I had seen her reels on YouTube, mostly of her funny takes on tech industry, on Indian middle class family and had seen some of her challenge posts only to have doubts about her stand up comedy ability. I was proved wrong by her on the Friday evening when she stood on the stage here in Austin and performed comedy for a good 2 hours without even taking a sip of water.
When Sandhya told me that Shraddha (Aiyyo Shraddha) is coming and I will book the tickets, I first said yes and expected the whole event not to last more than an hour and on the day of the event we got lined up with 3 other things for our about to graduate middle schooler. But as though it was divine intervention, one after another things fell apart and we were able to go as a family and enjoy one of the best 2 hours of our lives.
Her comedy was so clean and she intertwined all the way past to almost today present with such ease that it was remarkable and for someone like me who grew up in similar background it was totally relatable. More importantly our middle schooler had the best time too, I could hear her burst to laughter almost the whole time.
Listening to her, it was like time and space travel back to my hometown, her ability to intertwine multiple languages from Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and possibly Tulu was mind boggling. As they say, for those 2 hours she owned the stage. The show started sharp on time, I was completely expecting the opposite and had to stand corrected again.
Only grief is that we should have had given her a better welcome meaning a bigger auditorium and may be one more show. I believe she is still touring and if you do get a chance, take my word and go see her in action live on stage. https://www.sominithings.com/
An Engineer by profession and that too E and C (same branch as me) only to blossom out as a world renowned comedian made me question my own view points, I used to hold the view that people should stick with the fields they studied in, maybe they can switch to management. I guess that view point came from the lack mindset coming from India in the 80s and 90s. Anyways that is a discussion for another day.
ps: Daughter had attended another comedy show with Zarna Garg and when asked her opinion, she chose Shraddha hands down.
