Sunthar V doesn't expect to be everybody's comedian. But he is keen that you hear him out.
The 34-year-old queer Canadian-Tamil comedian, who founded the sellout show Tamil Comedy Club in central London in 2021, attempted to push social boundaries with his queer comedy while on a brief trip to Chennai.
Sunthar was raised in a working-class family in Scarborough, Toronto, and now lives in London, where he is looking at a full-time gig in comedy after leaving a job in marketing. He got on stage for his first standup performance four years ago before venturing out to find audiences in the United States, Europe and now India.
When he landed in Chennai in December 2022, he was here to share his own story as a queer Canadian-Tamil comedian. He met men who taught him that the queer experience wasn't all "black or white" and challenged his Western perspective on queerness. By the end of his visit, he said, the Tamil LGBTQI+ community in India had filled him with a new level of empathy and understanding.