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Indian comics aren’t exactly an exotic sight anymore in certain big cities. In places such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, you can see them waiting to do eight minutes of stand-up at an open mike or even headlining. Russell Peters, a Canadian of Indian ethnicity, happens to be one of the most successful comedians of the moment, grossing millions at sold-out theaters across the globe.
But in Columbus, Sumukh Torgalkar, at 25, is still a rarity. Out of the 100 or so comics working the rooms of the city, he’s the only one with roots in Mumbai and probably the only devout Hindu comic within 200 miles of here. This might not be so notable but for the fact that he’s also one of the funniest comics in town.
I caught up with him on a Wednesday night at the packed Surly Girl Saloon. Torgalkar has a dry, droll sense of humor and a slow delivery, and he knows that nothing is too trivial or mundane to become the basis of smart comedy.
He made fun of his neighborhood, a dicey section near the Short North, with its profusion of gays and dives that would shock his religious parents. He riffed on Hinduism for a while. And then he launched into a story about shaving his head and discovering a large mole on the back of it.
“My dad saw it and said, ‘You’re going to make a lot of money one day.’ I said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Well, amongst Indian people growing up in poverty, they would come up with whatever random superstition sounded good. And one of them was, “You have a lot of moles on your body—you’re going to make a lot of money one day.’ Which is highly different from my American upbringing, where if you have a lot of moles on your body, you have a higher risk for skin cancer.” Torgalkar leveled his eyes at the audience and paused a beat. “The way I look at it, I’ll have the money to afford the treatment.”
That night, as on all nights, Torgalkar never did an Indian accent—something he refuses to engage in because it mocks his own culture.
Torgalkar grew up in the west side of Cleveland, the son of two chemists. His first memories of comedy were watching shows such as “Seinfeld” and seeing such comics as Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Cosby. But he also watched British comedies. At home, his parents were funny, he says, but also serious Hindus.
Torgalkar went to college at Miami University and got a degree in English literature. And while there he wrote plays and tried his hand at acting in comedies and dramas. After graduation, a friend at Ohio State told him he had a vacant room in his apartment. After giving it some thought, Torgalkar moved here in the summer of 2006 and was lucky enough to land a job in the editorial department at Chemical Abstracts Services. A few weeks later, he took the plunge into stand-up, doing an open mike at OSU’s Scarlet and Gray Cafe.
He did a lot of one-liners at the beginning. At the time that’s what he was writing and he was nervous and didn’t feel confident enough doing anything longer. He still does one-liners. But gradually his shtick got longer and more complex, dealing with the intricacies of navigating two cultures: Indian and American.
“I love writing comedy, and stand-up is a way of getting my writing out there,” he says. “There is nothing involved with publishers. You get an immediate response.”
Torgalkar has hosted shows at the Funny Bone and done 15-minute spots there as well. He goes to two open mikes a week. Still, you can sense he’s waiting to make his next move after doing comedy in the trenches for almost four years.
He was accepted to law school in 2007, but decided to turn down the opportunity because of stand-up. He says he’d like to polish his act and try to tour the country performing.
“But I have a goal beyond that because I wouldn’t necessarily want to be on the road forever,” he says. “If I can continue to do stand-up, but also delve into comedy writing in TV, film or literature, that would be the ultimate goal.”
