Namita Nayyar:
How did your first open mic show turn out, and where did it happen?
Harpriya Bains:
I did my first open mic at Hyderabad back in 2018 at a comedy club where I got a 5 minutes spot. I think I had the beginners’ luck on my side, as the mic went off really well. I got a lot of laughter and even claps. I did another one the very next day where I totally bombed though. But even with 2 entirely different experiences in 2 consecutive days, I decided to stick to the former and never looked back.
Namita Nayyar:
What is the genre of comedy you practice? How do you go about preparing for the same?
Harpriya Bains:
My comedy is mainly observational with a blend of storytelling. As I began to dig deeper into the world of comedy, I realized that although there are now many great female comedians in India, but hardly any are married, let alone have kids. So, the married woman and mom’s point of view is hardly talked about.
There is so much fun and drama in the day-to-day life of a wife and mother that I didn’t need to do engineering for content at all. My inspiration came from all the women I could think of -moms and moms-in-law, sisters and sister-in-laws, dadis and nanis, masis and mamis, friends and foes because honestly somewhere our stories are all connected. It came from the daily life of a normal Indian housewife and mother with pun ‘intended’ against the hypocrisy of our patriarchy. My comedy was fresh and ‘home-made’.
There was now a strong urge to share some load off every woman, in my own little way, by making them laugh at our everyday struggles and get a feel that we are in this together. I knew I had a reasonable amount of confidence, stage experience, and a gift of the gab so I began to weave my comic stories around my own life with inspirations from all the women around me.
Namita Nayyar:
Share a deeper insight about your education, personal and professional life.
Harpriya Bains:
I am a 3rd generation army kid and am now married to an army officer. I have moved to various cities and schools but mainly studied in boarding during my senior classes at Maharani Gayatri Devi School, Jaipur. I did my Bachelors in Business Administration from Apeejay College Jallandhar, since my father had retired by that time and Jallandhar is my home town so we had planned to settle there. I went on to do my postgraduate diploma in Image management from Delhi. which I began a career in the advertising industry. I worked for about 3 years before I got married to an Army officer and moved to different cities with him.
A few years down the line, we began our family and became parents to two lovely daughters. I also pursued an online job with an information management company for 7 years during this time. I’m also a watercolor artist and resumed my painting journey again. I have displayed and sold my artworks at various individual and group art exhibitions at prestigious venues like the India Habitat Centre and AIFACS, Delhi.
Being an Army wife, I have had the opportunity to travel across India and so all my art forms are very close to my heart as they are a reflection of my journey as a woman, as a comic, and as an artist and are a little bit part of me and the memories I built along the way.
