठे हुए हैं और मेरे पास जो नहीं रुके थे उन्होंने नहीं किया, that's ok. ठीक है? तो यह right I think Pakistan, this is also, sorry मैं आपकी बात करता हूं. I think
there will be certain people, the movers that will also build the appetite, right? So, बहुत बड़ा मसला यह होता है कि when you're doing something new. So, when I started podcasting, for example, four years ago, you know, people sporadically doing podcasts here and there. But मुझे लोग आकर बार बार यह कह रहे थे कि TikTok की दुनिया के अंदर तुम आकर podcast कर रहे हो. यह नहीं चलेगी. People are not gonna watch it. They don't care. और मैं उनको यह बात कर रहा था कि यार हर चीज़ की appetite होती है. You have to create the demand before the demand exists. Yep. And you have to and that is the excruciating part because that is where people will point fingers. People will say, you're an idiot for doing this. For comedy in Pakistan, you need to create the framework of कि यार यह चीज़ ऐसे होती है and it's ok to be like that. And that brings me to my next question as well. You know, there is a very interesting आपने ख़ुद भी यह mention किया there is a very interesting relationship between comedy and digital now where some of the biggest comedians जो modern day में निकले हैं they are there because of their digital presence. Yeah. उनके जो world tours हैं वो सिर्फ इस वजह से possible हैं because people every time you you look at them and you hear them and crowd से लोग यही कह रहे होते हैं कि I watch your videos all the time. That's what drives the sales. मुझे पता भी ना होता कि Metrive exist करता है या Maximiny exist करता है अगर YouTube ना होता. Right. So, इन दोनों का लेकिन obviously jokes jokes होते हैं और jokes जो हैं वह कितना ही आप मतलब you're not an infinite content machine. So, more often than not you see कि digital के ऊपर ये लोग jokes नहीं बेचते unless Netflix का special चल रहा है. Digital के ऊपर ये आकर crowd work बेचते हैं. Crowd work बेचते हैं. And and that
for me has always been very interesting because crowd work Crowd work बेचने का भी एक reason है ना अगर आप इसकी logic देखें ना sorry आपकी बात काट रहा हूं लेकिन crowd work में क्या है retention है, ठीक है? आपने एक शुरू कर लिया, ठीक है? तो it's उसकी इतनी high retention होगी कि that is why you end up watching all of it most of the times क्योंकि उसमें फिर end पर link back भी होता है, callback भी होता है, ठीक है? तो it links back to the very first joke जो आपने crowd के साथ किया था, ठीक है? तो I think वही digitally scale करने वाली बात यही है कि उसमें retention इतनी ज़्यादा है कि वह चल जाता है.
Absolutely and I think there's this it's a lot more authentic as well. It's a lot more real and so people tend to binge watch crowd work. The problem with crowd work is that unfortunately in Pakistan ना हम as a society हम ऐसे हैं कि हम बहुत ज़्यादा egocentric society हैं across the board. Everybody is very egocentric. मैंने आपको कुछ
ठीक है? मैं mother चाहता हूं अगर मैंने कोई ज़्यादा बोल दिया लेकिन I had to set.
नहीं, but वही वाली बात है ना कि अब जब आप mainstream होंगे और आप बड़े होंगे और और जब आपका crowd, अभी होता पता क्या है? इस वक़्त ना the influence. एक influence होता ना हर बंदा create करता है. And you you know पाकिस्तानी society unfortunately ऐसी है कि वहां पर ना एक मस्ख़रा जो है वह लोगों के लिए ज़िंदगी मौत का वह वन जाता है कि उसने उसने बोल कैसी दी? उसने मेरी बात देखता हूं मैं तुझे आकर तू gate के बाहर आ जाओ. अब बाहर and yes it's not just exclusively a पाकिस्तानी problem but again like I said there are structures for it, right? They have comedians have an incredible security teams, जो आपका crowd work का एक बहुत बड़ा problem है वह यह है कि and I feel like जो मैंने दोनों नाम लिए Maximini and Matt Rife दोनों के दोनों they they have a very incredible balance between extreme humility and extreme you know this this sort of a very comforting personality while immediately just destroying you, right? Like they'll pick you up and they'll अगर उनको कुछ चीज़ off लगेगी वह आऐंगे वह आपको तबाह कर देंगे and then उनको लपेटना भी आता है. उनको पता होता है कि यार अच्छा बंदा जो है ना वह frustrate होने लगा है तो मैं इसको किस तरह से पकड़ता हूं? You did you do crowd work in the special that you do that you did? How has your experience been with यह तो चलो hooligans थे. आप generally crowd को सामने खड़े हो क्या? आपने अगर किसी का वह मज़ाक बनाना है, आपने उसको वह करना है तो how did people take it अगर आपने किया था?
मेरा यह था कि मेरा वही वाला मसला कि since I am learning और मुझे अभी इतना time नहीं हुआ, है? Like India में comics एक एक set को दस तफा perform करते और फिर they add it to their special. मैंने तो दो तीन तफा ही किया हुआ था. तो मेरा यह था कि मेरा यह यह भी मुसला कि सिर्फ learning experience है तो मैं अपने अगर set से कहीं और transition करता हूं ना तो I forget कि मैंने क्या करने आ गए, ठीक है? तो I try my best कि मैं अपने set पर ही focus करूं, ठीक है? तो I did my set सबसे पहले, ठीक है? और उसके बाद we had a small moment five ten minutes for crowd work. इसमें audience को mic दे दिया गया था. ठीक है? Usually तो small venues पर आप सिर्फ बोल देते हो ना तो इधर mic वाला scene भी था तो वह mic पकड़ाया था और लोगों ने जो बात करनी थी उन्होंने वह बात की थी, ठीक है? और उसके basis पर, ठीक है? I was like if anyone has any questions about me वाला तो उस पर हम कर सकते हैं. तो उसके ऊपर we tagged a couple of jokes लेकिन वह it was not उतना authentic crowd work जैसे shows में shows पर होता है, ठीक है? क्योंकि usually crowd work इस basis पर generate होता है कि आप crowd में किसी को देख लो कुछ हरकत करते हुए या फिर crowd से कोई hack ला जाए, ठीक है, जिसके ऊपर आप कर लो, ठीक है? तुम और या फिर आप crowd से खुद interact करके कुछ ऐसा material निकाल लो, ठीक है? तो मेरे इसमें यह कुछ भी नहीं था तो इतना मेरा crowd work अच्छा नहीं था उस time पर.
Right. Do you think you'd want to work on that? Yeah, love to work on that. Mhmm. एक, one of the most viral episodes that we've done has been one with ताबिश हाश्मी. So, ताबिश being he was hosting that show with, what was it called? To Be Honest. अच्छा, ठीक है. और फिर To Be Honest के बाद, you know ताबेश अश्विन, right? So, the guy who did To Be Honest and then now he's in Jio, he has this incredible huge show. So, right before he went to Jio मेरी उनसे podcast हुई ताविश भयाए. अच्छा, जब तक वह podcast नहीं हुई थी ना उससे पहले everybody, a lot of people I would interact with. Either he had a cult following of people who'd be like, hey यार क्या बंदा है? What a funny guy. Mhmm. Or he had this sort of a very woke यार यह बस गंदी बातें करता है, अस्तख्र उल्लाह और क्या हो गया है और Pakistan में और मथिरा से ऐसी बातें करती हैं और उससे ऐसी. So, you could see कि as soon as he sort of went mainstream, you know, the the the content start to go towards, like, the 40 year old and the 50 year old and they were like, अस्तख्र उल्लाह. यह Pakistan में क्या चल रहा है? And so when that podcast happened, I think the reason why a lot of people connected with that and resonated with that was because they were like यार यह तो बहुत smart आदमी है. Like he is not a मस्कार. Pakistan में ना यह भी concept है कि यह concept है कि आपका online persona है वही आपका real persona है या फिर state Absolutely persona है या आपका real persona but even more so than that a lot of people consider जिस तरह से musicians जो हैं ना वह मरासी हैं, right? या जो comedian है वह मस्खरा है. These are these are negative connotation words where you tend to diminish the agency and the power and the intellectual capacity of that particular individual by saying कि यार इसका तो यह काम है ना, यह तो इस तरह का profession है. मेरे experience में comics are some of the most, some of the smartest people in the world because you cannot, it it takes a lot of high IQ to take content that a dumb person would just aggressively talk about but these people would actually cloud it like वह politics के ऊपर वह उसके ऊपर तबसरे दे रहे होंगे, वह society के अंदर यह identify कर रहे होंगे कि यार यह चीज़ें होती हैं. It takes a mind to identify commonalities of the society and then make jokes around it, right? And that could, that was extremely evident with with with दावेश भाई as well कि ok, he is this extremely smart human that utilizes comedy to actually say a lot more than just what he's doing. Mhmm. And so I'm curious k as an individual, yes, you you started off with school, and you started off with what you were seeing around you. Mhmm. But as you're now growing up and you're 16 years old now and just graduating from o levels as well or I think you're going to start with your final year at o levels. Mhmm. आप how much of the world are you absorbing as part of your personality? Do you, are you just, like, focused on कि जी मैं comedy देख रहा हूं, मैं मैं MetRife को देख रहा हूं, मैं Maximini को या आगे पीछे के स्तरी comedians को देख हूं, Indian comedians को देख रहा हूं. Yeah, am I actually also passionate about the problems the world has? You know, what's good that's happening, what's bad that's happening and that's one of the reasons why a lot of comedians you find also talk about social issues in a way that does not offend people. मेरा
मेरा यही है कि besides comedy I have a lot to me as well, ठीक है? मैं like CIS के करीब में आते हैं तो मैं भी पढ़ने बैठ जाता हूं as a normal kid, ठीक है? पढ़ना पड़ता है, ठीक है? And उस पढ़ाई के अलावा I am really into a lot of stuff. वह महाद भाई की मैंने आपको बताया था महाद भाई के साथ he owns a restaurant, ठीक है? वही के नाम से है in लाहौर, ठीक है? जैसे fast food joint. तो I spend my time over there, I learn about stuff उस business से, like I help them with content. They help me with a lot of stuff तो वहां से मुझे a lot of business side चीज़ों की वजह जल जाती है कि अच्छा यार, इस logistics होते हैं, इस तरह supply chain सारी handle होती है. So I am really absorbing a lot of stuff इसके साथ साथ like like I'd say I'd call myself jack of all trades क्योंकि हर जगह मैं हर जगह ही बढ़ जाता हूं इस तरह के के, ठीक है? कि हर जगह से कुछ ना कुछ सीखने को मिल ही रहा है, ठीक है? Whether it's comedy और content और business और पढ़ाई, ठीक है? I'd say, yeah.
You're very focused on पढ़ाई तो. A you're a top student. 11 subjects in O levels. Yes. Do you intend to stay in Pakistan? Again, I was just watching one of your videos where you were like, Pakistan मेरी जान है. Of course, मैं बाहर जाऊंगा. So, do you think you'll you'll eventually go abroad for your education?
Yes, यही है, I'm working on that too.
यही अगर Where would you prefer to go to? The US, Canada? US.
UK तो office ही होगा. US का भी अभी हल्का सौ off ही लग रहा है लेकिन let's see in the next few years क्या ही बनता है?
Interesting. How do you see the industry overall? And and rather let me rephrase the question. इस वक़्त, as as someone who's who's been a part of this now for for four, five years, who actually has created a successful product,
why do you think Pakistan में comedy never took off the way that it has in India? इसका यह बड़ा मज़ेदार सवाल है. यार होता है मेरे बहुत लोग पूछते हैं, ठीक है? And I think the best answer is कि content का मसला नहीं है, ठीक है? The our comics are equally good and equipped with good content that it resonates with people, ठीक है? The only problem is they can't market it properly, ठीक है? उनको कोई Instagram चलाना सिखा दें, उनको कोई show बेचना सिखा दें. आगे आवाम आ जाए अगर तो वह रुककर जाती हैं, ठीक है? That is given. अगर कोई आगे एक दफ़ा लाहौर के show पर at least, ठीक है, they will become a recurring customer to the shows, ठीक है? लेकिन जो पहला वह है ना कि आपको बस पहली दफा उठाकर लाना है बंदे को, ठीक है? वह is a really hard part. That is why I'd say कि comics like अब्लु भाई was able to pull people to his show, ठीक है? क्योंकि he already has an audience, ठीक है? That is why अबाज़ भाई was able to pull people to his show. He did a special as well, ठीक है? Allover Twentium में. तो that is why also I was able to pull people to my special, ठीक है? क्योंकि यह है but these people they do not have a digital presence, ठीक है? तो that is why they aren't able to pull people क्योंकि Pakistan में I think celebrity culture बहुत ज़्यादा है, ठीक है? And so तब तक जब तक कोई famous अगर मुझे कोई बंदा नहीं कोई चीज़ बेचेगा तब तक मैं नहीं खरीदूंगा, ठीक है? यह वाला I think is a very big reason कि अगर Avaam अगर comics उसको हल्का सा बेहतर market करें, अब आम पर तो है ही नहीं, ठीक है और हल्की सी आम open हो कि यार अच्छा चलो ठीक है something new, something new culture है या फिर यह new industry के जिसको support करना चाहिए. अगर two way relationship हो तो I think it can grow exponentially. इसमें दूसरी बात यह है कि majority people जो कर रही हैं हल्के से I'd say short sighted हैं या नहीं है I don't know कहना चाहिए नहीं कहना चाहिए लेकिन risk taking factor भी होना चाहिए comics में. ठीक है हल्का सा, ठीक है? That is really important कि अगर scale करना है उसको like you have to go from 50 to let's say 500 तो you have to take a leap of faith, ठीक है? अगर मैं उस time पर जगह note कर जाता, ठीक है? या फिर मेरे हाथ पैर ना मारता कि मुझे sponsor चाहिए तो वह special भी ना होता, ठीक है? तो I think वह leap of faith लेना पड़ता है. You have to trust yourself, trust your gut, ठीक है? And यह भी एक important factor है कि शायद India में comics के पास ज़्यादा वह है, ठीक है? कि वह यह scale कर जाते हैं इस चीज़ में, ठीक है? But वही new industry है तो can't blame the comics as well कि वह इतना
नहीं करना जा रहे हैं. I think personally मैं comics को blame करने से ज़्यादा ना मेरा इसके अंदर जो opinion है and obviously it's not the expert opinion you you being in the industry would know much better. But as an onlooker, मुझे यह feel होता है कि just like a lot of other industries, Pakistan में infrastructure is a bigger problem. Marketing is definitely there but infrastructure से मेरा मुरा दिया है कि अगर दयान को आज जाकर के एक show करना पड़ रहा है ना और उसको एक cinema book करके साढ़े सात आठ लाख रुपया ख़र्च करना पड़ रहा है to just, honestly, I'm not looking at it as this he he's doing this show or this special. I'm looking at this as him going and testing his material to see what works because मेरे लिए I remember मैंने एक दफ़ा post भी किया था आपके एक Instagram के ऊपर कि मेरे लिए ना you're not you, अभी तो आप net practice में हैं. You're like in the 16 team and, you know, the sky is the limit and I genuinely I genuinely and I say this with full confidence that I can imagine you, इंशालाह, touring The US, touring The UK and and gathering a global audience and and putting Pakistan on the map. Have this once in a generational talent that needs to be nurtured, and this is an important point is again और यह मैं YouTubers को भी कहता हूं काफ़ी दो है ना you know I I try to help out younger people who are starting. वह मुझे आकर कहते कि you know YouTube पर मुझे इतना viral कैसे बोलना था? मैंने कहा यह बोलता हूं यार अगर तू जहां चला रहा होगा ना experience? पहले सौ episodes सौ बनाओ. That is for you creating for yourself because you're not just learning how to film, you're learning how to speak, you're learning about clarity of thought. Mhmm. There are so many things that you make better with experience. बिल्कुल. Problem with comedy is that a lot of these people don't even have the opportunity कि वह हर week जाएं और जाकर के किसी you know, there's an there's a place जहां पर वह पचास, चालीस पचास लोगों में dogs try करते रहें, करते रहें, करते रहें, करते रहें, and that experience is what gives you the the, you know, the ability to maneuver through multiple different sets of crowd. What I'm curious about is कि अब जिस तरह लोहौर में एक sort of एक boom emerge करना शुरू हो गया है, you know, बाज़ भाई का हो गया, आपका हो गया और लोहों का हो रहा है. क्या आपको अब इस तरह की opportunities आ रही हैं जिसमें cafes आकर अपने आप को थोड़ा सा rewire करने की कोशिश कर रहे हो और कह रहे हैं कि ok because now there are I feel like enough people that there is an economic opportunity where you don't have to spend money, sell tickets and just say कि ok यार Saturday night को इस वाले cafe के अंदर comedy वह हुआ करेगा. उस पर जो है इस हफ्ते चार लोग आए हुए तब आपकी कोई cost नहीं है. आपने जाना है, आपने दस minute का jokes try करना है, आपने वापस आ जाना है. Restaurant वाले को customers आ रहे हैं. It's, I mean इसमें कोई यह बात नहीं है कि वह मैं तो special बेचता हूँ तो मैं यह क्यों जाकर क्यों? It's you having the space to try out newer material and getting better, right? मेरा personal opinion है कि it's the infrastructure problem first that is going, that's stopping you from being lawyer class to world class. And and उसके अंदर until and unless there is there there is some sort of a transformation in that, वह चीज़ possible नहीं होगी. And so the question would be, since you are now getting this virality and this love and support from people, have you gotten unique and interesting opportunities to perform more without having to spend that money and going through all that of managing everything. जब,
आई भी हैं like फ़िलहाल अभी I am talking to a company as well जिनको मैं like यह specialist लेनी आता क्योंकि I am planning to sell this special to the company क्योंकि कराची में they were planning कि अच्छा यही वाला लाहौर वाला, let's do it in कराची as well, ठीक है? और वह वैसा सारा वह company sponsor करेगी, ठीक है? यह वाली है and उसके अलावा I have got a lot of schools वाले वह and I always have to turn them down, ठीक है? क्योंकि school events के मुझे क्योंकि since I am a kid and I am मेरी main audience बच्चे ही हैं ठीक है? तो यह वाला है ना कि I am trying to work on it, ठीक है? लेकिन it's a hard pill to swallow, मुश्किल काम है to clean your content and make people laugh तो आवाज़ भाई does that very well, ठीक है? मेरी ज़्यादा niche और expertise
लिए. क्योंकि उसी नहीं sir, आप अपने experiences से निकालेंगे. You are 16 right now. When you are 22, you can do 22 वाली audience के लिए. What's your current demographic? Is it younger teens
mostly या are you able to reach out to twenties and thirties as well? Twenties and thirties as well. I think ज़्यादा enjoy twenties and thirties वाले करते हैं. Younger teens are in their वह के stand up show पर आते हैं तो वह उसको try not to make me laugh challenge बना देते कि मैं क्यों हंसा? मैं तो, मैं तो यह LGS से वाला complex होता है बच्चों I think दादा easier audience to crack for me is twenties क्योंकि वह actually उनके पास liberty भी होती है कि वह shows पर जा सकते हैं, ठीक है? तो it's mostly twenties and thirties, ठीक है? यह वाली को आप. Right. Globally comedians का बड़ा एक मसला आया पिछले पांच छह साल के अंदर.
There was this whole vogue cancel culture. All got your show cancellable. Yeah. And so a lot of comedians started to eventually speak out and say कि listen, like, why you can't put limits on comedy? Comedy then has to be completely open ended and फिर सब रगड़े जाएंगे, right? When you begin to say कि ok wow यह इसने यह बात क्यों कर दी, वह बात क्यों कर दी, यह racist बात है, यह ऐसी बात. I mean honestly a lot of times comedy is comedy because it's racist and it's you know, this or that or वह सारी की सारी चीज़ें. How do you, first of all, how do you feel about that? How do you approach political correctness in your content. And that political correctness could be because of the woke crowd. That could be because of the पाकिस्तानी dynamic. पाकिस्तानी society not very open to a lot of conversations, and you have to be very, very careful with what you say. I mean, a 16 year old, generally, you still have that pass. But as you grow older, you know, it becomes more and more serious. How do you approach that being in Pakistan?
I I think उसको political correctness की जब तक बात आएगी तो उसको इतना sugarcoat कर दो. मुरूहाई does this really well, ठीक है, in his videos कि अगर उन्होंने कोई sexual nuance के बारे में बात करनी है तो उसको बड़ा लपेटे करते हैं. तो I try कि मैं यह भी करूं, ठीक है? But at times वह नहीं होता and it's really direct and that is why मेरे Instagram पर अगर आप mostly videos देखो तो like हर चार पांच videos के बाद एक video आ जाती है, काला दिल्ली वाली video आ जाएगी कि अच्छा. There is a lot of times I have should have been gone and I am not gone. So I am really surprised लेकिन अब है तो यह है ना. अब अगर अगर एक चीज़ है तो तेरे से reason the comic is speaking about it, ठीक है? And comic का तो काम है लोगों को हंसाना तो there is just extra content for him. तो अगर मुझे content मिल रहा है जिससे एक socially भी लोगों को benefit हो रहे to some extent या फिर awareness जा रही है तो why should I not be a part of it? मैं तो ऐसे देखता हूं.
चलिए यह तो political वाली बातें होंगी ना. What about the boundaries? The arbitrary boundaries that have now been created because and काफी दफा वह 13 year old है जिसका world view जो है वह उसका किसी creator ने बनाया हुआ है और वह उसने मना दिया कि भाई तू ऐसी बातें क्यों कर रहा है? इतना तू sexist है और यह वह है. And so that becomes very difficult. I am not saying कि sexism doesn't exist. I am not saying racism doesn't exist. But a lot of these,
between कि where you cross the boundary and वही वाली बात कि you are keeping the audience on the edge of their seats कि they are having good time but they are not uncomfortable या फिर कोई ऐसी बात नहीं कर दी. I tend to use that line as a tightrope कि मैं उस पर खड़ा रहता हूं, ठीक है? और ऐसे ऐसे हो रहा होता है, ठीक है? तो यह वाली I think that's the perfect way to that is why I named it Cancellable Kid क्योंकि it it the whole set was like कि पहले मैंने इनको establish कराता हूं अपने set में कि अच्छा यह tightrope है, ठीक है? And then I slowly walk towards it and at the end of the set it's just me standing on it, ठीक है? तो it's gradually gets even edgier and political and वह सारा. तो I I think comedy is itself subjective where you like it, you don't like it. End of debate.
Makes sense. A lot of times when I when I see comedy, I think I feel like it's a great space to to get into uncomfortable con conversations and help bring people together while laughing about it rather than creating divide.
बिल्कुल. यह इसमें I I in my set I talk about puberty and shaving, ठीक है? And it's really surprising to me कि a lot of parents don't have that conversation with their children and the children have to figure out themselves, ठीक है? यह ऐसी were a taboo subjective to talk about. So I took that, ठीक है? My dad never had a proper conversation with me कि मैंने कैसे shave करना है तो I took that observational comedy, ठीक है? ठीक है? And I took that and made it part of my set, ठीक है? यही वाली चीज़ थी तो it's really great way to talk about stuff कि आप puberty के बारे में बात कर सकते हो. The changes a kid is going through. ठीक है? आप shaving के बारे में बात कर सकते हो. आप lot of topics that you can cover.
Right. In terms of observational comedy, right? So, what I'm trying to understand is, as you as you're now growing growing up, as you are becoming bigger and more mainstream, what's what would you like to explore in terms of the topics, in terms of, and again, when I, मैं जब देखता हूं ना कि, a lot of these comedians, what they do is they try to look for segments of people and then they try to make jokes on that, right? Pakistan में we're a very interesting society because we're not really homogenous. We we talk about कि हमारे, you know, Pakistan की diversity is what, gives us strength. The fact is it doesn't. We probably have to go through that painful period and a lot of nations do do that where we have to realize कि ok, we are unique in our own set of ways and then there is a grand vision that keeps us together. And so यहां पर अभी भी वह वाला problem है कि, you know, people get really offended when it's like a कराची versus लोहौर versus इस्लामाबाद, when it's like a पठान versus पंजाबी versus हिंदी versus बलूच, South Punjab, सिराईकी. The fact of the matter is that obviously people will be in a particular region, will be culturally similar and then they will have good and bad things and those are great material for a comic कि यार अगर दयान मुल्तान जा रहा है तो I'm not sure कि उसका मुल्तान के high school का और लाहौर के high school का बड़ा similar experience होगा but definitely वह जाकर के मुल्तान related सौ बातें कर सकता है based on the सिराई की people that exist over there, right? So, I'm curious कि do you intend over time to explore these different segments, these different sort of class conflict and and, you know, ethnic conflicts and try to bridge those gaps by taking them creating comedy and saying कि listen like guys calm down, it's it's not the end of the world. इसका
यह class conflict वाली बात से मुझे याद आया कि मानिक माना का एक set है about profit and loss where he tells about कि कैसे the introduction of toilet paper, ठीक है? And like western style का mode आ गया एकदम से India में and toilet paper introduce हो गया उसके साथ क्योंकि आप पहले बैठ रहे होते थे, ठीक है and now you are एकदम से sitting and you have a toilet paper with you in the West ठीक है. तो यह decision किसने लिया? तो he talks about profit and loss and this का वह पूरा set है. So that's a really good set and I'd love to explore something of this sort as well कि मैं proper issues के बारे में बात करूं. In a comedic way obviously कि आप initially देखो तो आपको at first glance लगे कि अच्छा it's just जो होगी क्या बात कर रहे हैं? ठीक है? But then when you go back home you're like oh, यह I want I want something of that sort कि oh, यह कर तो रहा है लेकिन इसने बात कुछ कर दी है. देखिए तो यह यह वाला I'd like to go that route, yeah.
Interesting. Do you think you're, have you started? I mean, I did see you collaborating. You did a a video with मूरू. You you, I mean, content wise तो you are collaborating. But how is the space generally between different comics? मैं आपको अगर अपनी creator side की बताऊं ना, तो जब early stages में industry develop हो रही होती है तो बहुत quickly competitive spirit आ जाती है. So, और एक और बड़ा मसला यह audiences का कि audiences जो है ना वह, they love you till you're
till you're famous. So they will love you. They will love to be part of the journey to make you and then once you're made they're like यार क्या overrated है यार? Let's let's go out and break it because that's that's exactly what is gradually happening with me. देखा अभी अभी मुझे यही realize हो रहा कि मुझे हल्का सा content switch करना पड़ेगा या कुछ तो करना पड़ेगा ताकि यह चीज़ wave ride हो but stand up space और insta space, insta space I'd say is way more competitive than stand up space. क्योंकि insta वाला dynamic तो यह है. There are creators who are collaborating ठीक है but at the end of the day सारे अपनी race में लगे हैं. ठीक है? Forward count है सब में ऊपर जाना है. Stand up वाला is way less competitive. लाहौर वाले comics are collaborating, ठीक है? Shows साथ हो रही हैं, open mic spaces एक दूर बनी हुई हैं, ठीक है? And material के साथ help कर देते हैं. If someone needs help with writing a set तो वह लिखा जाता है. सारे collaborate करके मिलकर लिख लेते हैं तो but यार Insta content वाली and stand up वाली में ज़मीन आसमान का फ़र्क़ है. वह stand up वाली is not competitive at all. Forgetting someone, ठीक है? लेकिन creators वाले हैं उसमें, ठीक है? यह जो creators हैं जिनकी fall में है, ठीक है? Stand up. सिकंदर
सिकंदर नवाज़ even though I mean he does a lot of content on comedy content, सिकंदर and I think his मोहिज़ नवाज़. Really great. मोहिज़ नवाज़ and सिकंदर and आज़ेददूर, Dubai. Yeah. They're doing some really good work. They're definitely doing acting and all of that. They haven't gotten into,
stand up? No. I don't think so. Have you have you met these guys? I've met these guys. मैंने उनको बोला भी था कि आइए try करें. मैं तो हर creator को कहता हूं कि आइए try करें, ठीक है? यह वाला कि हर creator को and in fact एक दो creators ने try की भी थी. यह Jimmy boy action buy ने की थी, अशफन यार blue tuck ने की थी, ठीक है? And उनके sets बच्चे थे या Jimmy boy तो कर भी रहे हैं stand up. अश्फन भाई ने एक की दफ़ा की गई. I don't know why he did not carry on लेकिन stand up वाली is a completely open space जो कि अगर किसी creator ने आकर test करना है तो it's very easy I'd say to pull people for a creator and Right. Do material, do a Right.
Tell me about the critics though. It's a and like you mentioned कि अब जाहिर है कि अब आप जब चूंकि mainstream हो रहे ना तो you had a lot of free get out of jail free passes. यार यह तेरह साल का बच्चा है, oh, छोटा बच्चा है, up and coming artist है. चार लाख और एक sold out cinema के बाद you're not an up and coming artist in a lot of ways. You're, you you've sort of made it. And so the expectation then becomes very different. Now they're like, okay. Now he's big. Why is he still doing this? Why is he still like this? Right? And people then try to push their version of what they think you are, and they try to make you do it. And I think there is a conflict for every creator where after a certain scale, you have to balance between what you genuinely want to do and believe in and what brand or persona that you sort of created. And काफ़ी दफ़ा in the in the middle of that as you're growing, you begin to lose yourself and by proxy of that begin to lose the very soul of what drove your content and all of that. ठीक है. यह वाले कि And while that's happening, sorry आपकी बात. Was quickly complaining. While that's happening, I I do remember I saw one of your Instagram lives if I'm not wrong, जिसके ऊपर you guys were, there were couple of people and you guys were talking about कि, you know, critics गालियां देकर आपको funny नहीं हो रहे. What most people don't realize it is there's a difference between you not targeting someone and making jokes and people coming and targeting you and saying all sorts of crappy things about you. And, you know at the end of the day you are human as well and so you will feel, you will definitely build a lot of walls around you. But when someone says something, वह आपको दिल पर लगती और यह सिर्फ़ comedy के लिए नहीं है. I I have been a creator, I have heard all sorts of stuff. It takes a while to realize कि ok, it's just people, random people, no face people saying no face shit. But वह hit ज़रूर करती है. आपको criticism मिला है, मिला है तो how have you felt? I am not gonna say how have you dealt with it because काफी generic answer होता है oh you know, आयुर्वादिक scan doesn't really matter but how have you felt?
शुरू शुरू में it was कम था, ठीक है? कि शुरू शुरू में it कम था तो like वही वाला कम था तो ज़्यादा feel होता था, ठीक है कि अच्छा why everyone is resonating with it, why is he not resonating with it, ठीक है? And then I just look at it and take a deep sigh, like बैठे हो सांस लो इतना ठीक है फिर then you move on. I think that that's the way of dealing with it and feeling with it दोनों ही encapsulate ऐसे ही होता है, ठीक है. मैं हमेशा ऐसा नहीं था कि मेरी bathroom में जाकर रोहराऊंगे. उसने मुझे कह दिया हंसना था क्या? ऐसा ऐसा नहीं होता लेकिन हां that is, it is कि आपको वैसे grabs
you for a moment and then it leaves you. It it gives you a sinking feeling like I guess कि यार यह क्यों हो रहा है? सोते में आपको मुझे वह आएगा यार वह क्यों बोलते हैं? काफी दफा ऐसे होता है कि you don't even realize कि you suddenly are having a bad day and that's because you just read a comment here or there and you probably aren't even able to connect with it. Do you think जो again अब बल्कि in fact आपने जब यह बात बोली कि यार पहले बहुत थोड़ा सा मुझे ज़्यादा feel होता था. Mhmm. Has it evolved over time? Has it grown at times? And again, what's how how do you plan to deal or or rather how do you plan to evolve yourself? You said कि यार मैं अब तो सोच रहा हूं कि अब मैं mainstream हो गया हूं, बड़ा हो गया हूं. तो लोगों ने मुझे शायद different material भी करना पड़ेगा. Are
you listening to a lot of people? Yeah. Are you coming to your own sort of catch up? What's the next stage for me? We experiment करके if you see कि मेरी reels को अभी आप recently वह देखें ना I am experimenting with a lot of stuff, ठीक है? Different हल्के से different formats कर रहा हूं comedy में क्योंकि अगर आप नीचे scroll करेंगे तो आपको एक completely different format of comedy नज़र आएगी, ठीक है? अगर आप वापस ऊपर आऐंगे आपको एक complete और आप full नीचे जाएंगे आपको cringey ध्यान मिल जाएगा, ठीक है? तो यह वाला है कि I am trying to experiment and see what works best, ठीक है? And steal like an artist एक किताब है I am sure आपने पढ़ी होगी, ठीक है? तो वह वाली this is my go to work अगर मैं कभी भी फ़ंस जाऊंगा I just go and reread it again and I just align myself कि अच्छा. वही वाला है कि as a creator जो reels बनाता है I have to sit down and scroll for a while and see कि where I can get my inspiration from and पकड़ूं सबकी inspiration दोनों को मिलाकर एक अपना art form बनाऊं. She'll hear. Makes sense.
Where do you go from here? What's the next major goal over the next year, next five years?
I'd say hopefully this year या next year इंशालाह कराची special, ठीक है? Then we do इस्लामबाद special. Basically अब whole city लाहौर तो हो गया है कराची इस्लामाबाद special या फिर कराची special के बाद I release the special on YouTube and try to scale that. That is why I think my priority on the list. उसके बाद wherever दुबेन takes me I don't have never had a proper plan and I don't think I should have a proper plan
जो होना You think क्योंकि हो we'll be open to potential acting opportunities. I mean, मैं मेरा यह बड़ा एक सवाल है अबूलो भाई के लिए कि यार आप एक बड़ा different content कर रहे थे और साथ आप जो है वह आपने comedy special भी try किया, hit था, miss था, we'll understand more. But suddenly now you got this acting gig and it's very clear at least to a to a bystander कि यह अगर वह इसको double down करे और इसको लेकर जाए तो वह कहां से कहाने का है? Sort of similar to जब when I was sort of your age, makes me feel so old. But there was this band called Entity Paradigm. I don't know if you've heard of them. Never heard of it. So, Entity Paradigm was this band जो कि दो Pepsi Battle of the Bands जो आया था अभी recently उसका original version दो हज़ार तीन चार में आया और उसमें there were two bands. एक Entity के नाम से था, एक Paradigm के नाम से था. उसको उन्होंने combine किया और Entity Paradigm बना लिया. अच्छा, वह जो band था ना वह उसकी cult following थी. Incredible rock band, one of the best that Pakistan has ever produced. आज भी जो लोग उनके कानों से exposed होते हैं, उनको होता है कि यार wow, incredible. That is the band that created फवाद खान. फवाद खान was the vocalist for that band and eventually got into acting and now nobody knows फवाद खान the singer. Singer, yeah. They all know फवाद खान the actor. Yeah, yeah. अहमद अली butt is acts sort, hosts or does this or that and now does a podcast as well. He was a rapper and he was an English rapper for that matter. The only person actually who stuck to that band and eventually was जुल्फी भाई जो कि eventually call band के अंदर भी गए और you know next cafe basement and so on and so forth. तो काफ़ी दफ़ा यह होता है कि you get your early success or an entry to the space because of things like these like comedy and this and that but And then you're on a mission. Other, हां, well established fields हैं. उसमें बहुत easy है कि मैंने एक point से उठाकर लगा. I remember I saw you in the मुरू video and I was like यार यह लड़का दो minute में निकल जाएगा. Because you have that effortless talent there as well, right? So, have you explored acting? Have you gotten opportunities for acting? And do you think if a gig comes in, are you super married to your comedy career?
या you're just open and you'll evolve in whatever which way that life takes you? I'm open. I'm open to trying out new stuff, ठीक है? And transition करने के लिए अगर it makes sense with me but यही वाला है कि many comics जैसे Jim Carrey के example ले लेते हैं, he transitioned to acting as well, Robin Williams' transition. Zelensky तो मुल्क बना रहा अब. Imagine ध्यान as president. Remittance लूंगा आपसे. लेकिन I would transition to something acting अगर गाती है. In the past I think आई हुई थी but it was a really small TV channel so did not make sense to me. So अगर कोई आती है that does make sense and does look like अच्छा यार this is something I could do तो I wouldn't mind कि hard and fast rule नहीं है कि I'm only gonna stick to comedy. I've done theatre in the past. Love doing theatre as well, playswara and yeah dramas, films अगर कोई याद है तो सौ सौ बीस मिल रहा है.
Right. What's the commercial aspect right now? I mean, you have a 400,000 following account. You have a pretty clear influence over the people who follow you. So, it's not just बस यह एक लड़का है, एक character है जिसको हम follow कर रहे हैं, जो कुमारा ठीक है. They actually support you, they they feel for you, they because specially जब आपका यह वाला content आया कि you know I did this and I did that and and when I saw the काफ़ी दफ़ा यह होता है कि comedy comedians को comedy के ऊपर तो बड़ा मिल जाता है. वह जब कोई भी अपने दिल की बात करते हैं वह लोग कहते वह तू joker है ना joker ही वहां ने बात करिए क्या कर रहा है? But your audience is very different here. They they they they're actually out there cheering for you and and supporting you, and that shows influence. Mhmm. For a lot of people on Instagram, for example, they're making millions a month. What's the financial side of content beyond comedy that अभी तक खुली है? Are you pursuing that? Again, you're just still just 16, probably don't have a bank account. And you're very focused on your studies as well. Me through the economic side of your entire
career. Ok, इसका यह सूल है कि I have talked about महादभाई, ठीक है? महादभाई और मैंने यही है कि once created as brand deals, brand deals आती हैं, मैं ले लेता हूं at times, ठीक है? But हमारा शुरू से यह सुबह है कि once created as a brand deal उसकी reach गिरेगी, ठीक है? तो rather than अगर मैं let's say I want 400 की है right now, ठीक है? अगर मैं एक brand से let's say चार लाख ले रहा हूं hypothetical figure. अभी चार लाख लेने से बेहतर यह नहीं है कि मैं और creative freedom भी नहीं मिल रहा. अभी चार लाख लेने से बेहतर यह नहीं है कि when I am at आठ लाख, नौ लाख grow करके और तब मैं जाकर कोई दस लाख के साथ creative freedom मांग लूं, ठीक है? तो यह वाला ही aspect है that has stopped me क्योंकि I am 16, I do not have any खर्चे मैंने. कोई घर नहीं चलाना मैंने, किसी बीवी को, पैसे नहीं देने मैंने, कोई बच्चे निपालने, I do not have any rush, मना कर देता हूं. जी. ठीक है? Do you get a lot of queries? I do get a lot of queries and मेरा यही है creative freedom पर. अगर मुझे अच्छा creative freedom मिल जाए along with the video I don't mind earning less क्योंकि वही वाली बात है.
What's the general demographic age wise?
Pakistan में ज़्यादा लोग हैं, India में लोग हैं, India ने पता नहीं आपको ban किया नहीं किया बाकी जो होगा India ने नहीं किया. I was the only creator in the world that wasn't banned in India even though I launched like 10,015 followers in like one day. ठीक है? For one post. एक दिन. ठीक है? एक दिन में I lost क्योंकि मेरी majority audience Indian ही है. ठीक है? अच्छा. मैंने गालियां भी बड़ी खाई हैं क्योंकि obviously उस time पर तो like फिर tourism peak पर जा रहा था ना वह मेरे वतन, ठीक है? तो उस time में मैंने भी ज़रा relay बनाई और I think I made one post जिसके बाद से I lost 10,000 fall bits एकदम से ऐसे like थक, ठीक है? मैं उठाऊं अगले दिन और मैंने कहा glitch हो गया refresh करूं दस ऊपर थे. लेकिन that happened. I have majority I think 60% India से यार. अच्छा interesting. Massive आवाम और बाकी 40% पाकिस्तानी and age demographic वही है. Winstra का is not that accurate क्योंकि हर मंदा अपनी random डाल देता है. But I think मेरे जो most show होता है वह 17 to 21 वाला bracket show होता उसके बाद 21 से 27, 28 तक जो यहां तक भी जाता है and then 30 वाला Interesting.
Did that, how did that impact you जब वह India वाला एकदम से drop आया? Did that make you reconsider? Did you think कि यार ठीक है, अब यह तो मैं I can't drive myself around. I'll say what I feel like and Yeah, मैं वही था. I'll say what I feel like.
ठीक है? लेकिन
लेकिन I mean you are what you are, right? And people need to grow up and and realize कि यार you're talking to a comedian not a politician and so he's gonna be himself. That
makes sense. But even though I need self deprecating jokes as well इसमें. यह मैंने हम अपने ऊपर भी लगाई थी कि यार ठीक है but people were like no बस आ गई है हम तो मुझे politics हो
यह बताएं कि
do you get recognized now that when you go out? A lot. I I do get recognized a lot. अगर मैं किसी mainstream event पर जा रहा जैसे पूछते देनों geek कौन वाला हुआ था तो वहां पर लंदिला people recognized me a lot and हो जाता है if I go out with family or friends तो it's always one or two people जो भी आकर photoleroes and always an amazing experience.
How does that make you feel? Did you ever imagine this would happen to you?
हल्का सा visionary था. हल्का सा मैं visionary था. यह तो नहीं कि कभी imagine नहीं किया था, अभी किया हुआ और भी चीज़ें imagine की हुई हैं या फिर play out right but it makes me feel amazing every time. बहुत wholesome feel होता है कि और इतना हल्की एक बार overwhelming से हो जाता है if it's a lot of people like एक दफा people were waiting and ऐसे था कि वह अच्छा मैं photo ले रहा हूं and there already three people waiting किया चौन ने भी photo लेनी तो that was like उपकेश जी वह एकदम से यह मेरे लिए हो रहा है ठीक है क्योंकि obviously मेरे घर में तो वह वाला experience नहीं आएगा, घर की मुर्ग की दाल बराबर, ठीक है? तो वही वाला है कि बाहर जाता हूं तो इतनी इज्जत मिलती है घर पर मुझे दूसरी रोटी नहीं मिलती.
Interesting. Then I am going to wrap this up. We're at the one hour thirty minute mark. I want to understand you're 16 years old. You did not have correct me if I'm wrong, but you did not have a lot of connections that would have given you a head start, right? Potentially, आप कह सकते हैं कि you had the privilege, of being from an upper middle income family. But to be very honest, I mean, that you could you could have been in any which space. आपके पास शायद iPhone ना होता, techno का mobile होता है. Techno ही था. I started from techno as well. Right. All you had was, you know, you you had access to content, and you exposed yourself to it, and you saw it, and you had the vision to say, okay, listen. I can do this as well, and I'll screw up a 100 times so that I can be something uninfused. And so what I'm curious about is and I think that that story itself resonates should resonate with a lot of kids and a lot of people. Mhmm. To realize, in the age of digital and the age of knowledge economy, you can you have the ability and the capability to do anything. What you do with it is entirely up to you, right? And so, as a 16 year old in a very very turbulent Pakistan, I feel like हर generation वैसे तो कहती है कि सबसे turbulent time था. जब हम बड़े हो रहे थे तो दिमाग़ें भट रहे थे. But still, for every generation, I think there's Pakistan gives you fair share of heart mode. And so, how do you genuinely feel about Pakistan? You know, yes, of course, you want to you you want to expose yourself to global ideas and you want to leave to for better opportunities and everything. Maybe you'll come back. But at the end of the day, it is Pakistan that that gave you the flavor, that gave you the personality, that gave you the following and sort of catapulted you to a particular point. And you can never really, मैं, you know, I moved to Dubai. Between a lot of other people who had moved to Dubai उनके लिए बड़ा आसान था disconnect करना. वह एक job भी चले गए वहां पर. अब वह अपने आंखों थोड़ा सा वह भी हो गया कि bro like, हां मैं actually मैं तो Dubai में ही रहता हूं type. मुझे पता है कि मैं पाकिस्तानी हूं, मैं Pakistan ने मुझे बनाया है तो मेरे लिए बड़ा मुश्किल होता उस part को disconnect करने के आपके लिए आज के Pakistan को आप देखते हैं, what do you, what do you see?
See, it's a beautiful country. वही वाली बात है कि it is the country that has made me what I am, ठीक है? और आगे जाकर अगर if even if I have the plan कि अगर मैंने बाहर जाना है तो disconnect नहीं होगा, ठीक है? In any way, not personally भी नहीं, ठीक है? और I think even content wise भी नहीं कि मैं ऐसा जी full English में switch मार दूं जैसे दाने शिलीव I did that I think, ठीक है? He switched to English completely. I wouldn't do that, ठीक है? मेरी audience यह है, यही रहेगी और इसी पर ही इंशालाह expand होगा.
Right. You think पाकिस्तानीय, like पाकिस्तानी culture, पाकिस्तानी identity is an inherent part of you? Yep. And you'd love to take that forward as well? Yep. Interesting. Okay. I have I have another question that I ask everybody, but I feel like I don't the answer. Mhmm. So I'm gonna wrap this up. Generally, ख़ैर, that question is कि how do you see Pakistan of 2050? And I'm not sure. I've never asked a 16 year old that question. Generally, I've asked older people. They tend to have a different answer. But if you were to imagine कि यार, Pakistan को आज आप देख रहे हैं, you know, you're you're consuming content online as well. You're seeing all sorts of Pakistanis. Pakistanis come in all shapes and sizes and so कभी कभार आपको देखकर depression भी होती है कि यार यह क्या calm है? क्या flow है? कभी कभार आपको बड़ी inspiration मिलती है कि यार बड़े मज़े के लोग बड़े मज़े का काम कर रहे हैं. If you were to extrapolate that over the next twenty five years, you would be what? 25, 15, 41. हमारी Gen Z basically main
वह हो जाएगी ना? हां,
main power power उसमें आ चुकी होगी.
How do you see the Pakistan like how do you see Pakistan that is being run by Z? Pakistan run by Gen Z. पता है Gen Z even though brain rot बहुत है और like attention span full trash है लेकिन one thing about I really like about Gen Z कि everybody is passionate, ठीक है? सारे like there's a certain hunger in kids that they want to towards too, ठीक है? In my peers as well and I've seen a lot of people as well because they're really passionate about stuff, ठीक है? And लोग हाथ पैर मारे हैं अपने and आपकी generation से ज़्यादा ही I think लोगों ने हाथ पैर मारे हैं in Gen Z, ठीक है? तो I think it would turn out fine, it would हल्का सा बेहतर होगा या फिर I could be this could not age well as well. तो यह था एक हल्का सा बेहतर होगा या do you expect कि do you have बेहतर नहीं मतलब आपने पहले बेहतर होगा ऐसा नहीं है कि वह Dubai वन जाएगा और जी एकदम से यहां पर जी palm tree जुग रहे हैं, मौल आ गया है. ऐसा ऐसा कुछ नहीं होना.
नहीं but I mean चलो वह तो infrastructure changes है ना but generally नफ़्सियाती तौर पर. Do you think कि Gen Z is better in terms of how they approach problems and how their moral compass lies and how they are able to voice their disagreements and so on?
यह हर चीज़ों पर बहुत different different answer हैं. कुछ चीज़ों पर voice their disagreements पर बिल्कुल भी नहीं, ठीक है? इनको अदभुत्तमीज़ बिल्कुल भी नहीं आती. Please सबको सखाएं, ठीक है? लेकिन अगर passionate वाली चीज़ों पर if they are passionate about stuff, ठीक है? और like mental ADHD type हैं, Gen Z वाले और अगर attention span कैसा है तो आप लोगों का ज़्यादा बेहतर है obviously लेकिन कुछ चीज़ों में Gen Z is better and कुछ चीज़ों में आप लोगों की generation और कुछ चीज़ों में Gen Z is very cooked as well.
What do you think is is gen z cooked?
Attention span नहीं है किसी का, बिल्कुल भी नहीं. Like I myself can't sit down and watch a podcast to be honest, ठीक है? मैंने पिछले like आपकी देखी नहीं थी अभी शाश्मी मोली भाई बहुत पहले ही देखी थी लेकिन ऐसा नहीं है कि मैं अब जाकर Joe Rogan की podcast देखूंगा. That's why I think many podcasters that's why they've shift to reels as well अपने वह content की reels निकाल रही हैं, ठीक है? और वही वहां से convert कर रही हैं, ठीक है? But वह conversion I think is really मुश्किल as well. The Gen Z's का attention span is really cooked
and Do you think that that that that personality type goes across beyond content as well?
मतलब अगर आप एक किताब पढ़ रहे हैं तो उसमें भी आपका tension span बुरा होगा. आप कोई काम कर रहे हैं उसमें भी बुरा होगा या यह content में ज़्यादा है? Content में ज़्यादा है क्योंकि lot of Gen Z people are into books as well तो वह आराम से books पढ़ते हैं and I had my friends, share of friends जो कि they are into books and वह आराम से बैठकर यह एक sitting में कोई कताब खत्म कर देंगे. यह कह रहे हैं वह कर देंगे. तो अपने अपने कामों पर सारे सही हैं लेकिन when it comes to content especially तब तो attention span बहुत खराब है and voicing their disagreements क्योंकि अगर आप किसी Insta post, you need really need अगर आपको चाहते हैं ना कि you want to know how a person feels about something, ठीक है? तो you आप उस post के comments खोल लें, ठीक है? और आपको comments है हर बंदे का क्योंकि आपकी digital identity इतनी anonymous हो गई है. तो वह comments खोलकर आपको फलाना फलाना बातें समझ जाएंगी कि भई अगर आपको slangs वगैरह आते हैं और सारे Gen Z trends पता है तो आपको समझ आ जाएगा कि यार यह बंदा कैसा feel कर रहा है? तो which itself is a good thing as well. वह भी debatable सी बात है कि अब क्या comments are made for voicing your opinions or disagreements लेकिन the way you're voicing them, is that correct या नहीं या फिर is that what you really want to say? भाई वाली बात आ जाएगी. I think as as as a millennial, it
was a tough thing to experience. Gen Z being unhinged and just sort of going nuts and raw without any filter giving opinions. And more more often than not, those opinions are not very nuanced, and so you can very very easily, deconstruct them and say कि listen, you're wrong. But and it it took a while क्योंकि पहले ना हम मैं उस generation से हूं जहां पर at least on a certain level हमने भी बहुत ज़्यादा चीज़ों में fight किया but हमने बहुत respectfully किया. हमारे से जो बड़े थे ना जो Gen X थी, वह तो वह तो वह थे जो parents ने बोला चुप करके मान लिया. Millennials were the first ones who went above and beyond and said कि ok, we will go out and try newer things. But they respectfully fought those battles and set. Gen z on the other hand, I'm seeing कि they're also trying out new things, they're doing it, without
apologizing for me. Without unapologetically
सारे गहरे हैं. Unapologetically कर रहे हैं. मेरा overtime जो मेरा opinion बना हुआ है, यह बनाकर, you know what, like, yes, they're disrespectful right now. Yes, they it's not the most comfortable way to to do things. But I feel like we haven't given them the best opportunities, and I feel like, you know, मेरी generation ने अगर आकर respectfully disagreements की तो उससे कोई कोई partner नहीं लिया है कुछ ठीक है? And so versions होते हैं ना. अब आपको वह अगला version नसरा है कि यार एक point तक कहीं ना कहीं कोई ना कोई generation होगी जिसकी bus हो जाएगी और वह फिर डंडे के ज़ोर पर ही वह change drive करेगी जो कि eventually आपको चाहिए है because you have to, you know, just 250,000,000 people. They're not idiots and they and I'm not this is not even a political thing. This is like it's in all aspects, social aspects, economic aspects, वग़ैरह वग़ैरह. तो I do मेरी personally मेरी बहुत ज़्यादा hopes हैं Gen Z से. And the reason for that is because of the unhinged behavior and because of the unapologetic behavior even though that puts me in the line of fire काफ़ी दफ़ा Mhmm. But I do believe कि जो वह वाली चीज़ें हैं वह they will grow up and they will eventually, mature into a better understanding of those things. I also feel like, you know, I mean, majority of the Gen Zs in their teens right now, Some being in their twin early twenties. उस उम्र में सब passionate होते हैं और सब dumb होते हैं और सब वह बातें कर रहे होते हैं but at least उनको वह exposure तो मिल रहा है जैसे जब वह maturity में आऐंगे तो उनका world view बड़ा होगा, right? Eventually वह आ जाएंगे maturity में. So that's at least I don't see that as a very negative.
Negative way हां, जैसे जब आपने तो बड़ा optimistically इसको देखा है. आपने तो पूरी Pakistan solve कर दिया.
है. None less, ध्यान भाई, I'm gonna wrap this up. Thank you so much for taking the time out. Thank you so much for being open to having a conversation with a 34 year old. I know that I've spoken to a lot of, tried to speak to know, I'm blinking twice. If, your comment पड़ा है, link twice if you need help. But मेरे लिए, I mean, it's always, मुझे बहुत मज़ा आता है because it helps me remain connected to to to younger audiences and and younger people and trying to understand how they approach the world. More often than not, young people tend not to talk to me because I give off this vibe कि मैं एक बड़ा कोई boring serious type हूं. मेरी अम्मी लगा था कि तुम्हें क्यों बुला रहे हैं मुद्दा मिल भाई. मेरी अम्मी is a pretty big fan
time out in conversation. Thank you for calling. And
for all of you guys, let me know in the comment section below जो यहां पर भी दयान की अगर fan following आ रही है और वहां unhinged comments डाल रही है तो आप डालें जितने आपने डाल लें but साथ ही थोड़ा सा मुझे पढ़ा लिखा भी एक जवाब दे दें कि you know what do you think about the comedy culture in Pakistan? आप किस तरफ देख रहे हैं कि क्या दयान भाई पहले ही वो होंगे जो कि world tour करेंगे और sold out shows होंगे और Pakistan को global map पर लेकर जाएंगे? Generally, overall beyond अयान, how do you see the comedy, the stand up comedy industry in Pakistan evolving? What do you think is missing? Who are your top comedians that you're you're following? Gen Z के बारे में आपकी क्या राय है? All of those things, let me know in the comment section below. But, nonetheless, this was सय्यद मज़ामिला संजय दी. You are watching Thought Behind Things. Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you in the next one.
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