Fans of the hugely popular television series Game of Thrones are having a field day using it as a muse to put out creative and quirky content on the web
Fans of the hugely popular television series Game of Thrones are having a field day using it as a muse to put out creative and quirky content on the web
Bhai ab late ho raha hai. Tu Arya hai ki main niklu “What does Jamie Lannister eat when he is Punjab Cersei ka saag aur makki di roti.” “I asked Daenerys, ‘Why didn’t Drogo come to work yesterday ” She said, “Khal Drogo bimar tha!” If you are a fan of the hugely popular HBO series Game of Thrones, chances are these cheeky puns made you grin. These are a few of the memes making the rounds of the Internet, along with its spoofs in Bhojpuri and variations of its title track. A bunch of enthused GoT fans are channelling their fandom by using their favourite TV show as a muse for creative experiments.
Take Viraj Pradhan for instance. The 23-year-old Mumbai-based amateur stand-up comic loves to create rib-tickling memes based on the show, most have which have become a viral sensation. “I love doing amateur stand-up gigs or talking in puns. English puns are fun, but Hindi or Marathi puns are extremely funny. Lately, I have developed a taste for these. So, one Sunday afternoon I came up with the ‘Cersei ka Saag’ joke and a few people loved it. Right then, it hit me that I could actually do an entire series of puns dedicated to every character from the show and one pun after the other, the series #GameOfPuns was born,” says Viraj. “My grandmother doesn’t exactly understand what I do on the page but she still makes sure she shows it to everybody she knows,” he adds.
While Viraj is a huge fan of the show, Karan Chitra Deshmukh who isn’t quite one, still managed to grab eyeballs with his instrumental rendition of the show’s title track. Karan recreated the track entirely on a set of ten tablas, the video of which splashed across social media pages during the show’s season six premiere. “I am not really a Game of Thrones fan, I don’t follow the series. My cousin, Yash Barve, who lives in the US, however, is a huge fan and he called me on the day before season six released and asked me to do a tabla cover on it since it hasn’t been done so far,” he says adding, “I loved the theme music, it’s a great composition and I wanted my cover to be something different from a typical drum or tabla cover, where the theme music plays in the background and you play along with it. So I tuned ten tablas to emulate the notes of the song, which I figured out on the piano, and then played it.” The video got two million views in a day and with some people commenting that they liked Karan’s rendition is better than the original. “Of course, I was on cloud nine! I might start watching the show now.”
Yet another bunch of fans have put out a Hindi parody of the title song. It narrates the story of the seven kingdoms in chaste and not-so-chaste Hindi along with quirky visuals. Writer of the song, Jasmeet Bhatia says, “We decided to use quotes that are famous, so that it had a mass appeal. The show is six seasons down, and yet there are so many spoofs and renditions of the song from India itself.” The song opens with, “Yeh hai Game of Thrones ki kahaani, aiyaash raja, pishacho ki adbhut kahaani” and goes on to retell high points of the show.
Director Harman Wadala adds, “The whole idea was to collaborate with artistes who have worked on the GoT song, to create something bigger. We wanted to do a sketch on GoT for the longest time but we didn’t want to do a cheap version of it. The feedback we have received is positive. Most have appreciated the lyrics, and have liked how we used well-known quotes from the show. Next, we are looking to do a sketch on GoT. Hopefully, this we will manage to pull it off.”
