From reels to roars: Shraddha Jain at a literary festival

Shraddha Jain, with her beaming greeting of ‘Namaskara Bengaluru’, was welcomed with deafening cheers by a crowd of youngsters who had made their way into a packed venue. The popular content creator who has 1 million followers on Instagram was there to perform a stand-up comedy routine at Alliance University’s Alliance Literary Festival on Saturday.

Most would know Shraddha from her online handle @aiyyoshraddha. As a content creator, she has garnered massive popularity across India and beyond with her comedy skits featuring creative and relatable caricatures of everyday people. Shraddha has taken on multiple forms and roles in her Instagram reels, executing them in terms writing and video-editing, recently winning in the category of Best Creative Creator (Female) in the National Creators Awards for her content.

Nevertheless, being a content creator is in many ways different from being a stand-up comedian; while a lot of labour goes into producing the short, snappy videos, there is yet a different slew of challenges that performing live entails. Shraddha’s session at the festival, unlike the others, was not a moderated session, but a stand-up routine. The audience was awed with the effortless grace with which Shraddha took to the stage and there seemed to be no dissonance between the screen comedian they were used to addictively laughing at, and the stage one.

Like any good comedian, Shraddha’s set showed her ability to take challenges into stride. Her session being just preceded by Javed Akhtar’s, she alluded multiple times to the elephant in the room. Equal parts deflecting and embracing, she exclaimed, “Following the Javed Akhtar and trying to deliver! Can you imagine the audacity!”

Written by: Anubhab Roy