NEW YORK - Comedian Vijai Nathan was one of the four women who appeared on the PBS show "Asian America" on Jan 31. The show focused on racial and gender stereotypes in comedy. Other comedians on the show included Esther Goodhart, Karith Foster and Mariette Rodriguez "The show was cool", Nathan told India Abroad. "As Asians get more comfortable with their place in America, they also get a lot funnier about the trials of being ethnic in America, and about joking about ethnic issues in public". Every time she gets up on the stage, she says, it is to prove a point: that racism is a problem that needs to be tackled and people need to speak out against it. And comedy is the method that 29-year-old Vijai Nathan, who prefers to use only her first name, has chosen. "I am here to make a point. To make people laugh and, at the same time open their eyes to racism," Vijai said. Also what I am doing is bringing an Indian family and making it part of the American mainstream". Most of Vijai's comedy is based on personal experiences, growing up in Maryland in the 1970s in what she says a hostile atmosphere. "Indians weren't welcome and I would often get to hear remarks like 'Go back to your own country.' At that time I never spoke for myself. I just took it, because there was always the fear that if we fight back, we could make it worse." she recalled. So why comedy ? The choice of her career, she concedes is unusual, but it is the only thing that makes her feel "empowered." In fact, Vijai, who recently appeared in a program on the Indian diaspora on the international channel of Doordarshan, India's state-owned television network, tried her hand at journalism before she "stumbled onto comedy." While working as a copyeditor for Newsday and The Baltimore Sun, Vijai decided to register for a two-day course in comedy. "That was just for fun. It took a lot of courage after that to come out and just go ahead and do comedy," she said. "I was tired of not being able to speak for myself. I wanted to be one of the people who are written about. I didn't want to write about other people," Vijai said about her short stint as a journalist. " My work now makes me feel empowered. I am getting back and speaking out against those people." Take for instance her joke about how one person in the audience thought her to be an American Indian: "This guy shouts out: "Woo! Keep it going for the Cherokee. Yeah!" I said, "Sir, I'm not the kind of Indian with bows and arrows. I'm the kind with unlimited access to nuclear weaponry." So how did her parents react when she decided to give her steady job and become a comedian? Well, according to her stand-up act, her father was furious: "He said: 'Vijai, how could you do this to your family? I have struggled in this country for 25 years and you're going to disgrace me this way?' I said, "But dad, I just want to make people laugh, you know, be a comedian.' He said 'Oh, your mom told me you wanted to be a Canadian." But, in reality, her parents have been very

supportive. "Science, business, medicine, law, these are typical professions that Indian Americans choose," she said. "I, too, was brought up in a similar environment. I tried to focus on that, but my heart wasn't in it." "My parents saw me struggle and do the responsible things, and they have been really supportive," she said. "Once they saw me perform, they really became involved. My father always offers me advice after seeing a performance. They try to come to as many performances as they can." Her first performance was in the basement of a bar in Baltimore, said Vijai, who currently works part-time with a Manhatten-based executive search firm. Since then she has performed at numerous bars, clubs, colleges as well as fundraisers. "I perform about two to four times a week. Mostly at clubs in New York and you get about 10 minutes. Clubs are not lucrative at all though colleges and corporates pay much better and you get about an hour for your act," said Vijai, adding that fall is her busiest season and at that time she will have to quit her job. "I think of myself as an Indian American," she said. "And through my comedy, I am also exploring what it means to be American. I think it is very difficult to define American for an immigrant family, because you come with a lot of baggage." "Our parents always fear that we will become too American, that is, lose values and respect for elders etcetera. So I have to struggle to find out where I fit in. It's a search for identity", she said. It is this emotion that she tries to bring out in one of her acts: "Any time I asked my mom about sex, she'd freak out. 'Vijai you don't need to know that. Its only for Americans.' And my parents were always worried that I was becoming too American. My Dad would say: 'So you want to wear pants, eat cows, have minty fresh breath. That's it, you're going back to India.'" "In comedy, timing is the most important thing. You have to make the audience laugh in 30 seconds, otherwise you lose them," Vijai expained. "I usually start with things that I know will work," she said. "Then maybe I improvise along the way. I use voices and accents and these change with different characters. For instance, when I am talking about my father, I slouch a little, use a different accent." Life as a comedian has been a struggle, Vijai conceded. "It has been a struggle. Because I don't fit into what managers and agents perceive as a slot they can fit me in. Though Indian Americans are an emergency presence, we have a long way to go yet," she said. One of Vijai's regrets is that the South Asian community is not aware of her work. "It's a really difficult task getting the South Asian community to come to my shows," she said. "It isn't as though they don't care, it's just that they are not aware about me and so I have to send out e-mails and letters to all the people I know." Earlier I performed in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. where the audience was 99.9 percent white. But when I moved to New York, I saw some diversity, but still no South Asians," she noted. Vijai, whose favorite comics include Ray Romano(of the television series "Everybody Loves Raymond") and Briton Eddie Izzard, hopes to move ful-time into comedy in the next five years and have her own show, tentatively titled "Push."