It is the story of his life till his current age of 46. But you can be forgiven for thinking that you are at a Vir Das show. It has the sassy tone of his stand-up acts making for a stream-of-consciousness kind of read. Once you get past that, the book speaks. It tells the story of a boy who couldn’t shut up and the influences that shaped his witty bone.
There is the childhood in Nigeria, in a secure compound. Then at nine years of age the shift to The Lawrence School, Sanawar, a posh boarding school in Himachal Pradesh where he was beaten, bullied and miserable. He tried running away so often that it became a sport. Finally he lied about stomach pain and did not recant even on the operating table just before the surgeon took out his perfectly healthy appendix. That is when the school let him go and he landed in Delhi Public School in Noida where he lived with his grandparents. He took to debating, dramatics, playing in a band, tennis and basketball. He kept winning trophies but his grades were “mediocre to terrible” as he puts it.
Ramesh, the family cook taught a teenage Das how to smoke, cooked him lunch, let him watch MTV. “Ramesh listened or at least pretended to and he never responded. Because of his silence I had to make a story extremely interesting to get a response out of this taciturn man. In a way he was my first audience member, one who paid in food,” remembers Das. His parents came back from Africa poorer and life became tougher. While studying political science at Delhi University he managed, with great difficulty, to get through to Knox College, Illinois with 90 per cent aid to study economics. It is here that he did well in drama class prompting the teacher Ivan Davidson to coax him to change his major. “You are meant to be a performer,” Davidson told Das.
That came with its own challenges, including surviving in the US doing everything from dishwashing to bartending to keep things together over the years. Das tells the story of his struggles just like he tells his jokes — with a straight face and dollops of sass. His return to India, his first major show at The Habitat Centre in Delhi, his move to Mumbai, the years with CNBC-TV18 and later tell you so much about him. His experience of working in Hindi cinema helped shape his resolve to stick to stand-up.
The universe has conspired to give Das the kind of life that fuels his brand of aware, sharp, humour that takes on everything and everybody–politically and socially. Every prejudice, injustice and duplicity that the world offers, becomes grist for the mill that sits in Das’s head. That is his appeal for millions of Indians like me. It is also the reason why the book makes for a great read.
It is honest, sometimes a bit too much. Are former girlfriends okay about being discussed? And is his wife all right with the chapter on Watson, the dog who “kept our marriage together,” as Das puts it? The Watson episode is particularly touching. So is Das’s description of the troubles that followed Two Indias, his brilliant act at the Kennedy Centre in the US in 2021. He got death threats, shows were cancelled and there were FI₹against him all over the place. His telling of that episode is sprinkled with much humour and attitude. The one about the night he got his Emmy in 2023 is another piece of fine writing.
This a life well-lived, experienced and enjoyed. There is some wisdom too. “I have come to believe that success is the amount of time between you having an idea and somebody saying ‘Lets make that idea!’ The goal is for that time to get shorter,” says Das.
The quibbles? Though he does explain his feeling of being an outsider at length in the introduction, there is an over-emphasis on it. Almost anybody who shifts cities, domestically or internationally, is an outsider. Almost anybody who does multiple things is an outsider in some sphere or another. Millions of us no longer have a “home city” or a “home country”. Nor does Das. But he brings it up again and again and again till it starts to irritate especially because he has clearly become an insider. He is acting in an Aamir Khan Production, his film is being promoted on Kaun Banega Crorepati with Amitabh Bachchan. Shah Rukh Khan called him when he was in trouble. In the profession he chose and the ones he’s spread into, he is very much an insider.
The other minor quibble is some sense of the actual years when an incident happened — say he left Sanawar, or he performed at the Comedy Cellar — would have helped contextualise things. That apart this is an eminently readable chronicle of a witty, intelligent man who is one of India’s biggest comedians on the global stage.
 "The Outsider: A Memoir For Misfits by Vir Das | Published by Harper Collins - 255 pages, ₹699")