Hyderabad-based comic Vivek Muralidharan: Finding his niche in standup comedy

Ahead of his performance, Vivek Muralidharan looks back at his journey in standup comedy

Vivek Muralidharan never follows online trends. The Hyderabad-based stand-up comedian uploads onlycontent related to his show on social media and that has helped him build a community. Proof is his 123k Instagram followers who have grown from around 5k in August 2022. “Earlier I was one of those people who thought people would find me but last August I gave up on that,” he says adding, “The basic reason why I am online is to get my audience offline; I am an influencer but I have only one client and that is my show,” he says unabashedly .

Ahead of his show at Zen Bowls in Manikonda, the software engineer-turned-comic is open about his ‘overconfidence’ in the early phase of his stint leading to failures. “I don’t think anyone was laughing at my jokes during those initial eight months. It was weird because I hadn’t found my voice.” He realised being the funny person among friends is not just about jokes as they know you and there is context. “It is a different ballgame on stage; condensing the material to present it to a crowd and knowing you are making strangers laugh.” Although it took nine months to understand the ‘problem’ and fix it, he did not give up.

Failure has been a teacher to Vivek who feels one needs ‘a good amount of shamelessness’ to get onstage and also be open to people not laughing at your jokes. “That is how you learn and bring new thoughts. You’re trying to convince the audience who sometimes might want to listen to something else.”

Drawing humour from day-to-day observations, Vivek pursued standup comedy at night while working as a software engineer. After balancing dual careers for five years, he quit his job in January 2020 to pursue standup full-time. With the pandemic halting live events, did he regret his decision? “No,” he quips and adds, “I anyway wanted to quit my job so it wasn’t a decision I regretted.”  Besides reading, he had one agenda during weekends and holidays: Explore the city. One such material that came from observation is his piece on the toy figure who strikes the clock with a hammer every hour at the iconic musical clock at Salar Jung Museum. “The line, ‘He is the only person who comes on time in Hyderabad’ came impromptu in one of the shows and I just added it.”

Besides Hyderabad, Vivek’s six shows a month take him to Chennai Bangalore, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Kochi. While most of his jokes are in English, he switches to a bit of Telugu, Tamil and Hindi depending on the city he is performing in. For someone who keeps his opinions to himself, Vivek says, “Standup is a nice place to be in. There is freedom to be free in front of other people.”

Vivek Muralidharan performs at Zen Bowls Cafe, Manikonda on June 16 from 7.30pm onwards Tickets: bookmyshow.com