Tadpatri Talkies Hunger For More

- Anurag Tagat

FOR A FEW MONTHS, MUMBAI comedy group Tadpatri Talkies experimented with everything they loved about humor—the absurdity, the surreal narratives and more showing rather than telling. And then they created Gari-B, a rap persona for former heavy metal vocalist Sidharth Raveendran, who loved his bhel.

In late 2016, Raveendran, Anmol Gawand (who raps under the moniker EMF and is now Badboy Bandya), Aseem Chandaver (now a writer at comedy content company All India Bakchod), Gaurang Bailoor, Nandan Kini and Nikhil Vaiude began in the most DIY manner possible, not garnering too much hype beyond their circles. But then, they introduced the oversized Tshirt-sporting, sunglasses-rocking Gari-B, stuffing his mouth with bhel as he parodied everything about the trend-hoppers who wanted to be me-too desi rappers.

Bailoor says, “The year has been quite the roller coaster of happy accidents. We started off with shooting something that is still stuck at the edit table, which will hopefully see the light of day, by the end of the year, but we chose to focus on the momentum that Gari-B generated.”