Stand up (not comedy): Meghalaya stand-up comic’s bid to draw attention to miners

Edited transcript of the text :

My name is Abhineet Mishra. And I am a stand up comic from Meghalaya. Yes, Meghalaya. Even my friends know little about Meghalaya…one of them sent me a message that Meghalaya seems to have awesome adventure sportsmen. I asked him, Tere ko kaise pata ? ( How do you know ?)

He replied that he had read somewhere that a 50 year old man in Meghalaya wanted to rappel into a 350 feet well. Is he a professional diver, the friend asked.

No, he is just a hapless father, I told him. And no, it is not an adrenaline rush that prompted him to say that. The poor do not have adrenaline rushes. They do what they must do because of ‘Majboori’ (compulsion). This 50 year old man wants to save his son who is trapped in a coal mine with 16 other people trapped in a mine for 23…

23 hours, my friend asked.

No, 23 days, I told him. He was shocked. What, when ? Why didn’t I hear anything about it, he exclaimed.

You want to know why he didn’t hear about the disaster ? It is because our media have far more important things to discuss. Like why Rahul Gandhi winked at Prime Minister Modi or why did he hug him, huh ?

A minister the other day said that India would send man into space.

I wanted to tell him, “ Bro, why don’t you send man into that 350 feet hole on the ground ?

People get offended and warn that I shouldn’t make fun of India. Hey, we will have a Bullet Train that will cover 3000 Kilometres in 20 hours, they tell me.

This is weird, man. 3000 Kms ? You know the distance between New Delhi and Meghalaya ? It’s 2000 Kilometres and yet high speed pumps required to pump out water from the mine took 15 days to reach, man. 15 days.

What is the use of technology, man, if we cannot rescue people or send pumps faster ? What is the point installing statues 200 feet high if we cannot go 350 feet down to save lives ?

My friends tell me, don’t play the victim card. Doesn’t Modi Ji visit the North-East ? No Prime Minister has visited NE as many times as has, haan ! Didn’t he visit Assam twice in a week?

I know, I know. The conditions in the mine are challenging. Challenging, yes. But not impossible.

Remember Prince? The boy who fell into a borewell some ten years ago ? It took two days to take him out. You know why that was made possible ? Because the media highlighted his plight and the Government wanted to take him out alive.

But 15 men are trapped in a mine for 23 days and counting—without food, without water and perhaps without air. And yet not even 15 people know or care about them.

You know now why the North-East feels alienated.

I am a stand-up comic and I perform before audiences. But today I decided to perform without an audience.

Because the North-East has no audience.

( he ends the monologue facing empty seats)