Book Review | Comedian’s Memoir Lives up to Its Promise
In The Outsider, Vir Das reflects on how, his entire life, he’s never actually fitted in anywhere
Truthfully, if I had seen The Outsider, the memoir by standup comedian and actor Vir Das, on display at a bookshop, I would have walked right past it without even reading the blurb. Not because I have anything against Vir Das, but because I am not familiar with much of his work.
But the books page editor of The Asian Age hates the very concept of comfort zones in relation to books, and so, as I put down my review copy of The Outsider, I found myself thinking that had I turned down her offer to read this book, I would have missed out on something rather interesting: the story of how an unknown young man with no godfather in showbiz or media circles helped create a whole new entertainment platform in India — standup comedy — thanks only to his conviction in his talents and his unabashed stubbornness.
Not that this is the point of the story — or rather, this is not the whole point of the story. In The Outsider, Vir Das reflects on how, his entire life, he’s never actually fitted in anywhere. Not as an Indian child in Nigeria, where his parents worked, not as a boy in an Indian boarding school run on military lines (read violent), not as a too-foreign boy at a school in Noida, not as an Indian guy in college in the US, not as an actor in the US, not as a stage or Bollywood personality in India — precisely nowhere. But rather than crushing him, this sense of alienation in every circumstance only spurred him to make his own place in the world. And a pretty decent space it seems to be too — the infamous “Two Indias” episode in his life notwithstanding. (The true story of this episode will only be found in this book, says the author, so anyone who wants to know more about it will have to cough up the requisite 699 bucks.)
One of the things that made me cautious about starting this book was the possibility that I would not enjoy the writing style. Would it read like a print version of a standup performance, with the writer hopping from joke to joke like a mountain goat in the Himalayas? Or would it be a smooth read? The answer to these questions is: Both. The first few chapters are choppy in style. But after a while, Das settles down as a storyteller, giving the reader a better idea of his real personality and making even a cynical reviewer (me) of his book reasonably happy to have read it.
The Outsider
By Vir Das
HarperCollins
pp. 251; Rs 699