Rishi Dev-Meet BEST’s very own Mr Bean

Comic relief: Meet BEST’s very own Mr Bean

His 3-minute video gags aim to entertain bus passengers

    It takes a secure man to pull his pants down inside a full BEST bus but then Rishi Dev has always liked an audience. Recently, when the 20-year-old took a seat on the commode and prepared for his morning ablutions, entire busloads of unsuspecting Mumbaikars were invited to the show. On the flatscreen television inside their respective buses, they saw this curious young man accompanying every bowel movement with a severe facial expression, drumming his toilet seat and later suffering the consequences of using the nearby butt spray for a mike.
    Unleashing a torrent of distrubing bathroom habits, however, is just one of the things Dev is willing to do if it means a cheap laugh. For over two months now, this young man’s three-minute long sketches have been airing on BEST TV. Here, he pops up on screen in between recipe shows and advertisements to manifest cotton candy from his mouth, wield a stalk of sugarcane like a gun, climb a park ladder with the grit of a soldier and indulge in other antics that he likes to call “comedy of errors”.
    These overly dramatic sketches do not really bear the endearing awkwardness of Mr Bean or the sepia charm of Charlie Chaplin but the intentions of this Jalandhar lad, who came down to Mumbai a year ago to pursue a career in acting, are noble. “The working Mumbaikar’s day is full of tension. I want to soothe his nerves through my act,” says the 20-year-old actor, seated in an air-conditioned dressing room on the set of his TV show for a general entertainment channel. Here, he plays the lead’s jovial friend. Sporting a hairstyle that hides his forehead and dressed in a colourful kurta and jeans, this Punjabi lad looks like a cross between one of the Jonas brothers and Shahid Kapoor. For BEST TV, though, he sheds all make-up. “I want to look like the common man,” he says.
    Dev’s BEST journey began a few months ago when his father, Rajesh Sharma, who runs a production house in Jalandhar, approached Yunus Siddiqui, vice president,
sales, at BEST with the idea of developing content. “Over 50 lakh Mumbaikars travel by bus everyday. We wanted to give them something that they’d enjoy during travel,” says Sharma, adding that it was important that the show could be consumed by everyone across communities. Siddiqui liked the idea of silent comedy and asked the duo to go ahead with it.
    Soon, the father-son duo racked their brains to create videos inspired by everyday happenings such as a visit to the beach or how Indians react in front of a news camera. “We even caught some reactions on a hidden camera,” says Dev, referring to the video in a children’s park where Dev’s attempt to climb up to the top of a slide is punctuated by the reactions of a wideeyed toddler nearby.
    He admits the exaggerated silliness of his videos wherein things like sticking a hot iron to your cheek is entertainment and defends it vehemently. “They have to be slightly over the top in order to grab the attention of distracted passengers,” says the 20-year-old comedian. “I observe people everywhere I go,” adds the actor, who even contemplates modelling his next video on the “spot dada” when he brings in the promised chai half an hour late.
    Once a week, Dev’s team sends a new video to the BEST office where the creative team inspects it. This is then aired at least 32 times a day in the 2,159 BEST buses that boast flatscreen TVs, including air-conditioned buses. “Though the videos are silent gags, we add music as AC buses tend to be quieter,” says Dev, who edits the videos himself. The process of coming up with each sketch costs in the region of Rs 15,000. While both Sharma and Siddiqui are unwilling to disclose details about the funding received from BEST, “you can say that we make at least 15% more than we invest,” says Sharma.
    So far, Dev has come out with 15 such gags that are leaving the audience both bemused and a bit confused. “I thought these videos were adveretisements,” says a commuter. Sharma, though, assures the number of takers is growing. “We are now getting sponsors.”
    “People have started responding to me like they once did to Shaktiman,” says Dev, adding that strangers in resturants have recognized him from his BEST appearance. The best compliment, though, came in the form of an insult. A man requested him to stop churning out such gags. “He was so engrossed in watching my gag that he missed a job interview,” says Dev.

KILLER JOKE: Rishi Dev has made 15 gags for BEST TV so far