The Buffalo Intellectual show will fill your weekend with laughter and questions

In this age, we try to box the things around us in the name of convenience. Just because we may not understand something, we try to fit it into a certain label to make sense of it. Although doing this for an art form defeats the purpose, we still try to box something as a certain genre of music, stand-up comedy, spoken word, a specific dance form, etc. While this has kept artistes from using their creativity fully, it has also forced audiences to go to the show with a certain mindset without room for subjective interpretation. This week, Hyderabad hosts a show which falls in the grey area between these boxed forms. Buffalo Intellectual Live by Ravikant Kisana is a “live version of his podcast.”

Buffalo Intellectual Live blends humour with hard-hitting caste-conscious commentary

The main premise of all his creative pursuits—a podcast, book and live show—is to bring about awareness of caste. “While this piece of work is exploratory, it is not meant to demean anyone, it is to build consciousness about privilege,” says Ravikant. Although the subject is hard-hitting, it is packaged with humour. An interesting part about his live shows is how dynamic they are. “While most stand-up comics have jokes practiced and perfected, my show only has a fixed start point and end point. Whatever I do in the middle depends on how I am at that time, the news of the day, something the audience has said, and so on,” he says.

The man behind the mic

When we asked Ravikant about his inspiration behind the show, he jokingly says, “Do content creators have inspiration? Do people get inspired in this era anymore? Everybody's bored. It's the end of culture. Nobody has any inspiration.” He says this to his audience as well, “You've paid some money to come here. Maybe I'll entertain you, maybe you'll be bored. And if you're bored, it's fine. You're not going to do anything else with your life anyway. You're going to go sit at home, and go through reels on your phone.”

Ravikant also says that he has a very niche audience because his content has been specific. And he does not want to make it generic just to procure a larger net.

Speaking about the story behind the name, Buffalo Intellectual, Ravikant says that the first word was picked up from the book Buffalo Nationalism written by Kancha Ilaiah, while the second word came from his profession—a professor. “People usually associate the word professor with intellect, and this name was just catchy as I had to create content anonymously for a few years to avoid backlash,” he says.

This is a show for those who want to think, and question, albeit with a hint of humour.

Tickets at ₹350.

May 31, 6 pm

At Aaromale Café and Creative Community, Film Nagar.

Email: ananyadeval.m@newindianexpress.com

X: indulgexpress