‘Aditi Mittal: Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say’ Is A Breakthrough Moment For Netflix’s Comedy Specials

Unless you watched the 2014 documentary, Stand Up Planet, and let’s face it, odds are you didn’t and still haven’t (even though Hasan Minhaj hosted the doc just months before landing The Daily Show), then you as an American have no idea who Aditi Mittal is.

But Indians know all about Mittal. She’s described by Netflix as “trailblazing” not only because she remains one of the few female stand-up comedians in that South Asian nation of 1.3 billion, but also because of what she’s saying there.

After Netflix announced its first comedy special from India, starring TV personality and Bollywood actor Vir Das, Amazon Prime swooped in to sign up 14 other Indian comedians for specials. All of them male. Aditi Mittal: Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say is the second Netflix stand-up special to come out of India, and the first to feature that nation’s comedy from a female perspective.

In a nation where arranged marriage continues as the cultural norm, Mittal stands out, miss independent with blue and red highlights in her dark hair, sarcastically taking on cat-callers while also defending herself against tradition.

“I realized that being 30 and single and an Indian woman is like being that Tupperware container at the back of the fridge,” Mittal jokes. “Where you’re like, ‘Is this still good?’”

It is, and she is, but you’ll want to turn on the subtitles/closed-captioning because of Mittal’s use of Hinglish, flipping back and forth mid-joke and often mid-sentence between English and Hindi.

And if you’re not up on your Bollywood, many of her references likely will sail over your head. Such as when a cat-caller compares Mittal to Kareena Kapoor. Mittal’s reply? “Please, I am an artist. Call me Shabina Azmi…At the current rate I’m going, Nasseruddin Shah will also do.” You won’t need as much help following along when Mittal jokes about how more contemporary Bollywood soundtracks make it more difficult for cat-callers to whistle accurately.

A few other helpful references:

• Gupt: The Hidden Truth, which Mittal jokes was “a love story,” was a 1997 suspense movie. The most thrilling/frightening part for her, however, was thinking about how one character tried to escape from prison.
• Meena Bazaars during the Mughal Empire (which lasted hundreds of years before the British took over in the 1858) were markets exclusively for women, so Mittal takes aim at a legendary love story about one man disguising himself in drag upends the whole legend for laughs.
• Grant Road Station is where the trains meet in south-central Mumbai.

You might have to look up “Rahul Roy from Junoon yellow” (Junoon was a 1992 Hindi horror film) if you’re wondering exactly how Mittal felt after standing “900 people deep” in a line for the women’s bathroom in an Indian airport. But when she describes small children on a plane as “T-Rexes on cocaine,” anyone on Earth can visualize at that enough to laugh.

And just like stand-up comedians anywhere around the world, Mittal bemoans her single life, claiming her career choice means “the only long-term relationship you can cultivate is with an airport.”

The TSA-like experience might be rougher for men in India’s airports than for women, but just like American travelers, Mittal wonders why we’re still forced to take off our shoes before entering the terminal just because one would-be terrorist attempted to explode his shoe once. Terrorists, Mittal jokes, aren’t nostalgic enough to go back to their old ideas.

If American and other-English speaking stand-ups have used Netflix or YouTube in the past decade to have their jokes reach a global audience and expose everyone to our culture, then 2017 is the year that the rest of the world is holding that humorous mirror back for us to see and appreciate.

So looking up a few references and learning what they mean is far from a bad thing.

Besides, as a 30-year-old single woman, Mittal’s experiences remain relatable. She just so happens to be half Punjabi and half Sindhi, and she’ll happily translate their stereotypes for you.

She watches TV advertising and wonders why “we have no cure for the common cold, yet the four hairs on my eyelid have their own technology,” and why everyone seems to need 40 percent extra fiber in their diet to help their bowels.

She enjoys being the cool aunt to the kids from her brothers and sisters, and the ability to bail when the kids get too tough to handle. And listening to parents makes her realize “why all the Indian kids are winning the spelling bees.”

She wonders why India is still stuck up when it comes to teaching teens about sex.

Which explains one of her stock characters, elderly sex educator Dr. Mrs. Lutchuke, who appears for in a smoothly-edited eight-minute segment to talk frankly and simply about sex, foreplay, “blow jobs,” and “organisms.” It won’t seem revolutionary or envelope-pushing for American comedy audiences, but it’s still rather new and taboo to the Indians she’s performing.

Mittal mocks her own lack of fashion sense, mocks club-goers for not understanding dance songs such as “Cotton Eyed Joe,” questions James Bond’s choice in cocktails, rails against high heels, and jokes about spam emails for penis enlargement and the lack of open talk in society regarding “sanitary napkins.”

Mittal acts out the awkwardness of asking a random woman for an extra tampon during an emergency, as well as the idea of cashing in on a money-back guarantee for a certain brand of pads. Mittal even finds herself in an awkward predicament at the beginning of her closing bit, but just like the contestants in the Miss India pageant, she’s sure to go home with a trophy for getting to spread her message around the world.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Aditi Mittal: Things They Wouldn't Let Me Say on Netflix