Topsy-turvy existence, audacious verve pulsating at every moment of the clock ticking and above of all doing what you are keen on... don’t we all wish for the same? One hell of a life, that would be. Nay, it’s not just an adolescent’s dream. Some awe-inspiring personalities are doing it and doing it with elaborate flair. I happened to stumble on a couple of them and they gave me second thoughts on my life’s perspective, rethink my presumptions, see the world from a new and perked up foresight. And I lost count of times when I have gone ‘dudddeeeee!!!!!’ all the way, unwittingly. This column follows those kickass young personas who are living their dreams with lots of grit and abundant coolness.

Cackle, chortle, chuckle, guffaw, titter. We have skilfully mastered the art of laughing. Just needs the slightest instigation of ‘show me the funny’. And at some point of time we all might have wondered how cool it would be to be someone like Jerry Seinfeld, Russel Peters or George Carlin, but to really take the leap and ‘just do it’, apprehensive eh? I had the chance of talking (yeah, like in real) with one such persona, Nitin Gupta ( B.Tech Chemical Engg. IIT B) also known by his stage name Rivaldo, CEO, Entertainment Engineers (EE).

Along with good friends Vipul Goyal, Tushar Upadhay, now recently joined by Tushar Shah (from laughter challenge fame) they nurtured EE and made it 10 members strong. EE has been successful in giving ‘a semi-urban kind of flavour’ to stand-up comedy, they are enjoying wide-famed popularity among college and corporate circles.

Right now his note ‘The Curious Case of Rahul Gandhi’, which carries an astonishing revelation on the hypocritical arena of Indian politics, is raging like a wild-fire on FB and other social media.

Love in December, his cult play has been a milestone in his comic/drama career. But much to the dismay of the biggies of the bolly-town he refuses to commercialise it as a movie. So, he spared some time, I called and had more of a candid chat than an interview with the man himself. Betcha ‘twas delightful! 

Me: *after surpassing the inevitable pleasantries* So, why the name Entertainment Engineers?
Nitin: We believe Comedy is both an Art and a Science. So Entertainment Engineers :) It's Art because not every Science guy can do it. And its Science because every Art guy can't do it...

Me: Nicely put. Now the eventual question, being IIT graduates, weren’t you attracted to the jobs that are being offered these days both in India and abroad?
Nitin: I was attracted to the Jobs, but what attracted me more was creating Jobs. So the attraction is there, but may be from a different direction.

Me: How did the idea of doing Stand Up strike you?

Nitin: Actually the idea didn’t strike us, we struck the idea. It started with stand-ups. We have huge young audience across the country who want to listen to English and Hinglish stand-ups along with Hindi.. and when I say English, I don’t mean the language, I mean more in terms of the taste and the flavor.. So where there is a market there is way. But Stand Up is sort of an Individual Art.

Me: Hmm... so then, why form a company?
Nitin: See, company gives you the liberty of formalizing things and lot many people can join. We just don’t want to be a group of people doing stand-ups, we want to draw many verticals in the entertainment domain. I think for that you need some sort of structure.

Me: Your spectacular cult play ‘Love In December’, is available in like each and every hard drive of a sane college student. How cool was it to act and direct?
Nitin: Really? If you say so.. . *chortles* actually the reason behind doing Love In December is quite personal which resulted in one of the lasting memories of my college life. I don’t know if it was particularly COOL to direct and act.. I found the whole experience rather warm :) 

Me: So, ahem, it seems the play really did work. While enacting did it ever cross your mind, it will be so huge?
Nitin: We are in the domain of entertaining, others as well as ourselves. Love in December was one such exercise in Self Entertainment. So it becoming so popular never crossed our minds. But we did put it on IIT LAN so that a lot of people can watch it :) Luckily It resonated with so many people!

Me: It sure did. I always wanted to know, does Entertainment Engineers market itself with a tag of being IITians ?
Nitin: Most people knew about our educational background before we started performing Stand up concerts in campuses. Thanks to Love in December. So we never had to use the tag of IIT per se. Also since we are talking about it. We don’t think of IIT as a tag, we like to think of IIT as a Culture, as an aperture which gave us a sneak peek into the real world. IIT is a legacy of people starting from Pandit Nehru to icons like Mr. Murthy, and Vinod Khosla and innumerable other giants. It’s a legacy to which we are yet to contribute. So we never use it as a marketing tool. For we are not worthy of being called IIT-ians until we contribute to that legacy. So, in my humble opinion, using IIT as a mere marketing tool would be too trivial.

Me: Does education help in comedy? Please elaborate.
Nitin: *pauses thoughtfully* Depends on what definition of education we choose to use.
What is Education for us were a string of question marks for people till 400 years back.
Why does the Apple Fall?
Why does Light Bend?
How did life spring on the planet?
What is Air made up of?
So our education was some one’s question marks! Which tells us a funny thing about Education. That’s Education in a pure sense actually is an outcome of learning, never the cause. We just happen to know the things which were discovered by those giants. So we just know! But in true sense Education is when we learn something from our very own question marks! We have lot of question marks when it comes to comedy and about Entertainment in general. Hopefully those question marks will eventually educate us about the Craft :)

Me: Pretty well, yes. That was a new perspective though. Now, something about your future plans? How big do you want EE to be?
Nitin: We don’t like to plan much. As John Lennon said, “ Life is what happens when you are busy making plans!” . But we have a dream.. like every performer.. We would like to make lot of dots in google maps. Not only in India, but outside too. Lot of places we would like to go, perform. So right now we are not thinking in terms of size. We are thinking in terms of reach.

Me: Finally a Rapid Fire, If I may...
Nitin: Sure..

Me: Where do you get all those ideas from?
Nitin: The same place where you get your questions from..

Me: Is Comedy a hard thing to do?
Nitin: It’s a hard thing to keep doing!

Me: Who are your Comic Idols?
Nitin: George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld and Robin Williams.

Me: Are you Single?
Nitin: I would say I am committed.... to my work! No really, right now it’s my work in life that’s the only Seduction.

Me: What’s funny to you?
Nitin: Religion and DeMOCKERYcy. I find both these concepts painfully hilarious.

Me: Finally, What is the Unique Selling Proposition of Entertainment Engineers, how do you stand out from regular comedians and comedy show?
Nitin: We don't do comedy to make people laugh. May be... that's our USP *trails off thoughtfully*