Warm as people, but cold as a place to visit.īut my overall impressions were nothing but amazing. I thought it was a very calm and quiet place, because I was coming from the hustle and bustle of Mumbai. What were some of your first impressions of America as a new arrival? You left India as a teenager to avoid an arranged marriage that your widowed father had set up. Garg and her family in One in a Billion Mandar Parab You start off your stand-up special talking about the immigrant experience. Then things started falling into place in my mind about where I could fit in. And once you go down that rabbit hole, it’s endless. I looked up Roseanne Barr’s late-night set. Then I started watching more female comics. So I watched all the big comedy specials out of curiosity, to see what were people joking about. My audiences are overwhelmingly people who have never stepped foot in a comedy club. And that’s true for a lot of Indians today. I had never stepped foot in a comedy club before. Of course I watched Russell Peters growing up, but I never imagined that I would be somebody who could do that. I come from a world where we don’t really consume stand-up comedy. When you were starting this new career, did you have any specific heroes? We’ve all thought we were going to do something, but it ended up another way … or our parents had one dream, we had another dream, and it was a messy road to get wherever we got. And I think that these contradictions are a reason that my audience resonates with me so much. In my head, I should have been that Google billionaire. In an ideal world, I would be a software engineer. People do ask me, how can I be so strict and old-fashioned about my kids when I myself am a comedian? I'll be honest with you. How do those contradictions play out in your life? But your own story breaks from a traditional path. Garg at New York City’s Comedy Cellar Courtesy of Zarna Garg Some of your material leans into stereotypes of Indian parents being strict and raising kids to be overachievers. There’s buckets in America too, but they’re filled with fried chicken.”) With her debut hour-long special One in a Billion premiering on Prime Video on May 16, Garg is poised to win over a wider audience with her sidesplitting observations on everything from arranged marriage to hot yoga to bubble baths. Branding herself on social media as the Funny Brown Mom, she posts videos often from her kitchen, frequently while cutting up pineapple, and usually while telling her kids no when they ask her permission to do something fun. “I had to go home and Google what is a joke? because I didn’t even know that.”Ī few short years and a pandemic later, Garg has channeled her innate comedic chops into a massive TikTok presence (705K followers) and sold out shows at clubs across North America. “I just started ranting about my family and my kids, and people were dying, and I couldn’t understand what was happening,” Garg recalls. As an immigrant from Mumbai, India, Garg wasn’t even convinced that stand-up could be a real job, but her first gig at a New York City open mic in 2018 set her on a new trajectory. When Zarna Garg’s three children pushed her to consider a career in comedy, the former lawyer had been a stay-at-home mom for 16 years.
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