Being a ‘Sakth Launda’ and beaming with pride about it. Meeting a ‘Delhi Girl’ and clicking a selfie with her. Saying no to a beautiful lady’s request for exchanging his window seat with her aisle seat because ‘Badal important hai, babu’. India’s stand-up comedy king, Zakir Khan has been there and done it all.
But this time, the curtains do not come up for joke’s regarding a forever single guy or a modern girl with a drink in her hand. This time it is about walking down the memory corridors of our school and in uniform.
Last year in November, Zakir came out with his new 1-hour Amazon special stand-up ‘Kaksha Gyarvi’. Narrating that his journey of becoming a ‘Sakth Launda’ began from childhood days, Zakir bathes in the recollection of his school days and takes the viewers along with him. With an IMDB rating of 8.3, ‘Kaksha Gyarvi’ promises to be a laugh riot where he takes a dig at the only-boys as well as co-ed education institutes. And here’s all you need to know about this new comedy special by Zakir Khan.
The School memories
Zakir Khan begins this time-travel special with the most common horror every 25+ year old person holds close to their heart – The Marriage. With every friend of his getting married and settling down, Zakir paints quite a funny picture of how people’s life change from their school days to their adulthood times.
He further advances ahead and casts a vivid image of his small hometown in the mind of the viewers. From explaining how primary school kids consider ‘Kutta’ as a bad-word to pointing out that small town boys have the advantage of open parks and streets to roam around and play, Zakir keeps the pace of the stand-up consistent. However, the theme of the special makes its appearance very slowly and in pieces. Zakir places various dots here and there about the development of toxic masculinity, peer pressure, and men not being men enough being taught from the start of the school days. Viewers are left to their own sense of judgement to grasp such an intricate concept in a comedy special and connect the dots to entirely understand the way grown Indian men behave is because of those early days of school and its flawed image of how a man should behave.
One of the most enticing moment of the show comes to limelight when Zakir announces that men who shout at women are weak. He also declares that people who say and think that ‘men do not cry’ are liars. By touching these sensitive topics in his new stand-up, Zakir also proved his intellect and support toward women community. But it does not hold up for long.
Zakir also introduces a new female character to the viewers, Natasha. He almost tried to portray her beauty by describing her look. But Natasha’s character only plays the part of a beautiful actress plays in most of the movies. She has been introduced to simply make a statement clear that beautiful women quickly learn about the duality of this sinner world and hence, stop communicating with a lot of men. Zakir later goes on with his humor and tells all the women in the audience that Natasha’s story reflect their own and they never should ever uphold a men guilty for their own actions.
But the best part and one of the well-crafted pieces of the show arrives when he goes on with his school days memories and unfolds one of the most curious and eventful day of his eleventh grade. He perfectly weaves his words and makes humor a shield while describing the day’s events and the idiotic behaviour every child possess at during those school times
While all these jokes witnessed a number of claps and whistles from the crowd, they did not always put forth a very progressive thought throughout process of the show’s writing. Zakir, although, ensures to keep his audiences engaged and hooked to the stand-up for more than an hour.
The conclusion – Yay or Nay?
This indeed is the biggest question with ‘Kaksha Gyarvi’ stand-up special. No doubt, there were bits and pieces where every member of the audience would have revived his or her memory of school days. At some places jokes about how girls ruin boy’s friendship did seem odd and out-of-the context. But overall, ‘Kaksha Gyarvi’ can be added to your wish list for one time view.