"'Outrage and Success go Hand in Hand': Stand-up Comedian Daniel Fernandes on Trauma and Controversy" in SCROLL (24 February 2026)

 

Daniel Fernandes’ stand-up shows and YouTube videos have led the comedian to deal with a fair bit of controversy. Yet, it is his attention to contemporary events that brings nuance to his comedic observations about society and politics, public and online life, and even free speech. Last year, the stand-up comic was once again in the news when he was served a notice by two Supreme Court lawyers that requested he take down a clip from one of his shows where his routine included, among other things, observations about goings-on in Kashmir.

Fernandes stood his ground, explaining in a post on social media that in a time when there is a global “trend of stifling voices, … [l]aughter wields a certain kind of power … that might make certain groups of people uneasy…” Even so, he stressed that the intent of his comedy “is never to change [people’s] point of view … I just enjoy talking about stuff that makes us uncomfortable and maybe offer some perspective. I am not important - politicians and the citizens they serve are.” 

Caste, religion, and gender are all fair game in the comedian’s repertoire. Nevertheless, this is not material that Fernandes takes on simply to get a rise out of his audience, his approach to these subjects demonstrating humor laced with analysis, even careful research. But the wry, cerebral touch Fernandes brings to his comedic artistry is balanced with more than a bit of ribaldry and raunch, for sex, salaciousness, and sex-positivity all feature in his entertainment.

Fernandes’ crowd-work is equally skilled: attendees of his shows are playfully skewered without being mercilessly shamed. Notably, while he may send up his audiences, the performer also turns his gaze upon himself, particularly with regard to matters concerning mental health.

In this interview, Fernandes discusses his latest and upcoming shows with Scroll (his new multi-city domestic and international tour kicks off on 20 February). The comedian reflects on his process, choice of topics, and his relationship with his audiences. Additionally, he also talks about his brushes with controversy, how the internet has affected comedy, and what his fans may expect of him in the near future.

*

RBF: So, what’s a good Goan Christian boy like you doing in a profession like this?

DF: If you want God-given talent, you have to go to Church 😊.

RBF: What do you have against self-identified “Motivational Influencers”?

DF: I find it very hard to take directions from people who haven’t travelled to my destination. A lot of these “motivational influencers” come from privileged backgrounds whose biggest trauma might be caused by their parents cancelling a European summer holiday. How could they ever relate to the struggle of the common man? You want to take life advice from that guy?

RBF: In your shows, you are open about being in therapy but also about issues of mental health more generally. These would have been taboo themes in the past. What has changed in this regard, socially, and what role do you see comedy playing in facilitating more open discussions about mental well-being?

DF: I am open with my struggles regarding mental health because I need a creative outlet to deal with my condition. It also helps that we as a society have finally woken up to how damaged we are because of generational trauma that has been handed down as inheritance. Add to that a highly capitalistic system that traps you in an endless cycle of exploitation (aka jobs) where burnout is masked as hustle and worn with a badge of honor. As a result, we as artists have a ready audience of anxious, depressed and broken people who need an outlet for everything they’re dealing with. Nobody is okay. And that’s okay.

RBF: This year began with many adopting the 2016 challenge on social media. What would 2026 Daniel Fernandes say to his earlier self?

DF: 2016 Daniel is very pleased. 2026 Daniel says, “We’re just getting started.”

RBF: You have been very vocal in your support of Palestinians, bringing humor to your observations about their displacement, their political struggle, and the violence they experience. Often, the use of humor can aid the avoidance of heavy subjects, yet you have been able to do the opposite. How do you find your audiences reacting to this approach?

DF: Comedy is about frequency. I feel my audience and I are on similar wavelengths which is why we are able to get into a room together and laugh at things that would make most people uncomfortable. I believe as an artist you must find your voice before you find your audience. I am thankful that I have a growing tribe of people who enjoy my work while I attempt the former.

RBF: The internet has expanded the reach of comedians, yet it also means that a controversial joke – especially if it has to do with religion or politics – may be amplified, misinterpreted, or weaponized. You are no stranger to such occurrences and, rather than sweep them under the rug, in your shows, you have been known to remind your audiences of such episodes! Are you a glutton for punishment?

DF: Outrage and success go hand in hand in Indian comedy. Given what I talk about on stage, if I didn’t piss a few people off, I’d be very disappointed with myself. An important distinction to note here is that I do not set out to offend anyone. I just like talking about the world we live in and not everybody enjoys their biases being challenged. Add fiber optic internet and unprocessed trauma to the equation, and you have a very volatile online audience. It’s an occupational hazard I don’t give much thought to.

RBF: Crowd-work or observational comedy. Do you have a preference?

DF: Both require skills that often complement each other so it’s hard to have a preference. I enjoy how written jokes land just as much as the ones I come up with in the moment. Crowd-work done right feels like magic because the comedian is dropping punchlines out of thin air with little to no prep. At the same time a very astute observation that’s crafted into an excellent joke leaves the audience thinking, “How did I not see this? It was right there!” To get nearly as good as the room demands for both these styles, you have to be a good joke writer first, and that takes a while.

RBF: Death, family, inter-generational trauma and conflict, the pandemic and collective trauma, and your relationship with your late father are some of the fun topics that come up in Do You Know Who I Am? What would you like your audience to take away from this show?

DF: Do You Know Who I Am? (the show I’m currently touring) is an exercise in processing loss. I relive everything I went through during my father’s passing every time I perform these jokes. I also know that my audience is grieving – the loss of a loved one, a friendship, a career, or the box of stash they can’t seem to find, and I guess if I can show them the funny side of the pain they’re in, maybe it won’t hurt that much. It worked for me.

RBF: Your latest tour begins in India and then expands abroad with several dates in Europe. Are you going to any new cities this time around? Is there a location you’re looking forward to visiting? How do you prepare for new places?

DF: The European leg of my tour includes first performances in cities like Luxembourg, Gent, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Lisbon, Riga, Helsinki and Tallin while also returning to favorites Amsterdam and Utrecht. I’m looking forward to having my endurance tested.

Preparation in terms of performance is minimal. I write material that translates easily across borders. The European audience is going to watch the same show I’m touring in India, as is. The only real prep needed here is me packing the right amount of winter clothing.

RBF: A lot of your set has to do with topical situations. Do you still work in political goings on in India into your international performances?

DF: I talk about Indian politics only if it’s relevant to an international audience. My set has much more to offer otherwise.

RBF: From past experience, how have your European audiences differed from ones at home in their reaction to your comedy?

DF: At live shows, Indians are more energetic compared to Europeans. The laughs are bigger and the applause is thunderous. As a performer you have to calibrate your expectations accordingly while performing abroad. But what the Europeans lack in volume, they make up for in exchange rate. 

RBF: “How would you feel if someone made fun of you after you died?,” you ask in your YouTube special, Alive and Vaccinated (2023). Along those lines, how would you like to look back on what I hope will be a long-lived career and what might audiences expect from you in the years to come?

DF: My nervous system willing, I’d like to keep building a global audience and continue touring as much as I can. I’ll save some time for self-reflection only after I’m gone.

For now, I would like to expect audiences to watch me perform across India from 20 February to 21 March followed by dates in Europe from 2-24 April. You can find ticketing details on my Instagram account @absolutelydanny and here.

"The Unrevealing Nakedness of Milind Soman" in THE WIRE (14 November 2020)

 

True, it was not the first time that the world had seen Milind Soman naked. And, yet, for all the reactions it has generated, Soman’s history of public nudity is a small one. Two events in total – 25 years apart – in the chronicle of Soman’s unclothedness have sparked the most controversy, the most recent occurring on his 55^th birthday.

“Happy Birthday to me!” Milind Soman’s Instagram post reads on 4 November, 2020. In it, the model and actor is seen running on a beach in Goa, undressed for the occasion in his birthday suit. While it is apparent in the photograph that Soman is indeed naked, the camera catches him mid-stride, genitalia obscured.

The non-event resulted in charges of obscenity being brought against him. But the spurious nature of what constitutes obscenity in the eyes of the law is itself debatable. The episodes involving Soman’s déshabille which I reference are hardly notable for their claimed impropriety; rather, more attention should be paid to what these occurrences conceal.

Soman would not be the first to have pranced upon Goa’s beaches as bare as the day he was born. In comparison to his provocative but short record of being seen unclad, nudism on Goan sands has occupied the Indian imagination since the 1960s. This, shortly after the annexation of the formerly Portuguese region by India in 1961 and during the era that saw European and American “hippies” make their way to the subcontinent.

Drawn to the Konkan coast by Indian spirituality, the counter-cultural movement saw white youth shirk off their ties to the middle-class values of their parents and homelands by seeking to be one with nature, drugs and nakedness part of the formula they concocted in the purportedly lax atmosphere of Goa. Truth be told, the Church disapproved of the naturist ways of these rebels as did locals, though their presence became a source of income on Goa’s beach belt. As Raghuraman Trichur posits in Refiguring Goa: From Trading Post to Tourism Destination (2013), the arrival of the west’s disenfranchised youth triggered the beginnings of tourism in Goa, in turn entrenching the then-Union Territory within the Indian political economy.  

 

  

 

If Soman chose to celebrate his birthday in the buff in Goa, his idea was not a novel one, taking cue as it did from the rebellious Western youth of yesteryear in the same locale. And while the obscenity charge leveled against Soman for this latest incident of being in the altogether is dubious, one would be hard-pressed to read the celebrity’s actions as being radical or even revealing.   

When the hippies bared their bums on Goa’s beaches in the sixties and seventies, the shirking of their garb was a symbolic act of rebellion against establishment norms, the Vietnam War, and respectability politics. It was an attitude that was not localized to Goa, instead having global ramifications.

In comparison, Soman’s nakedness reads as an act of self-indulgence, not least while the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage on. It would be difficult to imagine the same person – an avid and regular runner – taking a jog down one of the crowded streets of his native Mumbai unmasked and without a stitch of clothing on. Indeed, it is Goa, or some skewed notion of it, that apparently makes it possible for visitors to act differently here than they would elsewhere. As a pleasure periphery to India, seemingly, anything goes in Goa.

Ironically, Goa’s former status as a refuge for the anti-establishment hippies led to the advent of commercialized tourism which, since the liberalization of the country’s economy in the 1990s, brings in hordes of tourists from India. And from the same genesis, legends of once rife nudity also function as enticement. Consider that the number of rumours of nude parties in Goa are only rivaled by regular official claims to the contrary.

Just as one can trace the liberalization of India’s economy to the growth of Indian tourism in Goa, a similar link is to be made between the country’s recent fiscal history and the little sagas of Soman’s public nakedness. Pre-empting the newest episode of being publicly bare on the beach, in May, Soman mused on social media about how his infamous 1995 footwear advertisement with Madhu Sapre would be received now. The black-and-white photograph depicts Soman and Sapre cleaved to one another, a snake clinging to and concealing their chiseled nudity. Completing the Adam and Eve allusion, instead of fig leaves, the two are seen wearing only the sports shoes the advertisement is for.

Deemed highly controversial at the time of its publication, it would take fourteen years for the two models to be acquitted of obscenity charges. Nonetheless, the spectacle of Soman and Sapre’s fit bodies spoke to its moment, symbolizing the confidence of an emerging Indian middle class with a disposable income that marked the difference between them and a prior generation. The rise of opportunities borne out of India’s new fiscal path in the nineties, Michiel Baas suggests in his book Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility & the New Middle Class (2020), also translated into a focus on fitness. 

 

 

 As can be implied from its title, Baas’ book is centered on the equation between post-liberalization opportunities for men and the kind of muscularity they develop or aspire to as markers of middle-classness. If there is a footnote to what becomes of women who flaunt their bodies as evidence of their own self-making, then perhaps it is to be found in the 1995 picture of Sapre and Soman. Then a couple, while Soman continued to make a name for himself – despite the controversy – going from being a model to an actor, Sapre’s star faded until she fell out of the Indian entertainment industry entirely.

If 25 years ago Soman’s nudity and its outcome was a case study of gendered difference as India entered a new economic landscape, then the most recent episode of his unclothedness demonstrates the ongoing consumptive relationship between India and Goa, liberalization and naked pleasures entwined. But in the midst of all seemingly laid bare, what goes unseen? 

What the Indian tourist does not witness are the struggles of Goan people trying to save their beloved homeland from the ravages of untrammeled development that threatens the natural landscape the region is famed for and is often seen advertised in tourism brochures. In Chandor, protests continue against the laying of tracks of the South Western Railway which could lead to an increase in coal imports and related pollution.

And as if a worldwide pandemic were not underway, the state has been reopened to tourists while its healthcare system remains unable to deal with the rising number of coronavirus infections. To date, Goa, despite its tiny size, records the highest number of virus-related deaths in the country per million.

Nakedness may imply being one with nature, but the myth of Goa as a free-for-all state is unnaturally perpetuated, nudity and discussions of propriety obscuring the struggles of the local populace. Much remains hidden in plain sight.

From The Wire.