Sarah Silverman is a stand-up comic I have somehow followed rather intermittently, over the years. But I have always loved what little of her work I have seen so far. Recently, while indulging in our staple dinner-diet of Seinfeld reruns with the husband, I screamed in delight when I noticed that she featured in one of the episodes as Kramer’s girl friend. The husband, of course, having mercifully not devoted as large a chunk of his life as me to YouTube stand-up videos, looked befuddled and started scanning the room for rats. Which only made me laugh harder, seeing as we already have a cat and dog in the house, and a rat would really have completed the family photo.
So when Sarah Silverman’s stand-up special came out on Netflix, I instantly downloaded it. And there it lay, for several months, eating up precious phone memory space, while I staunchly refused to delete it and accept defeat in the face of not being able to find a decent one hour chunk in my life to devote to it.
Enter Jet Airways, flight 9Wwho-gives-a-shit, from Delhi to Lucknow, that was supposed to fly me from Delhi to Lucknow one fine evening. Only it actually landed in Lucknow in the middle of the night after a mind-numbing 3 hour delay and a harrowing 1.5 hours spent sitting cooped up in the plane while it stood adamantly on the runway. Seriously, they did not even have the decency to taxi around and make a show of movement. I have never seen such enthusiasm for a taxing flight in my life as when the pilot turned the engines on towards the end of this wait. The passengers literally applauded. I must say the sense of sarcastic humour was downright impressive, especially when considering that half the flight was full of Delhi-types, and the other half UP-vaale. That is a typecast, yes, but, as Sarah Silverman says in the special, it is a horrible stereotype… based on facts.
Here is how binge-watching comedy has made me a better person though. Every time I feel the urge to criticize how I was treated on a flight, my brain switches to this genius video of Louis CK, and I shut up and sit down and appreciate the miracle of human flight like I was taught to by The Master.
Back to me on the stationary aircraft. Trying to appreciate the miracle of human flight like a good girl. And admiring the even greater miracle of my co-passenger’ atypical behaviour. Mind you, at this point, we are surrounded by Delhi-boys with their steroid-pumped biceps bursting out of their tight t-shirts and tiny brains floating in pools of testosterone in their bloated heads. And there they were, defying laws of physics, sitting good-naturedly in their seats, spectacularly managing to not have indicated even once so far that the pilot or crew members engaged in sexual relations with their family members. (The ‘good-natured’ bar is really low for Delhi-boys, yeah.)
I suppose it certainly helped that they were distracted by the arduous task of flirting with the air hostesses. Or, at least, their version of flirting. Which largely involves making Netflix-worthy jokes such as “Madam, aaj Lucknow pahucha toh doge na?” while their unibrow dances suggestively. And which I might have considered harassment, if the air hostesses were not Delhi girls themselves, laughing their heads off at said non-jokes of said flirters. To give them the benefit of doubt, may be it is in their training for emergency situations. Here is how that training manual goes in my mind:
“When faced with an inconvenienced Delhi-boy – hereafter referred to as The Subject – always act like he is the most hilarious man on-board. Laugh at The Subject’s jokes, however hard you have to grit your teeth for it. Incentives will be offered on a per-bad-joke basis.
Keep The Subject calm with assurances that you can’t wait to listen to Honey Singh in his Audi and impress Mummyji with your round rotis.
There are two doors to your front and two doors behind you in the aircraft. Upon landing, when The Subject tries to take you up on that offer, smile and tell him to not let any of them hit him on his way out.”
The whole ridiculous display had me tittering to myself, which, I am sure, the Delhi-boys took as further certification of their undeniable charm. And since all of this was keeping them from throwing punches and asking people if they knew who their fathers were like little angry lost orphans, I wasn’t complaining either.
Hilarious as the non-flirting and its undue reciprocation was, it reminded me of that 250MB space of actual entertainment lying on my phone. I thank Sarah Silverman deeply for providing me with an alternative source of humourous entertainment in these extenuating circumstances. Bonus points to the Special for providing a worthy escape from the non-food the airline seemed to be serving as compensation for the delay.
And so, I kid you not, I watched the entire special right there on the runway. Time well spent.
There are no two ways about it: Sarah Silverman is a comic genius. For starters, it somehow felt humbling to see her walk on stage with her cues written on a notepad. This is the first stand-up I have ever seen where the comedienne came with notes written on a paper. And the fact that such a senior and experienced stand-up comic did that made me feel really warmed up to her somehow.
Over the Special, she covers a wide range of topics, from abortion laws in the US to her experiences at camp, from sex to fun facts about squirrels, from a near-death personal experience to religion. All of it is intelligent humour, and all of it is super funny. A lots of segues through the whole thing, with her asking the audience repeatedly to put a pin in a topic she’s talking about to circle back to another related story they need to hear first. While the segues felt a bit disconcerting at times, they give the whole thing the feeling of a friend telling you a funny story, and realizing midway through the story that they haven’t told you another story from the past that you need to know to understand why this one is funny. It would seem that the notes ultimately didn’t help her keep track too well, after all. Or that the segues were actually flowcharted in those notes, in which case it would seem that she is an even greater comic genius that I originally estimated.)
My favourite part, ironically, was not actually a part of the Special at all. It was a cellphone video shot by her friend right before a life-saving surgery she had, which plays during the end credits. In the video, she is drugged for the surgery, and explains Brexit beautifully to prove to the doctors that she “isn’t high enough”. If half the people in the world understood political issues half as lucidly when sober, as she did when legitimately “high enough” on anasthesia, we would have much less suffering around us. And, borrowing a joke from her set, America would not be becoming great again right now.
All in all, an hour very well spent. Highly recommended if you are on a humungously delayed flight and trying hard to not be thankless by complaining about… you know what, Louis CK, screw that. I appreciate the miracle of human flight. But, God dammit, I will not let you take away from me my right to crib about human taxing on the runway. And as for you, Jet Airways, on my flight before this one, a guy’s seat was wet with the pee of the last passenger’s kid. And it is a little tough appreciating the miracle of human flight when flying in the wetness of human urination.
Let me end with an open letter to Jet Airways.
Dear Jet Airways,
I like you. I am a frequent flyer, which is basically fancy-speak for frequent air-polluter. But I am hoping that that is a good thing in your books anyway. I am writing to draw your attention to a quote by Ms Silverman, who puts it so beautifully in her Netflix Special when she says that we are all specks of dust sitting on a speck of dust hurtling through the Universe. To which I would like to beautifully add that I prefer to do my hurtling sitting on a pee-free speck, if that is all the same to you.
Unless you would like to offer me some extra frequent flyer miles and an upgrade to compensate for my troubles (and to pull this post down). In which case, we can probably work something out. Because while we may all be flying specks of dust and all that, the speck flying Business Class is definitely the more comfortable one.
Wink Wink Nudge Nudge,
A Non-Contributing Zero
Mahima Vashisht 
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