On a recent Sunday, a group of villagers, including some children, is at a temple in Chhattisgarh’s Tulsi village. They are engaged in an animated discussion, but it is not about a local festival or some temple work.
They are preparing a script for a YouTube comedy show. The discussion is about a background song (in a local dialect) for a new YouTube video. Scriptwriter, Gyanendra Shukla, wants an emotional song but Manoj Yadav, who is the lead actor in the video thinks otherwise. “We are discussing how a song can be effective in the background,” Yadav says.
Such discussions have become increasingly common in Tulsi , which has earned the unique tag of being a “village of comedians” in Chhattisgarh. Throw a stone in Tulsi, and you are likely to hit a comedian, perhaps more. (Not that one should be throwing stones at comedians).
The village of 3,000 people, located 45km to the south of capital Raipur, is home to about 1,000 comics, who act in around a dozen YouTube channels besides promoting themselves on around 1,000 personal Instagram accounts – a reflection of the extent to which the internet, new media opportunities, and social media platforms have made inroads in the Indian hinterland.