With an MBA degree and a corporate job, how and when ‘Happiness in Your Skin’ happened?

Great question. All my life, I thought about happiness. I still do and wonder what makes us happy as people. I observed things that made me happy and things that didn’t cover the journey of my life. That’s what led to happiness in your skin.

It is a culmination of my thoughts on happiness through my life journey.

After quitting your corporate job, what were the challenges you faced in your creative journey and how did you overcome them?

There are several challenges, which are mostly financial as in a job you have a monthly salary, which you don’t have otherwise. So, I started working as a marketing consultant, and as comedy grew, I started getting shows- that helped. I also wrote copy, books, blogs, movies, skits, whatever I could to keep the engine of passion running.

These days we see that humor isn’t often taken with an easy-going attitude and often controversies crop up around some jokes. Do you feel that this hampers the sharp edge of humor and its power of expression?

Yes, the environment of fear affects creative expression. When artists are scared of going to jail, they would be scared to create the art that they do. So, unnecessary controversies do affect jokes. We don’t want to go to jail trying to make people happy.

According to you which are the 5 books, everyone should read and also who are your top 3 favorite Authors?

My favorite author is Ayn Rand. All her books including The Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness are great books.

I like Robin Sharma and even Tony Robbins, in addition to them.

Books to read:

The Atlas Shrugged,

The Fountainhead

The Virtue of Selfishness

Long walk to freedom by Nelson Mandela

The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma

Tell us a bit about your family, likes and dislikes as a person. When did you realize you connect with humor writing and that it was your inner calling as a profession?

I am an irritable guy and get irritated easily. I love reading, gym, running marathons. My family doesn’t like me because I hardly listen to anything they say.

I saw stand-up comedy for the first time in 2010-11. Ever since I have been hooked, although it took me many years to learn how to be funny on stage.

Can you please share your first experience as a stand-up comedian? What was the learning from your maiden attempt?

I went on stage and started sweating. Nobody laughed at anything I said. They stared at me and I left within 2-3 minutes. That’s when I realized how difficult comedy is.

During the pandemic year, the stand-up comedy shows couldn’t be carried out as they are done normally. How this kind of pause in the creative industry affects an artist? Did you face any particular challenges during these times?

2020 was the worst year for comedy and hopefully, this pandemic would end soon. It affects when you can’t do shows-both emotionally and financially. But, things will get better by the end of this year. They are already getting better.

Could you share a few tips for Young Authors/humor writers/comedians? What would be that one thing which you would like to tell your younger self as a writer/standup comedian?

For young authors: Write what you feel and write with a purpose. Every book, blog post should have a defined purpose that it should achieve.

For aspiring comedians: Failure is a part of the process. Write jokes and try as much as possible.

Make friends with your tribe, or else it’s a lonely road.

At Sharing Stories, we have an ongoing campaign ‘Empowering Our Kids’ where we are trying to encourage and inculcate reading habit from a young age. We are trying to pick up 20 to 30 must-read books for children and try and make them available at our library in Jaipur, also take this initiative across the globe. Please suggest some books which you think every child should read before the age of 15 (mostly the character-defining age).

The 5 books I suggested above

#Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

#Happiness in your skin (My book)

#Unleash the giant within (Tony Robbins)

#The story of my life (Helen Keller)

#How to make friends and influence people (Dale Carnegie)

#7 Habits of highly effective people (Steven Covey)

Yeah. These come to mind right now.

Rapid Fire Round

1. Favorite Place, Person, Food, beverage- Goa, myself, chicken, lemon soda
2. Your other Talents…. Long-distance running, singing- a bit
3. Your First Love…. When I was in school, I unproposed her
4. Favorite Quote….. Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life-the whole aim and end of human existence- Aristotle
5. Favorite Character from a book- John Galt (Atlas Shrugged)

What if Round

What if you had to live with only three things all your life, what would the three things be? – Laptop, Mobile, Kindle

What if you were given the power to change one thing from this world, what would you change? – I would eliminate illiteracy

What if you had all the money in this world, what would you do first? – Feed everyone-why should anyone sleep hungry