Why Munawar Faruqui can’t sleep

Munawar Faruqui kept yawning during our meeting at a Bengaluru hotel last week. “My sleep cycle has gone (for a toss),” the standup comic said with a boyish smile, hiding the troubles the 27-year-old has had to endure early this year.

On January 1, Faruqui was jailed for jokes he didn’t crack. On a complaint filed by the son of a BJP MLA, he was arrested for allegedly making indecent remarks about Hindu deities and union minister Amit Shah and hurting religious sentiments at a show in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Eyewitnesses have contradicted the complaint since, and the police haven’t found evidence of any misconduct. Faruqui was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court and freed after 37 days, amid an outpouring of support.

“I could not sleep after coming out of the jail, so a doctor put me on a dose of two sleeping pills. There was still no sleep. ‘Can I take three pills instead?’ I asked my doctor and he said ‘no’. Since then, I can only sleep when my body is exhausted and not because it’s bedtime. There’s a difference between the two,” the Gujarat-born, Mumbai-based comedian told us ahead of his live solo show 'Dongri to Nowhere' in Bengaluru last weekend.

What’s keeping him awake? He struggles to find words as he says, “Those four walls of jail can kill you. Your mind constantly jumps from one thought to another. What are the newspapers writing? What is my legal team doing? How is my family coping? What about my reputation? At least the people I shared the jail with had committed crimes in different parts of India and they knew why they were there. But me? I didn’t know why I was arrested and I could not tell people what happened that day. That anxiety kills.”

The difficulties aren’t over yet. “There are separate cases running in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh (on the same issue) and my legal team keeps me updated about the court proceedings,” he says.

It is thus remarkable to see the work Faruqui has put out since he came out on bail. Whether it’s the 10-minute monologue 'Munawar Faruqui Leaving Comedy', where he says he won’t succumb to online hatred, or Aazmaish, a rap song he wrote on the violation of freedom. In his live show 'Politics in India – Part 2', he tells the audience he won’t make political jokes now but let’s just say he is a man of witty words.

These are powerful commentaries and have raked in lakhs of views. So has the jail time fired up an activist in him? “You can’t bring revolution by telling jokes or making people laugh. But sometimes in our jokes, people find words for the feelings they weren’t able to find and when that happens, the joke clicks with them. All I want is for people to enjoy a joke whether they agree or disagree with it,” says Faruqui, known for his political satire, observational comedy and poetry.

But the jail days have changed him as a person. “I like extra salt in my food but there wasn’t any in the jail food! So I have become grateful for things I have even if they aren’t enough,” he says.

He has also realised how much his jokes matter to his fans. “In the comments section (of YouTube videos), people have been thanking the guys who put me in jail because they were able to discover my content,” Faruqui says, laughing and admitting that the Indore episode has inadvertently become “a great PR exercise’’.

Turning serious, he shares a fan experience from his recent gig in Bengaluru. “A lady, whose husband, a doctor, died of Covid-19 a few months ago, told me that my videos and Insta reels helped her a lot to overcome the grief.”

Moments like these motivate him to keep going. He’s writing a web series now, and also a rap album. A show on his time in jail is in the works – “I will tell it purely like a story. I don’t need to make jokes on politics, religion, engineers, hostels or WiFi to get famous. I can make people laugh by laughing at myself,” he says, as a teaser.

Lastly, if Covid-19 allows him, he wants to perform to a packed stadium this year. But there’s a roadblock. “I fear going up on stage now. I am reminded of what happened in Indore. I am waiting for the day when I don’t get those flashbacks,” Faruqui says.