Laugh Lines and Life Lessons: Inside the World of Stand-Up Comedian Shouvik Bhattacharya
By Priyanka pasupuleti
Hyderabad, despite being miles away from Kolkata, is home to one of the most refreshingly witty Bengali voices in India’s comedy circuit Shouvik Bhattacharya. Born and raised in the City of Pearls, Shouvik speaks Telugu more fluently than his mother tongue, yet his cultural duality is just one of many quirks that make his comedy so relatable, raw, and rib-tickling.
With over 500 shows under his belt in the last eight years, Shouvik is not just a stand-up comic he’s a storyteller, a survivor of schoolyard bullies, and a man who’s learned to turn personal pain into public punchlines.
Ask him about the weirdest moment on stage and he recalls a show in a restaurant where the kitchen sat directly behind the stage. In the middle of delivering a punchline, a waiter tapped him on the shoulder, took the mic, and asked, “I have a Gobi Manchurian here which table ordered this?” The crowd laughed, but not at the joke he had painstakingly written. “My punchline failed to deliver but the Gobi Manchurian didn’t,” he shrugs.
If his life were a comedy special? He’d call it “Greek God.” “Why not? The title alone will get a laugh and that’s always the goal,” he says.
While his humor is largely self-deprecating, Shouvik admits to accidentally roasting a corporate event organizer once thankfully, the man had a sense of humor. “I got paid,” he laughs, “so it all worked out.”
Not every punchline lands, though. He recalls a musical bit he thought was gold until it bombed. “People looked at me with pity,” he remembers. “That was rough.”
Despite the vulnerability that comes with comedy, Shouvik’s friends never fear being the butt of his jokes. “I don’t make fun of people. I laugh at myself,” he says. Still, suggestions pour in — from WhatsApp forwards to unsolicited punchlines as though everyone believes comedy (like design, his other profession) is easy.
The origin of his humor? Pain. “I was bullied a lot in school. I cried a lot. So I started making fun of myself to survive,” he shares. “Slowly, the bullying reduced and I found my voice.”
He’s handled hecklers too once silencing a rowdy table by blasting heavy metal music into the mic. “They looked at me like, “Why are you doing this to us?” he chuckles. “That’s how quietness sounds, I told them.”
When asked if comedy is a form of therapy, Shouvik answers with layered honesty: “Writing a joke feels great. Arriving at it is agony. Performing it can be cathartic, but it’s not always healing it’s a process, like therapy, full of highs and lows.”
His “underground” comedy fantasy? Performing in someone’s living room or kitchen. “Basements are rare here,” he says, “but four people laughing at my stories is more than enough.”
While he refrains from sharing crass political jokes on stage, he admits some thoughts are best left unsaid. “Not everything funny in your head deserves a mic,” he reasons. “Comedy is about shaping thoughts, adding spice not spewing raw, unfiltered ideas.”
As the laughter fades and the spotlight dims, Shouvik Bhattacharya remains a reminder that humor, when done right, isn’t just entertainment it’s endurance. It’s healing. It’s rebellion. And sometimes, it’s just a guy on stage dod ging Gobi Manchurian for a laugh.
