We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abhay a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Abhay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I started doing voices as a kid watching cricket. The commentators became my training ground. I copied their accents, their pauses, their drama. Teachers told me to stop. They sent me into the hallway, standing in the heat, still whispering play-by-play to myself. You’d think punishment would break the habit. It didn’t.
Years later, at a friend’s wedding, I was asked to roast him. “You do a great George Bush,” he said. “What if George Bush showed up at an Indian wedding?” That was it. A simple dare that turned into a problem I’ve been stuck with ever since.

Los Angeles made comedy feel impossible. You could wait five hours for five minutes, and most nights the reward was silence. And silence is the cruelest of critics. It doesn’t boo, it doesn’t heckle, it just sits there and reminds you that maybe your mother was right about grad school.The Bay Area gave me more room. More stage time. More failure. More chances to chip away at the fear. That persistence led to Just for Laughs International as a New Face. For the first time, the void spoke back.
And then came the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Picture this: you’re performing an hour to twenty people who wandered in mostly by mistake. You learn quickly that nothing shrinks your ego faster. Doing an hour in front of twenty lukewarm aussie expats doesn’t just bruise your confidence, it dissolves it completely. But here’s the gift: once it all crumbles, something new grows in its place. A harder shell. A sharper voice. That grind gave me enough confidence to create my first special, Brown Jesus, now streaming on Amazon Prime. It wasn’t triumph, it was survival, which in comedy is often the same thing.

There’s no magic formula. The work is relentless. Write every day. Step on stage when no one cares you’re there. Surround yourself with people who make you uncomfortable in the best way. It’s embracing discomfort that eventually leads to some form of success. Comedy isn’t about polishing your wit. It’s about chipping away at the ugly corners to reveal a dopamine hit.

Abhay, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an Indian impressionist in stand-up. That doesn’t happen much. But I don’t lean on the obvious clichés. I put people where they don’t belong and let the absurdity unfold. Bernie Sanders becomes a dentist. Trump tries Spanish to win votes. Jennifer Coolidge drinks chai in a Mumbai café. Alex Jones shows up just to announce that my entire career is a government experiment. It’s comedy through misplacement. George Bush at an Indian wedding. David Attenborough narrating a Tinder date. Morgan Freeman waiting for Uber Eats. The wrong person in the wrong room, and somehow it feels right.

But my work isn’t only me. I also build stages for others. I co-founded The Setup Comedy, our speakeasy-style brand. It’s been featured in the LA Times and SF Standard. I also co-produce Desi Comedy Fest and it’s helped bring South Asian comedians to theaters across the country. The part I love most is the connection. Indians and Pakistanis laughing at the same punchline. Families processing the shared pain of immigration and misplaced anger. That is the power of humor.
Comedy can do what politics can’t: thread together people who argue in daylight and have them laugh in the dark together. The best types of jokes are the ones where people who disagree can also laugh at the same stuff.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The best part of comedy isn’t the laugh. It’s the awkward moment right after, when everyone looks around as if to say, “Wait, did we all just agree on that?” People who would never talk to each other in the checkout line at Trader Joe’s suddenly discover they share the same sense of humor. For about five seconds, the world feels less lonely. On stage, I get to hold life at arm’s length and squint at it, like a strange insect under glass. From that distance, even the worst parts of life start to look ridiculous. Especially in hard times, humor is medicine. It doesn’t cure the illness, but it does shrink it to a size you can pocket and carry.

Comedy has helped me deal with grief, sadness, and the darker moments that don’t make it onto Instagram. When despair shows up, jokes are an antidote. They don’t erase the pain, but they keep it from swallowing you whole. That coping mechanism is what keeps me coming back.
It also gives me a voice to talk about what I actually care about. The kinds of things you’d normally only say in therapy or after too much whiskey. Those “aha” jokes. the ones where someone realizes something true about themselves while also spitting out beer are my favorite.

And the process is absurd. You start with nothing. A half-baked thought scribbled on the back of a receipt. Then, after enough bad open mics and self-loathing, that nothing turns into a routine. And if you’re lucky, the routine becomes a voice. Nobody really knows how it works. But when it clicks, it feels like a magic trick you didn’t know you could perform. The best part of being a creative is that anything can happen. That random thought you had in the shower might become the joke that carries an entire set. Watching that unfold is like finding out your scruffy mutt can also play the piano. It makes no sense, but it’s glorious.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Failure. It’s not an obstacle. It’s the ecosystem. Most people avoid it. Comedians depend on it. Bombing isn’t shame, it’s tuition. Every bad set is like hacking through jungle with a machete. You don’t see the road, but every swing clears a little more path. Comedy is built to be unstable. Jokes evaporate. Crowds turn. A teenager on TikTok can steal the spotlight you’ve been chasing for years. That volatility isn’t a flaw. It’s the design. And yet, that’s what makes it beautiful. Comedy is building sandcastles knowing the tide is coming. And still deciding it’s worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://funnyabs.com
• Instagram: abhayoy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Abhaythecomic
• Other: My comedy special “Brown Jesus” is streaming now on Amazon.

Image Credits

Jim McCambridge