A London School of Economics graduate comes back to his natural calling.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Indian-American stand-up comedian Hari Kondabolu is gearing up for the release of his first comedy album, “Waiting for 2042,” which is set to release on March 11.
Kondabolu hails from Queens, New York, where he and his younger brother Ashok – a rapper known as Dap from the hip-hop group Das Racist – grew up with their Telugu parents. He attended Townsend Harris High School in Flushing, graduating in 2000, and has the distinction of being the namesake for the school’s mascot, Hari the Hawk.
He attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut before transferring to Bowdoin University in Brunswick, Maine, graduating in 2004 with a B.A. in comparative politics. In 2008, Kondabolu earned his master’s degree in human rights from the London School of Economics, earning merit for his dissertation entitled “Mexican Returnees as Internally Displaced People: An Argument for the Protection of Economic Migrants Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement” (which, as he jokes on his website, www.harikondabolu.com, is “by far the least funny thing he has ever written).
Kondabolu has been doing stand-up for several years now, through his higher studies, and has been featured on numerous high-profile television programs, including “Conan” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and has also made a radio appearance on NPR’s Morning Edition. Kondabolu also made an appearance on the BBC show “Russell Howard’s Good News.”
He has performed in cities all over the US and Canada, and has been featured on several prominent lists of up-and-coming stand-up comics to keep an eye on. Specifically, both HBO and Flavorwire.com listed Kondabolu as a formidable rising star. As NPR put it, “Hari Kondabolu is a brainy comedian who cuts through the polite talk around race and gender,” while India Currents magazine said “Kondabolu addresses the political issues that outrage him, and as an artist, he thinks deeply about the messages he is presenting and the ways in which he is presenting them.”
His comedy frequently satirizes American cultural and political beliefs, particularly when it comes to xenophobia. He doesn’t shy away from more trivial topics, however, such as “What the [heck] happened to Weezer?” Kondabolu, who is 31, also dabbles in improvised talk shows (The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project, which he co-hosts with his brother and which has featured guests such as Aasif Mandvi and Ajay Naidu.
For the past couple of years, Kondabolu has been a writer and “correspondent” on “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell,” a Chris Rock-produced show on FX that takes after similar news satire programs by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The following clip is of Kondabolu on the show, talking about his reaction to yet another Indian American winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2013 (warning: some language may be offensive):
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com