This Indian comedian wants to forever change the comeback for 'Go to Pakistan' to be 'I’d love to'!

Ever since he started posting “Pakistani humour”, which was around two months ago, his social media has blown up. Besides making people laugh, these memes are bringing about a cultural impact, 24-year-old comedian Manoj Mehta believes.

If you’re on Instagram, chances are, you might have come across “Pakistani Uber chats” and “Hamza” memes. On Instagram as @notmanoj, Mehta, who was previously associated with All India Bakchod and now works at One Hand Clap, has become a household name since he started posting these memes. His Instagram bio says, “Shitpost kr kr k india-pakistan ko aik kar dena mainey” (I’ll unite India-Pakistan through shit-posting).

And what exactly does he mean by shit-posting? “Nothing, nothing at all. Things that don’t matter but are relatable,” says he. He thinks that every discussion about India and Pakistan has been about serious issues. But it’s weird that some guy named Hamza has some relationship problem, and that can unite us because people in both the countries find it funny.

Mehta has been in the comedy industry for the past seven years and has built up his social media around that, posting jokes and funny takes on events.

“The first time I noticed Pakistanis were extremely funny was during the 2019 World Cup match between India and Pakistan. Pakistan was losing, but Pakistanis were all over Twitter making jokes,” he recalls. He saw self-deprecating humour, cracking jokes about their own country, and freedom of expression there. And then cut to this March, when a friend of his, who is half-Indian and half-Pakistani, sent him the Uber chat screenshots, and changed @notmanoj forever.

Mehta doesn’t care about the huge viewership or fat engagement statistics that the posts have got him. “It stopped mattering after the first 15k or 20k,” he says. The one thing that does matter to him though is his comment section, which has often been compared to that of Coke Studio. He smiles, “There’s harmony there, and that is a direction I want to pursue.” Such positivity in any ‘comments’ section is an Internet rarity.

Ask him why these jokes resonate so much with the audience though, and he says, “The tension between India and Pakistan is the setup for the joke. Then, the joke itself becomes the punchline.” He adds that besides the obvious cultural history and ancestry that we share, millennials of both the countries also share everyday middle-class things, which brings in the relatability factor.

He thinks the narratives put on by the media are what made us hate each other, it doesn’t come naturally to us. And so, he wants you to blame the narrative, not the people. Mehta also thinks that while Bollywood is a big deal in Pakistan, we haven’t been witness to a lot of their pop-culture. Coke Studio and Fawad Khan are not their whole entertainment industry.

He also wants to forever change the comeback for “Go to Pakistan” to be “I’d love to”! And before anyone else politicises his agenda, he’s decided to do so himself. “My political direction is uniting the countries through jokes and shit-posting.”

He underlines, “Our generation can draw a line and end the hatred right here, and have something better for ourselves for our future for our generations to come.”

He adds, though, that some people find it unbelievable that he’s making the effort to unite people across borders, because “I’m not even Muslim”. He thinks this is the effect of the rampant Islamophobia in the world today. What keeps him going everyday though is, “Start with something small, that doesn't matter but might lead to something bigger.”

However, despite all the obvious fame that this has brought him, Mehta doesn’t consider himself an influencer or content creator. “What do you call someone who posts jokes on Instagram? I don't know if there's a word for it,” he says.