Hey, everyone. Hasan Minhaj here.
For those of you guys who are fans of the show,
you are probably familiar with a segment that we did a few months ago
where I interviewed a bunch of Desi teens.
I asked them about what their life is like growing up.
And they reminded me that I was very old.
Oh, “The Whoa.”
The what? Oh, this.
(Laughter)
Can you do it?
That’s like the Indian uncle coming out of him.
What is it?
How old are you?
During quarantine, we decided to reach out to them to see how they’re doing.
And they sent in some very interesting questions.
Check it out.
Hi, my name is Teji.
My name is Suhani Madan.
My name is Pavan Kolluru.
Hi, my name is Jena Adya Dookie.
My name is Preksha Kalavar.
My name is Sahir Mir.
Hi Hasan, it’s Abeer again.
Hope you and your family are all staying safe.
And this is my question for Hasan Minhaj.
This is my question for Hasan Minhaj.
But without further ado, let’s get into the first question.
Has your daughter tried biryani yet?
If not, when do you plan on it? And if yes, did she love it?
Suhani, the answer is 100%, unequivocally, yes, she has tried biryani.
Look, not only do I have to prepare my daughter for the world.
I gotta prepare her for a Desi diet.
We’re going hard in the paint.
She’s had biryani. She’s had nihari.
She’s had karahi chicken.
And I don’t even mix it with dahi.
Like, I just go full on, “Baby girl, have this right now.”
And I take full responsibility.
She has full spice Indian food
and I change those diapers.
I live with the repercussions.
So… yeah. She’s had biryani.
Do you think that people will be able to get back to normal life after quarantine is lifted?
Look, I am not a fortune teller.
Nothing right now is normal.
As you can see, as the news keeps developing, states like Texas, Florida, Arizona…
They opened things up, now they gotta shut things down, so…
All I hope is this:
I can’t tell you what the next six months, the next year are gonna look like.
I’m not even gonna try to.
But going forward, I certainly hope we figure out what the rules are,
who’s in charge, and we stay consistent with following the rules because...
right now this kind of reminds me of when you play pickup basketball at 24 Hour Fitness
and you walk on the court and they’re like, “Alright, we’re playing to twelve straight up.”
And then the game gets down to like the eleven-point mark,
and then people are like, “Straight up or win by two?”
“Uh, it’s win by two!”
That win by two or straight up argument is happening in 50 different states right now.
And everybody has their own interpretation of what that even means.
And so I just hope we all stay consistent with whatever the plan is going forward.
And obviously as you can see, our civil liberties and our personal freedoms... COVID-19 really, really loves ‘em.
Did you ever intend on breaking these unconventionally strict Brown parent rules with your kids?
Or do you just kinda wanna keep the tradition rolling and just lighten the blow with them?
Dude, I’m gonna be real.
I… I’m a softy.
I thought I would be hardcore.
I thought I would be, like, strict. I’m not.
We had this no iPad rule.
Beena was like, “No iPad!”
And I was like, “Yeah! No iPad!”
And then my daughter started crying and she was like, “Please! Can I please have it?”
I was like, “She’s saying please. Like, give it to her.
Like, if she’s polite, just give her what she wants. Can’t we honor being polite? Like…
If a two-year-old says please, that means they’re a good person.
So who are we to deny her of watching eight hours of YouTube videos?
Let her do it.”
Did you ever consider giving up on your dreams when it became hard to pursue them?
Or did you just kinda keep going?
Yeah, there’s been a lot of times that I’ve wanted to give up.
But honestly, I have no other skill sets to offer the world.
Because, outside of comedy, I’ve been fired from every job that I’ve had.
I got fired from Safeway, which is a grocery store where I was bagging groceries.
I was really bad at bagging groceries, got fired from Safeway.
I got fired from OfficeMax ‘cause I didn’t sell enough printers.
I got fired from my day job when I worked at tech support.
Like, at every level, I literally could not contribute anything else to society.
So, comedy was really all I could do.
I stuck with it, and here we are.
You’re 34 years old now.
Do you still get a bunch of texts from Aunties and Uncles
from all over the world saying, “Happy birthday, beta” even though you haven’t met them for a decade or two?
Or have you become that Uncle?
Yes, Pavan. People have hit me up so many times randomly and they’ve just messaged, “Hey beta, happy birthday.”
And I’m like, “What is this?”
And so I won’t respond back for, like, a couple days and they’ll be like,
“This is Kiran’s Uncle” and I’m like, I have no idea who Kiran’s Uncle is.
So what I like to do is I just like to respond back always and say, “Thank you so much. Are you coming over later?”
Just so I can put the guilt on them.
But people have showed up before when I’ve messaged that.
So it’s a very dangerous thing to do.
What’s it like being an old person and connecting with young people and teenagers
when they’re usually preoccupied with apps like TikTok and other social media?
Okay, so this thing about calling me old, like, I get it. It’s a joke.
But...
can it please stop?
Like, I wanna be like, “Ha! I get it! Like, uh, it’s just a joke.”
But it’s actually kind of hurting me.
And yeah, like, I’ll just go down the rabbit hole of comments and it’s destroying me.
So this is a peace offering.
I think between millennials and Gen Z, we need to come together and unify in our collective hatred
of Boomers.
Because I can’t–
I can’t keep clapping back at 14-year-olds.
It’s just not good for me.
Let’s come together and dunk on Boomers.
Please. Thank you.
What type of Desi Uncle do you aspire to be?
Dude, I cannot wait to go full Desi Uncle.
I’m talking–I want a gut.
I want the full E.T. body.
Skinny arms,
gut,
mustache.
Cricket on in the background.
Not listening to any family members.
Forwarding conspiracy theories on WhatsApp.
Eating pistachios and almonds and mango all the time.
Not eating real food, just eating that stuff.
Blaring ghazals in the car.
I cannot wait to get to that level of I-don’t-give-an-F freedom.
I’m already like a step or two there.
I just can’t wait to go full Uncle.
So… my time’s coming.
You know, patience is a virtue and I’ll be there soon enough.
What would you do if your daughter became TikTok famous?
Teji, that’s great.
Look, in 15 years, if my daughter is like, “I wanna be on TikTok,” I’ll be so happy.
I’m like, “Thank you. You can be TikTok famous. You can be Myspace famous. You can be Friendster famous.”
Because whatever they’re gonna have in 15 years is gonna be terrifying.
So I hope and pray that she just wants to do dance videos on TikTok.
How do you talk to older relatives about anti-Black racism and
how should we start these conversations within our families?
That’s a really great question and it’s an important question.
It’s something that’s very prevalent in our community.
And I think these uncomfortable conversations that we have in our living rooms are really, really important.
I think coming at it from a place of, “Hey, you’re a member of my family. I love you.
I’m not trying to tear down your character or who you are as a person.
This is just an important thing to talk about and there’s a difference between ignorance and abject hatred.”
And for the most part, I think a lot of people aren’t filled with hatred.
There’s just a lot of ignorance.
And so, talking to them about, you know, anti-Blackness in our community is an important thing.
And getting them from a place of, “Hey, there may be a lot of things that you don’t understand,
that you may not be sensitive to – but here, understand the full context.
Understand the history of things. I’m here to help explain these things to you.
I don’t think you’re a bad person.
You’re still my uncle, aunt, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, dada, dadi,” that whole thing –
makes people feel less attacked.
Because I think if you go from a place of attacking people or making
making them feel ashamed for something they don’t think is particularly malicious,
isn’t the right way to go.
When you come from a place of, “Hey, I’m gonna help you understand this,
and I’m gonna always help you understand this.
And we can figure this out together.
And there may be things that we disagree about” –
coming from that place will still make you, you know, that daughter or that niece or that person
that they feel they can actually have a conversation with.
So there’s been a lot of tough conversations that I’ve had with my family or other family members.
As long as you come from a place where you’re not attacking their personal character, you should be okay.
I know things can get heated.
Oh, by the way, don’t, don’t let things just ratchet up to yelling or screaming.
Nothing good ever comes out of that.
I’ve been dying to ask you so many questions.
What do you think squirrels think of?
Hey Abeer, that’s a great question.
Look, as somebody who has the attention span and energy of a squirrel,
I’m sure they think about what’s just immediately in front of them.
Or, squirrels are thinking about deep philosophical questions, like:
“How does Pharrell Williams look 25 even though he’s 846 years old?”
So recently I heard you had a new son– by the way, congratulations.
You’re a father of two.
But, do you think you’ll be a better dad than your own dad?
Don’t try to catch me slipping here, Abeer.
Oddly enough – I know this is a cliche answer, but yes, I understand why he was so frustrated and so tired.
And why he never took me to Toys “R” Us.
Actually, I don’t understand why he never took me to Toys “R” Us.
But...
But yeah, I get where he’s coming from.
I don’t think I could be a better dad than my dad.
My dad went through a lot.
He emigrated here and he sacrificed a lot for me to grow up and be a comedian
even though I failed out of pre-med and then didn’t go to law school, so…
I don’t know if I’d ever have that patience with my son or my daughter, so…
Shout outs to you, Dad.
And hopefully my children never get into comedy.
This is probably the one that I’ve been looking forward to the most to asking you, and that is:
If you could be any mythical creature you wanted, which one would you choose and why?
Any mythological creature?
Easy answer. Have you ever heard of a griffin?
You got the body, tail, and back legs of a lion.
Then you have the talons, the wings, and the head of an eagle.
Undeniable.
Griffin.
Anything honestly, any mythological creature except a leprechaun.
Nothing against Irish people, but those smug little assholes gotta go.
If I could choose, I would probably be a gremlin so, you know, I could watch on people and people that I don’t like.
And also, Hasan, listen,
when you die, I’ll be the next you.
I’ll carry on the legacy.
You could probably even pass it on to your son –
or no, pass it on to me, I pass it on to your son, and so on.
We’ll keep the legacy until the end of the world, man.
Come on, Patriot Act for life.
Hope you all stay safe and I’ll see you very, very soon, Netflix.
Bye bye.