Dubai has heard Zarna Garg before. This time, she is bringing a million-dollar supply of excuses.
The outspoken New York Times bestselling author and comedian returns to the Dubai Comedy Festival this October with her new show, Million Dollar Excuses, which promises an evening of joyful family chaos, motherhood, marriage and cultural observations.
“I make the most ridiculous excuses,” Zarna says, turning major life events into reasons why she couldn’t do something. “It’s joyful family humour. I’m not a political or religious comic. That’s just not what I do.”
Instead, she dives into what she calls the “new age of motherhood”, which include the contradictions and absurdities of being an independent modern woman who still has to figure out who is making dinner.
When comedy becomes a family business
Zarna has three children and a husband, and much of her comedy comes straight from home.
“Like the gift that keeps giving, they do crazy, stupid things every day,” she says.
She calls comedy a family business because her children were the first to see her potential. Before becoming a comedian, Zarna tried several businesses after her youngest started full-time kindergarten. She says she was failing at all of them.
Her children noticed something she had missed: people loved talking to her, but nobody wanted to buy what she was selling.
Her daughter eventually suggested that she turn her funny stories into comedy and challenged her to try an open mic. Zarna had never even attended a comedy show before, she had only seen comedy on television.
That first open mic changed everything.
Today, her children are deeply involved in the business. Her daughter, a Stanford graduate, and her son, a Cornell student, are part of the wider family operation and regularly appear for her shows.
The family podcast, The Zarna Garg Family Show, is equally personal and unscripted.
“Nothing is pre-planned or rehearsed,” she says. “We turn the cameras on and just start talking.”
The podcast tackles subjects families often avoid discussing publicly. One recent episode, for instance, explored whether Zarna and her husband should get divorced; not because their marriage was unhappy, but because their New York-raised children have very different ideas about romance and marriage.
The conversation resonated with families, prompting parents and children to discuss marriage, happiness and whether the life they have is really the life they want.
Unapologetically Zarna
Perhaps Zarna’s biggest strength is what she refuses to change. She performs as herself, a brown Indian woman in a cotton kurta, churidar and bindi, speaking exactly as she naturally does.
“I realised early on that if you are not 100 per cent who you are, your material will not resonate with people,” she says. “If you’re not fully comfortable in your skin, you will not be funny.”
That authenticity has connected her with hundreds of millions of women who see themselves represented on stage.
And she believes mothers everywhere ultimately laugh at the same things.
“In the end, we are all the same. Moms are moms everywhere.”
Her Instagram provides a running catalogue of family battles and everyday disagreements that eventually become comedy material.
She also describes herself as a “free-speech warrior”, insisting that even people she strongly disagrees with should have the right to express their views.
That includes critics who take her mother-in-law jokes personally. Her mother-in-law, apparently, has no such problem, and regularly sends her suggestions for new jokes about relatives and neighbours.
Dubai Reloaded
Zarna describes Dubai audiences as cosmopolitan and global, with a unique understanding of the region’s cultural and geopolitical complexities.
She also loves bringing her children to Dubai. This time, she wants to explore the city, try its food, meet interesting people and, naturally, sample the famous Dubai chocolate.
Her previous Dubai show sold out, as did her Practical People Win tour across Dubai and Riyadh. She knows there is already an audience waiting.
Zarna deliberately designs her shows as intergenerational experiences. Grandparents come with grandchildren, parents bring teenagers, and uncles, aunties, neighbours, doctors and tutors can all end up sharing the same audience.
She even pushed for an evening Dubai performance so children could attend after finishing their schoolwork.
“I’m always looking for things to do with my kids,” she says. “We built the show in a way that your kids can meet my kids.”
For her, that is part of the bigger family mission: getting parents and children to put down their phones and actually spend time together.
Business at 45
Zarna’s family and friends always knew she was funny. What surprised them was how good she was at business.
She says she only discovered in her 40s that she had strong instincts for building an audience, selling, connecting with people and creating a business around entertainment.
That discovery now forms an important part of her message: there may be abilities inside us that we have simply never had the opportunity to discover.
Her memoir, This American Woman, explores that journey. Writing it was deeply cathartic, forcing her to revisit painful memories she had spent years trying to forget.
But she is proud she wrote it.
The book became a New York Times bestseller, has earned more than 20,000 four- and five-star Amazon reviews and has gone through multiple reprints in India and the US. Zarna says she wrote it especially for people who feel stuck at a particular age or stage of life; to remind them that it is never too late to change direction.
She started comedy at 45.
Today, she is one of the most recognisable Indian-origin comedians in the world.
Her career has also grown well beyond stand-up comedy. A new film is scheduled for December with Amazon Studios, her podcast continues to expand. Million Dollar Excuses is eventually expected to be filmed and released on streaming platforms.
And now, Dubai gets to hear these excuses firsthand.
Presented by the Dubai Comedy Festival, the one-night-only show takes place at Dubai Opera on October 16, as part of the festival running from October 9 to 18. Tickets start at Dh195 and are on sale at dubaiopera.com.
Source: Khaleej Times