Independence Day 2023 | Navin Noronha’s life after coming out and queer comedy special

Standup comedian Navin Noronha.

Navin Noronha’s stand-up comedy special, The Good Child, was released on YouTube last month. It has three distinct threads deeply connected to Noronha’s identity and upbringing. He is queer, he comes from Bhayander (a Mumbai suburb), and grew up Catholic. He wears each of these identities on his sleeve with a passion that makes the humour sound easy.

Noronha has been a popular name on Mumbai’s comedy circuit, doing clubs, open-mics, and solo shows, but waited years before he released a special. The result is an hour and twenty-four-minute ride that will not only leave you in splits but with complex questions about class, identity, and politics.

Early into our meeting at a café in a Western suburb of Mumbai, Noronha makes it clear that he will no longer pander to an uninformed crowd. For years, he spent virtually every night ‘coming out’ to a room full of strangers. “My goal is to show people we have full-fledged lives. The coming out journey is over now. We exist beyond that. We have relationships. We live in a society and have the same kinds of problems,” he says adding, “I have broken down some aspects of queer life but I can’t break it all down. Now, there are shows about us on Netflix and there is enough information around”.

This, becomes the focal point of The Good Child, even amid its many digressions. Noronha’s comedic structure isn’t easy to decode. Often, you don’t know where the next joke will come from, or the next poignant line will bare your own vulnerabilities. It’s an emotional journey, and like all good ones, leaves you with a wholesome feeling.

The making of a queer special

He says upfront on camera that the special has been in the making for the last five years. Noronha workshopped the content as he toured across cities. At first, it was a series of disparate funny bits with no segways and a loose structure. An earlier version of The Good Child started coming together in February 2020. Then, the pandemic hit, and Noronha spent the early months workshopping the bits online.

“The version in 2022 and early 2023, was the one I knew would make the special. It’s only ten shows before the shoot that you know it is all coming together and is the final version of the show. It’s a cathartic feeling,” he says.

Noronha is following the same process of writing and touring with his content for the next one. In fact, he mentions casually that he will be touring Europe for a series of shows next year.

The thing about metrics

As an independent comic, Noronha isn’t chasing numbers and is aware that he serves a niche. He speaks largely in English, talks to and about the marginalised queer community, and doesn’t go easy on the swearing. It is the latter that led to his video losing partial monetisation on YouTube which is to say that the platform won’t run advertisements on it but will still allow subscribers to pay as they like.

Noronha never tried the OTT route for these reasons. “YouTube gives me control over my content. A lot of OG platforms are curtailing freedom of speech. I was enjoying the show being written on stage I didn’t want to go back and change things,” he says.

At the end of the day, he says he isn’t chasing numbers and the special also serves a legacy purpose, a culmination of his work so far.

The brickbats and hate

Stand-up comedy in India comes with its own perils these days. Where does he draw the line, we wonder. “If something has a narrative bearing, it has to stay. So, the observational nun joke stays,” he says about the edits on the show. “Having said that, we had to cut out a major chunk from the special about going to convent school because of the backlash we might get,” he adds.

Noronha has always spoken about his identity on stage and with it come the hate and trolling. In 2018, when Article 377 was struck down, he knew that it was a pivotal point for him and the community, and he had to fight the good fight.

Hate comes at him from different quarters. “People from Bhayander don’t like me making jokes about Bhayander. Queer people accuse me of dividing tops and bottoms,” he says. “Every day somebody or the other calls me ugly or chakka. Those are the comments I delete because I don’t want other queer kids to see them,” he adds.

At most times, on the internet, Noronha chooses not to engage with trolls.

Over the years of persistence, there have been some rewards too. “Thankfully, now when I go on stage, I don’t have to do an opening bit about coming out. I can start by saying ‘My boyfriend and I...’ I see that as growth,” he says, adding that he is now focused on making the comedy scene a safe space for younger comics.

While it may initially seem that Noronha’s work is a slice-of-life account of queer existence in a metropolitan city, it is at times, highly political in nature. He not only speaks of his own politics with ease but goes to places no one has been. He addresses the political divide in the queer community and the fact that Mumbai now has two Pride parades.

One is left wishing this exploration laced with his own brand of humour didn’t end so soon, especially in a comedy special running over an hour. But Noronha assures us that he is expanding on the bit, in his private shows. “I want to delve into but it’s a pandora’s box of its own,” he concurs.

The Good Child is available for viewing on YouTube.