How To Find Belonging When You Feel Like an Outsider with Vir Das

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Episode Transcript:

Vir Das 00:00:00  Early on in your career, or at least in your life. You’re like, what do people want to hear, you know? And can I meander between what people want to hear and ever so slightly pivot into what I want to say? And then you get to this point and you’re like, hey, maybe I’ll just say everything I want to say and find out if people want to hear it. And maybe they won’t, by the way, but can I just say everything that’s inside me for once?

Chris Forbes 00:00:29  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. our actions matter.

Chris Forbes 00:01:01  It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:14  There’s a way of moving through life where we’re always looking at what’s next, the next idea, the next project, the next version of yourself. I know that mode really well. And in this conversation, Veer Dass, comedian and author of The Outsider, talks about how hard it is to actually stop and recognize what you’ve already done. At one point, someone told him he needed to celebrate something he accomplished five years ago because he never did. And that really makes sense to me. We talk about that tension between ambition and appreciation, what it’s like to live with a mind that keeps generating ideas, whether you want it to or not, and how easy it is to miss your own life while you’re building it. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, veer. Welcome to the show.

Vir Das 00:01:59  Hi.

Vir Das 00:02:00  Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:02  Yeah. I’m really excited to talk with you about your book, which is called The Outsider a memoir for misfits. And I also pulled some things from your most recent Netflix special, although you have, I believe, two others that I now get to watch. So thanks for joining us.

Vir Das 00:02:18  I’m very excited to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:20  So we’ll get into the memoir and some of your comedy in a moment, but we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:52  So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Vir Das 00:02:58  I think for me, both wolves definitely exist in my life, and I think the meaning of life is to kind of walk through it with both of those wolves embraced with love and not judging each other, so that hopefully, at the end of a life you can wind up the good wolf. But I think what makes the good wolf the good wolf is to acknowledge the bad wolf, embrace it, and give it love. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:25  Yes. Beautiful. I want to start with where you start the book. In the acknowledgement, you say this book is about someone in the middle of their life with no answers, just more questions. The book is for fellow wanderers, complete vagabonds, utter idiots, committed clowns and lonely people looking to belong. Always looking, never knowing. That is such a great intro that I immediately resonated with. Although my experiences are very different than your experience.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:52  Is that feeling of never quite fitting. Somewhere is been pervasive for me in my life for sure. Talk to me about for you that feeling of never quite fitting for people who don’t know you. Why is it that you feel like you’ve never quite found the place that you belong?

Vir Das 00:04:12  Well, you know, for some reason and much of it am I doing. And much of it my upbringing, which was not my doing, I found myself seeing more of the world and being led into more worlds than anybody I’ve ever met, you know. And I can explain that I was born in India, in a town called Dehradun, but when I was eight months old, I was moved to Lagos, Nigeria. you know, in Africa in the 80s, which is a wild trip of a place to grow up, you know, and grew up essentially in Africa until I was nine years old and then wound up in a preppy boarding school in the north of India, in the hills. And from there I wound up getting kicked out and sent to Delhi Public School, where I was the kid from boarding school and wound up in Delhi University and saw an American movie about American college and kind of said, hey, I want to kind of drink from that fountain.

Vir Das 00:05:06  And wound up from New Delhi, which is one of the most populated places in the world, to Galesburg, Illinois population, you know, 21,000. The Mecca of civilization as we know it. And yeah, yeah, wound up from Galesburg going to Montgomery, Alabama to study Shakespeare, to be an actor, and then wound up being in 14 Bollywood movies from there in, in the bustling metropolis of Mumbai to then kind of crashing and burning in Bollywood a little bit and finding myself on a flight to Los Angeles to do Conan O’Brien and starting in America career. And it’s been this conflict of cultural dissonance where I’ve been able to be in all of these worlds. So for some, somehow I’ve found myself in Hollywood and in Bollywood and in rock music and in comedy and, you know, I’ve been in all of these bubbles, but had to leave all of them before the bubble took too much from me, but also before I could fully settle in the bubble. So I kind of feel like this kid who got invited to the coolest party in the world.

Vir Das 00:06:10  Except it’s nine parties. And the broad feeling when you get invited to the coolest party in the world is, jeez, what am I doing at this party? And how did I get in the door? And am I wearing the right thing? And should I talk to people, should I not? Can they smell the fear inside me? And, I suspect that’s the broader feeling that people share across the world, rather than belonging at the party or feeling like the life of the party. Yeah. And so I wanted to write a book about that feeling.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:36  You mentioned being at all these cool parties. I think you’re still in a pretty cool party, it seems like. Right. You’re a stand up comedian. You’re doing well. you mentioned the fear, right? You end up in these parties and you’re afraid I don’t. I don’t really belong here. What’s that experience like for you today?

Vir Das 00:06:52  It’s still the same. You know, I’m doing five things right now, which are the first things I’ve ever done.

Vir Das 00:06:58  I’m off Broadway for the first time. And so I’m. I’m, you know, at the Lincoln Center Theater. But it’s an audience that has no idea who I am. And watch is Ragtime on Friday and Les Miz on Thursday and now has to, you know, watch this tiny Indian guy tell jokes about Bollywood. You know, are they going to relate? Are they going to embrace it? You know, it’s weird to do a show that tells Americans about India and Indians about America. So it’s terrifying to go there every day. standup is a pretty isolated art form. You know, you’re by yourself. But then suddenly when you enter the Broadway world, you’re you’re collaborating in, there are directors and there are producers and there is there are tastemakers, quote unquote. That’s scary. I’ve never written a book before, you know, and so I have no idea if it’s if it’s shit or if it’s good, you know it’s good. We’ll find it’s good. Thank you. So we’ll find out.

Vir Das 00:07:56  And I just directed my first movie. So it is terrifying to walk into these places when arguably one could rest on a few laurels and and play to one’s crowd. And I think had you had an upbringing of a little more belonging, you’d be like, all right, I’m sad. I know my people, I know where I am, I’m happy where I’m at, and we’ll just do this. You know, in my 40s, this is a comfortable place to do, to, to be. But I’m kind of jumping into various deep ends. And the only thing I know to console myself is, all right, take it or leave it. I know who I am. Hey, this is me. Yeah, and it’s either going to work for you or not work for you, but I don’t know how to do anything else.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:42  When did you start to get that sense? Like, this is me, right? Because one of the things that happens when we, when we jump between lots of different circumstances is to a certain degree.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:52  We’re all mildly chameleons, right? We we adjust a little bit to the place we are. And maybe with age we, we start to do that. But when did you start to feel like, okay, this is me and you know, I’ll be appropriate to the situations, but I’ll still be clearly me. I know who I am.

Vir Das 00:09:13  I think it’s an accumulation not of knowing or some sort of enlightenment. I think it’s an accumulation of the exhaustion of trying to not be you. You know, at some point you’re just like, oh my God, I’m tired of pretending. You know what I mean? I’m 46 and I’m like, this is, you know, I’m not doing this. Do you know how they say about your 40s, where you meet certain people and you’re like, yeah, we’re not going to be friends. and yes, you know, and it is too late for us to, to find common ground, etc., etc.. And I think I’m there. I’m just like, yeah, this.

Vir Das 00:09:48  It looks like I’m this guy for the next 20 years. However long this career has left on it. So I think it’s just the exhaustion of trying to fit into various rooms rather than, oh, I figured out who I am. I think I have more than anything else. I figured out who I’m not. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:03  That’s a great way of saying it. I’ve been marveling at friendship a little bit lately. Like just how how it’s so it’s kind of just unpredictable. Like, you meet people and some people, you just there’s a connection and you connect with, and then there’s other people that you meet that you like that might be fine, but there’s you just know, like, we’re not going to be friends. And then of course, there’s the people that from the minute you meet them, you’re like, well, we’re not going to be friends. I just find it such a mysterious process, this process of who, we sync with on on that level, I.

Vir Das 00:10:39  I’ve a theory of friendships, which is I have to have seen your bedroom.

Vir Das 00:10:44  I have to have had a meal on a on a piece of furniture that you normally sit on, and that’s okay. And I have to have met one of your parents. I think that’s my theory of friendship.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:57  Okay.

Vir Das 00:10:57  Have I met your dad or your mom? You know, have you come over to my house and sat in my couch and on my armchair and I’m like, oh, no, that’s fine. Yeah. You sit there. Yeah. You know. And have we eaten together? You know what I mean? That’s really important. Like, have I seen you, with a mouthful of steak and or, you know, roti trying to make a point animatedly. That’s friendship to me, you know?

Eric Zimmer 00:11:25  Yep, yep. That’s a great way to think about how far into your life or someone else’s life you have to go for it to be friendship. And it’s interesting because I’ve studied a lot about how lonely people are today, and the study seemed to show that it just takes a long time for somebody to become a really good friend.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:46  It’s to the point that you’re saying by the time somebody in your house has met your parents and you shared a meal at your house or their house, there’s probably been some amount of interaction getting to that place that that allowed it to develop over time to the point you’re like, okay, next step. It’s similar to dating in a way. You start out at one place and you end up at a very different place.

Vir Das 00:12:09  I mean, I have had zero success at dating. I’m arguably the worst date in the world. I’m fraught with anxiety on a date, but, yeah. And I do think a really good friend has seen you through various versions of you. The post-breakup. Oh, woe is me self-pity. You know, talking about your ex for two years, version of you, the. Hey, I’m doing so. Well, I want to tell you all about this career that you don’t care about. Version or the, you’re much further ahead of me in life, but I’m happy for you version.

Vir Das 00:12:46  And I just want to come over right now because I need to see a face that I know, and I don’t want to take an appointment to see that face version as well. Like, that’s a good friend, you know?

Eric Zimmer 00:12:57  Yeah, yeah. You frame the book as a search, not a success story. Now that you’ve documented that search, what do you feel like you’re searching for today? And has the nature of the search itself changed?

Vir Das 00:13:11  Definitely. I think it’s one thing to find a voice, and then it’s another thing to own that voice and scare yourself to see what that voice can accomplish. You know, to me, it’s it’s the equivalent of building a car and building an engine and then getting out on the freeway. Or, you know, you learn opera for a while, and then you want to try and hit the high note. And so to me, the search is, what can I do that scares the ever living daylights out of me on a daily basis? And let’s just do that for a little bit of time.

Vir Das 00:13:43  So being in New York right now is part of it, and testing it on brand new audiences is part of it. But also kind of going, you know, early on in your career or at least in your life, you’re like, what do people want to hear? You know? And can I meander between what people want to hear and ever so slightly pivot into what I want to say? And then you get to this point and you’re like, hey, maybe I’ll just say everything I want to say and find out if people want to hear it. And maybe they won’t, by the way, but can I just say everything that’s inside me for once, you know, and that process is is scary to confront.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:20  Yeah. You say in your recent standup special that freedom is not constantly thinking about whether you can speak. You just speak.

Vir Das 00:14:28  Yeah. You just speak.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:52  Do you have another line that says, don’t think about what you say and it will get you into trouble. And when you are in trouble, do not think about what you say and it will get you out of trouble.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:01  You tell a great story about you sort of not thinking about what to say to an Indian policeman. One day you want to share that story with us.

Vir Das 00:15:11  The context of the story is I did a speech at the Kennedy Center a few years ago, and it was called The Two Indias, and it got 35 million views and offended a lot of people and ended up getting me 14 police cases for everything from defamation to sedition, etc., etc. so for a long period of time, the police were not my friend. And you know, process can end up being punishment a little bit in these situations where you spend your life going to police stations and doing paperwork and fighting these investigations. And somebody sent me a notice for IP repetition. Right. And if you live where I live, you know that that’s not really a notice for IP repetition. It’s something larger. And so you go in and this policeman asks me to surrender my passport. And before I did I actually explained joke structure to the Mumbai police, ended up effectively doing like a half an hour.

Vir Das 00:16:07  One man open mic to a policeman in a Mumbai police station until he finally ended it by going, are you going to do jokes about me? Is this going to be in your routine? And I was like, well, absolutely, if you let me. And then I kind of told him what joke I would do about him, and I’m 95% sure he let me go because he wanted to see how the joke about him would land in the world. so, you know, what I found is policemen have a wonderful sense of humor.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:36  How did it land?

Vir Das 00:16:37  It landed pretty well. It was in the Netflix special. So you know all’s well that ends well. So yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:42  Yes. There’s also an incident of you being on a scooter on acid.

Vir Das 00:16:47  Yeah, yeah. In Delhi I was in.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:50  Delhi, okay.

Vir Das 00:16:51  I think I was 18 years old. And you know, this is the first time I did acid and I saw a gigantic cat, a brown cat with light shooting out of a massive one eye.

Vir Das 00:17:03  It looked like a cyclops at a traffic light. And then when we got closer, the cat morphed into a Delhi policeman. Oh, who got on his motorcycle? Because I meowed at him. Which is not a something I would recommend 18 year olds do at a traffic light to a policeman. And he got on his scooter and followed us for two kilometers and beat the ever loving daylights out of us. Now it is one thing to be beaten by a policeman. That’s par for the course, but to do it on acid, is part traumatic, part pretty magical experience, you know what I mean? Because you’re basically dodging punches and colors at the same time. so, I think it was, you know, more enjoyable for me than it was for him. He looked more exhausted than I did at the end of the meeting.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:47  And then you, found out that the guy driving the scooter only had a learner’s permit.

Vir Das 00:17:53  Permit, and I had a learner’s permit as well. And, I really tried to convince this policeman.

Vir Das 00:17:58  I was like, if we put two learner’s permits together, they become a full license, like Captain Planet. All of a sudden, you know, they combine into a more powerful being. But, you know, he was not buying it. I was on it.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:09  So let’s talk about humor. I’ve always thought of humor as a sort of almost a spiritual virtue. Right. When you when people list off the virtues, I’ve always felt like it should be on the list. And you say early on in the book, laughter has truly saved my life. Give me a couple examples of when you started to realize how important laughter was to you.

Vir Das 00:18:32  Well, you know, I think comedians are never the life of the party where the we’re kind of the the ass in the in the corner judging the life of the party, you know what I mean? And I feel like comedians either end up as the the loser kid in school or the coolest kid in school, and I find that the loser kid in school makes the better comedian, which was definitely me.

Vir Das 00:18:53  But I do remember, you know, in Indian boarding school, sometimes you’d get beaten with hockey sticks. It was just a corporal punishment thing. So you’d go and get like a hockey stick on your on your bum, like a caning kind of a thing, And I remember once just kind of going through the process and, I wouldn’t shut up, you know, and people around me were laughing because I wasn’t the only one being punished. But I keep looking at my prefect going. Does this make you feel better? Are you tired? Do you feel like more of a man? Etc., etc. and my friends were just like, if you just shut up, you’ll get one hockey stick instead of 12. But it was something undeniable. I felt where I’m like, oh, you can beat me as much as you like, but you’ll never win because I have the laugh, you know, that served me pretty well. I think everybody will remember their trauma. They’ll remember their tough times. But you’ll remember a good laugh, you know, for the rest of your life, I do believe.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:44  Yeah. In this special you are talking about. Well, I’m just going to give you the line and you can put it in context. You say happiness watched is greater than happiness lived.

Vir Das 00:19:57  Yeah. You know, the bit is happiness watched is greater than happiness lived. I wish I could put every audience member on stage so that they could see it. Like I see it and feel it like I feel it. Because then you would understand why people like stand up comedy. No one is watching the comedian. They are listening to the audience to laugh, to leave their body because laughter when yelled joy when projected, not protected is hope. People with power understand that the scariest noise to them is not the words that come out of my mouth, it is the noise that comes out of the audience’s mouth. You know, comedians just say words. The audience tells the truth. And this is what I don’t understand. Why is no one arresting the audience? It’s basically their fault. But I do believe that.

Vir Das 00:20:42  I believe that it’s very easy to demonize the audience and to lionize the artist. And if you really look at it in the right perspective, if you’ve ever seen 9000 people send you a laugh and taken the time to look in their eyes, you realize what a powerful thing that is and how much of the pedestal the audience deserves, as opposed to the artist.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:02  And do you think that is the thing that draws you to making jokes? Is it? Is that the thing? The laughter that’s received?

Vir Das 00:21:11  It is a moment in the show where I feel like if I do my job correctly, I can send you home flying on a cloud. You know, there’s a moment where you’ll sit back in the show and go, oh, wow, I’m glad I Uber. I’m glad I got a babysitter. I’m glad I bought these tickets three months in advance. And this was a good decision. And if I can get you to that. Man, that’s magic in that room. You know, that’s a a hell of an expectation to put on yourself.

Vir Das 00:21:42  But it’s also a hell of a promise to put out there in the world saying, I will unapologetically do everything I can to send you home flying on a goddamn cloud, you know? So I think that’s it. That’s when my art forms at its best.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:55  A couple of minutes ago, you mentioned you’re doing a lot of things that are scary, and that that’s kind of a a way you approach things like, how can I find the scariest thing to go do? Yeah, man. What do you think is driving that or what do you think is pushing that or because yeah, you are you are continuing to really do different things when you’ve gotten pretty good at one thing, why do you think you’re pushed in that direction, or is it not feel like a push? Maybe you feel drawn.

Vir Das 00:22:24  Oh no, it definitely feels like a push. But, I mean, who knows? Ego, ambition. Narcissism. and or, a desperate search for belonging. But I do think I. I’ve been raised all over the world.

Vir Das 00:22:41  I’ve seen the entire world three times. It’s a crazy story. Who the hell gets to say that? You know. and so it feels limiting to take this global upbringing and limit it to one place. to say it feels like, a waste of my story to limit it when I’ve. I’ve had been so privileged to have this story, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:03  So are you talking about ambition or ego? Does this mean that you live in a state of being sort of perpetually dissatisfied, one in the next thing or what’s that like? I mean, I’m always curious about that. Sort of like we have a desire to improve, to push forward in a new ground. And then there’s also like, how do I actually appreciate the things that I do have in my life, and I find that an interesting challenge in ambitious people.

Vir Das 00:23:31  I think it’s the biggest challenge of my life is I’m always what’s next? And I’m, you know, I’m in one place thinking about where I’m headed next. And yeah, something I’m trying to work on is, you know, I remember a mental health professional telling me a few years ago, she’s like, you literally need to go back into your last decade and celebrate everything you did.

Vir Das 00:23:52  So I want you to have a piece of cake today because you sold out Carnegie Hall five years ago and didn’t celebrate. You know, and yeah, validate for yourself the things you’ve done in the places you’ve been. And I would love to pretend I’m better that than I am, but I’m not working on it, you know?

Eric Zimmer 00:24:12  Yeah. Yeah. I just was talking with a woman about gratefulness and gratitude, and we were talking about this idea of these former versions of ourselves. Would be so thrilled with where we are. Right? That person would be like, oh my God. Like, what if I just had that? I would be happy forever, right? Yeah. And and she had a line that I really loved. I thought about this. And I mean, I don’t think any of us can put this stuff into anything near perfect practice. But she said, imagine an exercise where you wake up tomorrow only with the things that you are grateful for today. And that’s a fascinating sort of way to frame, you know, frame life.

Vir Das 00:24:57  I mean, that is wholly terrifying and inspiring at the same time. Do you know what I mean?

Eric Zimmer 00:25:04  Yes, 100%. 100%. Yeah, yeah.

Vir Das 00:25:07  Yep. I’m not sure what I would do with that if I just woke up with the things that I would. Grateful, was grateful for today. It would be my wife and my two dogs. And I think that would be. That would be enough. I would still wake up with 18 ideas in my head every morning and drive myself insane, because those ideas had nowhere to go. You know. Yeah. So that coping with that, I do not know how I would do, but, those three things. And I think I’d be pretty sorted. Yeah. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:35  Well, and I think that the fact that your brain does that is something to be grateful for also. I mean, at times it feels I mean, it feels crazy making. Have a brain that’s always kind of what’s next, what’s next, what’s out there.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:49  But it’s also kind of great to have a brain that does that, you know, that’s capable of doing that, that is enthused enough about anything to want to do that. That’s a gift.

Vir Das 00:25:59  I think so. And it also makes you empathize with people who have that and don’t have open ears yet. You know, in terms of I think success is the amount of time that passes between you having an idea and somebody opening their ear to that idea. You know, I’ve woken up with 20 ideas in my head every day since I was 18 years old, and it’s taken me till my 40s to get that time down to where people are listening. But if there’s people who are listening to this who are 27 or 28 and having ideas, you know, I empathize. Don’t stop listening to those ideas, because at some point people will start listening to those ideas. Like, hold on to that stuff.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:58  You mentioned dogs, and the most moving chapter in the book for me is, and I imagine you probably heard this from other people, is about your dog Winston at some point.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:11  Watson.

Vir Das 00:27:12  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:12  Yeah. You just wrote so beautifully about the experience of having and loving a dog, and I just would like to read a couple lines, Please, you say if you truly want to get to know me, you have to know Watson. I realize right in an entire chapter devoted to a dog might seem unusual, but this dog is and was the best part of me. If there was one being on earth around whom I felt totally, completely, and utterly myself, this damn dog, was it. Caring for him and losing him is the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through.

Vir Das 00:27:44  Yeah. For sure. And you know, I’ve lost people. You know, I’ve lost people that I loved. But a dog truly does see the best version of you, you know, the most innocent, pure version of you. They don’t understand you for anything but the love that they give you and how you respond. The dog doesn’t know about jokes. It doesn’t know about Carnegie Hall. It doesn’t know about your podcast.

Vir Das 00:28:06  It doesn’t know about your finances or your SUV or anything like that. It just knows that you danced around the room a little bit when you got home, and you made a high pitched noise and you rolled around on the floor, and we are at our most childlike and innocent in the presence of a dog or a cat or, you know, or a pet. I also think what I love about having a dog is you’re in charge of a whole life. Yeah. You don’t get that with anything else. Hopefully, you know, you don’t get that with your child. You will. Your child will outlive you. You don’t get that with your grandparents or your parents. You will outlive them. But here, from the second they breathe into the the second, the last time they breathe out, it’s you. Yeah. You know. And for you. So what a privilege that is. You know, you you will never get that anywhere else in your life.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:54  Yeah, I was reflecting on that.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:56  We lost a dog about four months ago, and it’s it’s for me. It’s the last in a string of dogs. I’m Douglas for the first time in, I don’t know, 20 years, maybe. Oh, wow. Wow. Because I just we just had, like, you know, I had one. Then I had a second, then I had a third. And there was just a lineage of them, which is amazing. And you about every year and a half I’ve lost one. It’s been sort of this ongoing process. So I’m sort of Douglas, but I was reflecting on that exactly what you said, this idea that you kind of have to play God for that dog and it’s really you do it’s really hard. And you mentioned, you know, Watson had health challenges and our dog Lola near the end, same thing you mentioned nebulizer your dog for breathing. I didn’t know anybody else till now that ever did that like we did. We thought we were like were the only people in the world who possibly are nebulizer a dog, but apparently not.

Vir Das 00:29:52  Yeah. No, it’s a thing and it’s a it’s a privilege. You know, if he couldn’t walk by the end, he was, you know, incontinent. By the end, he was, nebulizer three times a day. He had acupressure and, you know, bad limbs and, you know, you you carry him to the bathroom and you put on some nice music, and you give him a warm bath, and you nebulizer him, and it’s really I’m very grateful for that time and the way he he looked at me in that time. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:24  Yeah. Was he your first dog?

Vir Das 00:30:26  He was our first dog. Yes. For sure.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:27  Yeah. Yeah. I grew up not liking dogs. Oh, really? Probably. Yeah. I’d been bitten by one. I just didn’t like them. I didn’t want to be around them. And then my best friend, who’s also the editor of the show, had a dog, and I said, dude, I’m like, you know, you’re I like your dog.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:42  She’s she’s good, you know? And he called me one day and said, I have something for you. And I came over and I see the twin of that dog sitting right there. He’s like, I got you this. I was like, what? And it changed my life. It changed.

Vir Das 00:30:55  How long was it before you were completely converted? How long was.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:59  That? In a month, probably. Yeah. I mean, it did not take long and it opened me to a dimension of love I just didn’t understand before then, you know? Yeah, I had a child at that point. And I’m not saying I love my dog more than my child. It just was something. It’s different. There’s an uncomplicated nature to animals that I think is part of what makes losing them so painful. Because the grief is just with humans. It’s complicated. It’s always complicated. With a dog, there’s nothing to distract you from just the loss because the relationship had no complication. And I love the way that you talk about grief.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:36  You say the only way I know I can describe grief is an inability to breathe. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to get enough air in your lungs. It’s because there’s less space in there now. It’s because someone or something that used to live outside you now lives in you. That is heart stopping. Beautiful.

Vir Das 00:31:56  Thank you. I it’s how I feel, and I imagine how everybody who’s dealing with some sort of grief feels like, you know, Watson is under my chest bone right now. You know, until I see him again, you know, that’s how I feel.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:10  Yeah, yeah. It’s such a good description of grief because I think that does sort of mirror my experience of it. It does feel kind of hard to breathe. yeah. Also feels like even more than just breathing. But it’s like a crowded space inside. Like when grief or one of my dogs comes up. It’s sort of. It just takes over everything. I guess that is.

Vir Das 00:32:31  It’s.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:32  That is the nature of grief.

Vir Das 00:32:34  Yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure. The strange thing I found, though, is, you know, and not in a morbid kind of way. I very much love life, and I intend to live a long life. But I’m no longer afraid of death. Do you know what I mean? I’ll give you an example. I’m. I don’t like turbulence on an airplane. I’m a bad flyer. And when there’s bad turbulence, I’m like, oh, right, this plane is crashing and I’m dying. is, always in my head. And until Watson passed, it was terrifying. And now he’s passed. And if I ever hit turbulence, I’m like, all right, maybe this plane crashes and I’ll go hang with Watson for a bit, you know? so it’s it’s not terrifying anymore.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:14  Yeah. So you have three dogs now? Did you say.

Vir Das 00:33:16  I have two dogs? They’re called stupid.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:18  Dogs. Okay.

Vir Das 00:33:18  So the. Yeah. And the.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:20  Three dogs.

Vir Das 00:33:20  Born into our house? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:22  Yeah. And they’re very different than. Than Watson. You said they’re kind of street dogs. They they know how to take care of themselves.

Vir Das 00:33:28  They’re self resilient. They’re hardy. They’re reliant. But they’re also beautiful in that they they jumped into a house with complete strangers with blind trust, you know, and, to watch them at age five and ten, learn how to play and learn how to sleep in a bed and learn how to. It’s a lovely journey. You know what I mean? Like, Lucy had been abandoned during the pandemic. And, you know, the first time she came to our house, she, you know, was very skittish. And I remember the first time she slept through the night, she slept for four days. Because I think after three years, she finally knew she was safe. I was strangely proud of that. Of course, to watch her sleep for four days. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:13  It’s interesting to see almost the way we domesticated wolves happening on a mini scale in your home, right? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:21  Like, you know, taking these creatures that are that are wild and slowly they become very different. I’m in Lisbon right now. I normally live in Ohio, in the US, but I’m in Lisbon right now, and we’re house and dog sitting. So I am back around dog energy and just am loving it. It’s just so, so good, so good. It is. A lot of the latest special is about you. Six weeks before you were going to do the special Losing Your Voice. Yeah, yeah. And I’d love for you to share a little bit about that. But I also want to hear a little bit about how you’re six weeks from a special. So I’m assuming you think you know what the special is about. Maybe you don’t at that point, but if you did, you suddenly improvised very quickly to make the special to some degree, about what was happening right now. Just walk me through whatever aspect of that process you’d like to.

Vir Das 00:35:16  Well, you know, I do think a comedy special is nothing but a snapshot into who the comedian is at that moment in time.

Vir Das 00:35:23  So it’s got to be authentic to the experience. And I woke up without a voice and vocal nodules, and I was told it would be four months before I could speak properly again. And I had sold 12,000 tickets in a massive arena out. And, you know, immediately you spend six weeks in silence in your head and you will really discover who you are, and it will invalidate a lot of the things that you’ve done so far. You know, so I was like, oh, I’ve been so calculated and so obsessed with the wording of everything. And now that I don’t have the voice, I kind of just want to free talk. And that became the special to say, oh, I can speak again. I’m going to say everything in my head as opposed to obsessing about what not to say. And it was strangely kind of set me free. There’s an energy to this special that none of the other specials have, which is just a guy at some level winging it and, not knowing where he’s going to land.

Vir Das 00:36:21  Yeah. Which I would never have had the courage to do. Had I not lost my voice.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:25  I love this special because it shows you at different levels of success, I guess, for lack of a better word. Right? In Mumbai, huge crowd. London. Pretty good crowd. Us. Yeah, yeah. Not so much, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s just fascinating to see you operate on those different levels. And it’s always so fun for me. There’s a band equivalent of that and it’s when a band is really big somewhere else. Yeah, but not in the States. And you get to see this band that is like super pro, super good in like this small space. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s just amazing when it happens. And it was so great to see that sort of happening with you. to see you operating at these different scales. Do you approach the work any differently? You know, of small scale to to stadium scale?

Vir Das 00:37:21  no, because it would feel authentic, inauthentic.

Vir Das 00:37:25  You know, sometimes I feel like there is a version of me I could become that would, track way better in the States. For instance, you know, if I talked about 5 or 6 palatable Indian things that you knew about Indians, and I kind of gave you the the Indian that you knew that cater to your gaze. But I just don’t want to do that. And if that means that I play a smaller room, that’s worth it to me because I get to be authentic. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah. I’m not sure I would last very long doing that, playing the, the Indian that Americans see as opposed to the Indian who just showed up from India. Yeah. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:01  I think it’s very hard to succeed at any game that you don’t feel like playing. Yeah, yeah. You know.

Vir Das 00:38:06  For sure. That’s very well put.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:08  It feels lousy. And I don’t think you. I don’t think you do well, because you don’t want to do it.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:14  And I mean, maybe it works for some people, but I think about that often. The things that, like I’m willing to do and not willing to do.

Vir Das 00:38:22  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:22  For for success in the special, you have a sympathy and an empathy discussion. Walk me through to you kind of what those terms mean and why it felt important for you to talk about them.

Vir Das 00:38:36  Well, you know, I’d gotten into some trouble back home, and I remember talking to a reporter in the States and they were like, oh my God, are you going to get arrested again? And what are the investigations? And can I talk to the police? And I was like, sure, but should we talk about my perspective and my humor a little bit in my culture a little bit. And it felt and I don’t mean this abrasive, but it felt a little bit like they wanted to write an oppression story. Yeah, yeah. To make their readers feel a little bit better about where they lived. Right. And I was like, I don’t think I want to be the poster boy for for eastern oppression.

Vir Das 00:39:10  You know? And they were like, you know, our readers will sympathize. And I’m like, I. But my limited audience will empathize, you know? And the difference between sympathy and empathy is sympathy is a porn video that you watch for your pleasure. Empathy is an orgy that you enjoy with other people. You know what I mean? Like, you just kind of. It’s happening to all of you. So I would much rather get empathy from five people than sympathy from 9000.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:35  So I don’t know all the details about what you said. Was it it the Kennedy Center when it.

Vir Das 00:39:41  Was at the Kennedy Center?

Eric Zimmer 00:39:42  Yes. But I don’t know all the details about what you said, but it pissed off half of India pretty seriously. Did you know it was going to?

Vir Das 00:39:50  Absolutely not. No, I did not. And I don’t think you will. You’ll ever know, by the way, I don’t think you can predict the thing that’s going to go viral and why it’s part of a certain zeitgeist.

Vir Das 00:39:59  And, you know, it’s one of many videos on my YouTube channel that were in that vein, and I don’t know why that one went where it went, but your best bet is to turn it into jokes. I have this beautiful job that turns, you know, bullshit into laughs and laughs, into smiling faces and smiling faces into relationships and, you know, and that into Netflix specials, etc., etc. it’s alchemy, you know? So, would I do it again with a little more editing? Yeah, sure. I would have, I would have made sure it’s a better piece, you know, comedically. Yeah. But yeah, I never saw it coming. I was blindsided completely.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:39  Wow. I mean, it sounds like it was a really big deal. I mean, you were getting death threats. You were, you know, in trouble with the police. I was kind of amazed to see, like. Like you said, that’s like a that’s a career turn you just don’t see coming.

Vir Das 00:40:53  But, you know, it’s the equivalent of. I don’t know if Jimmy Kimmel saw what was going to happen to him coming that, that morning. You know what I mean?

Eric Zimmer 00:41:00  Oh, yeah.

Vir Das 00:41:01  Yeah. Oh, Stephen Colbert, it’s just the world is really changing and you got to kind of roll with it. But I think any other job would have been a much harder comeback than comedy. Comedy really allows you to make light of it really fast and turn it into fun, really fast. You know, a rock star gets canceled. That’s a while before you can you can come back. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:23  Interestingly, you talk a lot about America at different points in the book, and you talk about American comedy, you know, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, but you also talk about Bill Cosby. Yeah, you certainly have a point where many of us who had some relationship with Bill Cosby’s comedy find out like, oh shit, how do you work with that idea of separating the artist from the art? And do you feel like it’s important to do so? Or do you feel like it’s impossible to do so, or.

Vir Das 00:41:55  I don’t know. It varies for me. Like with different artists. I can’t watch Cosby’s stuff anymore because the basis of comedy is authenticity, you know? And so I know that that’s an inauthentic individual. But for some reason, I can listen to Michael Jackson’s early work because it’s music and it’s not comedy, you know? Yeah. and, and perhaps there’s an underlying hypocrisy to that, but I don’t think a blanket rule, I think the art form matters a lot. Like, I, you know, I can’t watch a Woody Allen movie, I can’t watch. I don’t like watching Bill Cosby because I can see the the shitty sausage behind the the hot dog being made. You know what I mean? Yeah, but, man, I can listen to a piece of Beethoven or Mozart, even though I know they were severely problematic individuals. I can look at a Picasso even though I know that was, a horrible man. So, I don’t know, it’s weird. I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:51  Yeah. As you’re saying that, I’m thinking a little bit about, like, Michael Jackson to me, never felt like he was Talking about things that were really important to Michael Jackson, right? Like, it was just it was all about the entertainment and the music. Whereas a comedian, it’s a much more personal thing. Right. For sure, if a comedian is sharing about their life and I and I think that’s I think that’s the case. I also have found the same thing with artists who mean more to me. It’s harder. Yeah. It is. Yeah, right. It’s harder because their music, I thought, was about something and about a person. And now I find out that that’s not exactly the person. And that feels harder to me, the particularly the closer I am to it.

Vir Das 00:43:37  For sure. And I also think the expectation of a comedian is to put yourself out there so much that I feel better about myself as an audience member. And then when I, when I figure that you haven’t put yourself out there really at all, I feel that now I feel betrayed, you know?

Eric Zimmer 00:43:56  Yeah, that makes sense.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:57  I’ve told this story on the show before, but it’s one of the most confusing stories of my life. You mentioned being an escape artist, right? You were always trying to escape school. Well, I wasn’t in boarding school, but my mission, my first two years of high school was to never go. Yeah. And so I was constantly engineering schemes and all that and wasn’t doing well. And I basically got kicked out of my high school and was sent to this small alternative school. And there was a teacher there who turned my my whole way of being around and my whole understanding of myself around. And I mean, so far as I went to spend like a summer with him at his place out in Seattle and comes out 20 years later, some of the kids that spent time with him, he was sexually abusing. Yeah, it wasn’t me. And it’s just so confusing to be like, this guy was an unquestioned good in my life, and an absolute horror ruined these other people’s lives. And I just think that’s so fascinating to be in that space with these questions that just don’t have simple answers.

Vir Das 00:44:58  I mean, isn’t the experience of adulting at some level discovering that two things can be true at the same time and three things can be true at the same time? It’s heartbreaking. You know what I mean?

Eric Zimmer 00:45:07  The yeah.

Vir Das 00:45:08  Yeah to children, one thing is true or not true. And sometimes I wonder if that’s a better way to live life. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:16  It’s simpler.

Vir Das 00:45:17  Yeah, it is. It is for sure.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:19  And I think if you try and live that way as an adult, it’s probably not like you said, you’re not an adult. If you’re not able to start to see the complexity and the nuance in things. Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s part of the reason great comedy is great comedy is it’s it’s pointing out all those inconsistencies that we all kind of have to wrestle with. And, and it’s just sometimes it’s just good to laugh at them.

Vir Das 00:45:43  I agree. And I also think great comedy, you know, the best kind of comedy makes you reflect three days after you saw it.

Vir Das 00:45:51  It makes you laugh in the moment, but then three days later you’re like, Wow, that was something and I didn’t quite get it then. Like right now, the the right and the left in America are sharing George Carlin clips. That’s insane. Right? But, you know, with the same agenda. But I bet you in the, in the moment people just like this man’s hilarious. And then 20 years later, 30 years later, people are like, he was talking about us. And that’s great comedy, you know? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:19  100%. So one of the things that is in the book a lot is this idea of committing to the bit. Right. Like really just committing to the bit. And I’m curious how you think about and how you know what bits are worth committing to.

Vir Das 00:46:36  That’s a really great question. I do not I commit to all of them and some will work in some world. I have no way to foresee. Honestly, my best bet is to just be like all in all the time on everything and some of it will land and it’ll be great, and some of it won’t, and it’ll be devastating. but, hopefully it doesn’t shake my commitment.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:02  Beautiful. Well, thank you so much. I enjoyed the book a great deal of thanks to the show notes who have links to your Netflix special. It’s been fun to kind of climb into your world for a week, and, I appreciate you spending some time with us.

Vir Das 00:47:14  Enjoy. Lisbon. This was a wonderful chat and I wish you all the best with everything.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:19  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.