Newsletter | Zarna Garg Makes Mom Jokes Cool Again

This column was originally published as part of our newsletter The Daily Show on May 22, 2023. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)

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ZARNA GARG is a social media phenomenon and a product of it. The 48-year-old Indian-American stand-up comedian is a rage on Instagram and TikTok, with her followers running in the hundred thousands. Her boisterous personality defines her videos on both platforms which in turn rake up millions of views. Last year, Academy Award winner Viola Davis was one of the many who shared them, making a compelling case for Garg’s burgeoning fame. A comedy special was always in the offing, which has come to fruition with the hour-long One in a Billion.

Her special is a thematic expansion and reiteration of the virtual image Garg, a non-practicing lawyer, has stitched with care: an Indian immigrant mother in the US appalled at the American ways of her children. In fact, her unique subject position and distinct segue to comedy — she was a stay-at-home mother for 16 years and branched out into stand-up in her 40s on her daughter’s suggestion — form a constant point of reference, also accounting for the most rewarding part of the set.

Garg starts out addressing the elephant in the room. “I am an immigrant and I am here to take your job,” she says to a warm reception. This brand of unhinged vibrancy comes to represent her act as she refers to her husband of 23 years as “a Clark Kent who never becomes a Superman”, and her elder son — the second among her three children — as the only one who matters. In order to justify her bias, the comic goes on to evoke the beleaguered status of Prince Harry who had to go to California to get some attention.

Much of the joy in watching One in a Billion is witnessing a middle-class woman owning the stage and mining her interpersonal negotiations with startling frankness. Garg brings up her mother-in-law, cites her sexist behaviour and calls her a “cunt”. This becomes a standout moment for the precision with which she co-opts the male comedian-shitting-on-ex-girlfriend template and makes it her own. Realising this, she is quick to offer her acknowledgement: “Without her I won’t have an act.”

The other delight of the set is to watch the dexterity with which Garg uses the duality of her identity — as an American and an Indian — to sharpen her jibes against both. At several instances, the construction of her jokes becomes a masterclass in narrative agility. The comic moves from critiquing Indian aunties and the scrutiny they had subjected her to when young, to calling out the privilege some people in America are ensconced in, that grants them the luxury of time to “find themselves”. Equally thrilling is the neatness with which Garg packs her concerns and expectations as an immigrant mother in nuggets of humour without diluting the intent. At one point she recollects being asked by her child if she was proud of them, to which Garg had replied, “I am not disappointed with you”.

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This reliance on hilarity to aggravate without sidetracking on the issue surfaces at several junctures. For instance, Garg — whose eldest child is a Stanford University-enrolled daughter — was told by her mother-in-law that women on the side of her marital family only have sons, “wonder why”. After dispensing this information, Garg looks straight at the audience and with a sinister smile declares she might know the reason for it. In another instance, she expounds on the concept of arranged marriages and uses her friend’s relationship as an example. Before getting married, the comic says, the groom’s mother had comforted her son saying if he cannot adjust they can always set the wife on fire.

In a swift swerve, Garg dispels the heaviness of the moment by reassuring the couple have adjusted just fine and the morbid plan has become a joke. Now when they fight, the husband asks, “Shall I get the matches?” to which Garg’s friend apparently replies, “First you need to find the kitchen.” It is a hysterical moment but also a succinct commentary on the unequal distribution of domestic labour and the ways in which the desi concept of arranged marriages are designed to fan and prey on the cloistered status of women. Somewhere embedded in this joke is also Garg’s origin story of a comic who had left India for the US several decades ago to avoid the eventuality of marrying a stranger as set up by her father.

For the most part One in a Billion works not just as an ingenious premise where an Indian woman sporting a bindi strides across a stage with a mic in her hand but also as an example of locating comic potential in specific immigrant experiences for easy consumption. The set is an exposition of astute observations modelled as mom-jokes; it both upholds the distinctness of identities and, by puncturing enough holes in them, showcases the futility of taking pride in the singularity of any. 

Which is why her declaration as a Hindu — “moderate” she clarifies given the circumstances — towards the end, doesn’t quite fit. More crucially, Garg evokes this to draw parallels with the severity of other religions (she skips elaborating on Islam with “not going there”). It is a confounding and tone-deaf moment given the divisive times plaguing India at the moment. But if probed deeper, it can be pinpointed as an NRI problem where the distance from their country of birth lends them fresh perspectives, while the accompanying detachment also imparts blindspots.

That Garg has an opinion on pro-life, gun policies and nothing on the contentious political climate in India can be read as an immigrant comic playing safe. The other way to view this correctness is to see it for what it is: a double-standard where a Hindu, immigrant artist mines her identity to make jokes without reckoning with the legacy the extremism of her religion is unleashing in another part of the world.

Watch Zarna Garg's One In A Billion.