Jeeya Sethi’s comedy show finds humour in grim situations like death

Stand-up commedienne Jeeya Sethi is a familiar name in the comedy circuit. She’s the girl with blue-streaked hair who cracks jokes about everything from millennials’ vocabulary to the break-ups she’s been through. She will be presenting Death: A Comedy Show by Jeeya Sethi.

The title may sound paradoxical, and that’s what makes it unique. The idea for it came to Jeeya when she saw her father deal with the loss of a dear one. "Last year, when my father got the news of  someone’s death, it  freaked him out. It was quite different from the way I reacted. That’s when I realised that the way our parents deal with the news of death is different from the way we deal with it," she explains. In her show, she explores ideas related to this concept and different situations that most of us have dealt with in the last one year. However, Jeeya emphasises that everything in her material is inspired by what she has been through personally.

Jeeya wrote this set, and another one titled Will You Marry Me during the lockdown last year. "I have dedicated and multiple books for my insights and observations that I make note of every time they occur," says Jeeya. Meanwhile, Will You Marry Me will premiere on July 31, and in this show, Jeeya talks about how her engagement was called off just before her wedding.

When asked if she ever feels apprehensive or awkward about sharing her life stories with the strangers who are the audience, Jeeya says as a comic she's normalised this process. "I am not apprehensive, but my parents definitely are. I remember doing a break-up video that's still available on YouTube, and many girls after watching it had shared their feedback saying they had gone through the same and they felt it was normal after watching my set,† says Jeeya. But this weekend, she's gearing up for the "death comedy" show. One more thing that she's learnt during the lockdown, "I never miss my mother's calls now. It's something that I learnt after I witnessed so much last year," she signs off.