Vir Das faced a major controversy in 2021 when his video, ‘I Come From Two Indias,’ received a lot of hate from a section of netizens. During an interesting conversation with Mayank Shekhar of Mid-Day, the actor-comedian opened up like never before on shocking changes in his life after this episode.
SHOCKING: Vir Das on how life changed after ‘Two Indias’ controversy: “My phone was off for four months. There was no work…I booked a flight to London and had no memory of it. I YELLED in the plane…”
Vir explained why he shifted to Goa and why he decided to return to Mumbai, “You can’t write stand-up in Goa. For that, you need to know the pulse of the audience. In Goa, it seems like the day is 37 hours long! Time slows down. What I like about Goans is that everybody, who shows up from the outside, is running from something (smiles). They are trying to deal with something in life and hence, they have come and settled in Goa. Goans are non-judgmental about it. They have seen people in all sorts of tragedies. But then I realized it was time to stop running and come back.”
When asked what he was running away from, Vir replied, “Dude, I had no work for a year and a half after the ‘Two Indias’ controversy. My phone wasn’t ringing. I thought I’d rather be in Goa, work on myself and write.”
Vir Das explained, “There were zero phone calls. If it did ring, it wasn’t a happy phone call (laughing). It would be like someone shouting, ‘Kahan hai tu? Tujhe dhund lunga main’. After that, my phone was off for four months. There was no work. Then, I worked on Vir Das: Landing. It jumpstarted everything.” The Netflix special won the Emmy Awards and gave a huge boost to Vir Das’ career.
Vir Das then shared another horrifying story which happened after the ‘Two Indias’ controversy, “I woke up on a flight that I thought was from Singapore to Mumbai, but it was London-bound. I had put up a last-minute show in London; we had sold a thousand tickets. I myself changed the flight, bought my ticket and checked myself in. And then I woke up on the flight and for two hours, I had no idea how I got on that flight. It was my 186th show that year.”
Vir added, “I was told that the flight was heading to London. I yelled, ‘No, this flight is to Mumbai’. When a brown man with a beard starts yelling about a new destination for the plane, everybody knows that the situation needs to be handled (laughs)! But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out for two hours. And you can’t feel bad for being disoriented in the first class (laughs).”
He further said, “I had to go to my therapist and explained her that I have blocked out 72 hours. She told me, ‘You’ve been on the road for way too long’. This was in the post ‘Two Indias’ phase where (performing in) India wasn’t an option. That’s how I ended up doing 186 shows abroad.”
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