Toronto's desi dilemmas go viral

Western pop-culture talks endlessly of the pain of being friendzoned – when a friend of the opposite sex you’re interested in justs want to be, well, friends. In a YouTube video, Indo-Canadian internet celebrity Jasmeet Singh, better known as JusReign, introduces a zone familiar to desis where even farishtas fear to tread – The Rakhri Zone. There are ways to tell if a rakhri (Punjabi for rakhi) has come between your friend and a love interest.Is your male friend unnaturally defensive and wearing full sleeves in summer? Rakhrizoned. Comfort him when he pulls up his sleeves to reveal the number of times that has happened – each colourful thread a painful reminder of how she texted back after a great evening out just to say, “thank you, veerji (brother)”
Sketches, spoofs, and some straight-talking make up over a hundred videos on Singh’s channel, which typify the south Asian experience through the eyes of the second-generation Canadian. The desi life is illustrated through a guide to surviving family parties, Indianised pop culture spoofs (Breaking Barfi with Heisenpreet, anyone?), Drake songs over the harmonium in Punjabi, and more. While this channel has raked in over 55 million views in all, Singh’s vlog (video blog) channel, which features snippets from his life, has a separate following. Today, the 24 year old from Canada makes a living from being funny on YouTube. Over the years, he steadily built a following of over 3.5 lakh subscribers (figures from socialblade.com), his popularity landing him a role in an upcoming Punjabi film.
Singh’s channel description reads: “I’m brown. I wear a turban. Old white ladies are scared of me.” Indeed, race, identity and racism are hot topics for sketches and vlogs. When the “Racist Brampton Girl” video went viral back in 2012, most popular YouTubers – from all ethnicities -- responded with condemnation. More recently, the racist online backlash that Nina Davuluri received on being crowned Miss America also had JusReign defusing one inane argument at a time in a video. The experience, says Singh, is not limited to the online world. Growing up in a small town close to Toronto, he himself was subject to racist comments while in school. “I was the only one in my class who was a visible minority,” says Singh. “Particularly after 9/11, people started calling me an Arab. I started doing videos about this, and sometimes I would get comments that said – hey, I didn’t know that this community existed. So it worked to some extent,” says Singh, who also has a turban tying tutorial among other videos addressing the clash of the cultures. He likens the current desi comedy scene in Canada to “black American comedians trying to break into the mainstream in the 70s.”
The Indo-Canadian YouTube celebrity is a category in itself. There’s the riotously popular Lilly Singh, better known as “Superwoman”, from Toronto. The young vlogging sensation has a cult following and was mobbed by a legion of teenaged female fans when she visited India earlier this year for a YouTube fan fest in Mumbai. Kanwar Singh or Humble the Poet has over 34,000 subscribers on his channel that posts inspirational videos. Amandeep Kang, also from Toronto is behind the YouTube channel AKakaAmazing where nearly 1.3 lakh subscribers follow his spoofs on the news, living in a brown family, and more.
On Singh’s channel, and among other Indo-Canadian online sketch channels, “desi parents” is a pet subject. “Desi parents are so relatable. I think my buddy Rupan and I were the first ones to take it up,” says Singh, who often dresses up as his father with an extra-bushy moustache taped to his face for his videos. His mother is usually played by his male friend in a dupatta. These videos dispense wisdom on everything from your parents asking you where the rest of the 20% went when you score an 80 (because Tinku’s son down the street got 90%. They don’t know he sells drugs), to them prescribing the quintessential Punjabi “food groups” for good health (daal, ghee, roti and “veggies” like goats).
“Initially when I started doing these videos, they’d ask me to focus on my studies, become a doctor,” says Singh whose parents worked long hours in factories in Canada. “They’ve sacrificed a lot, and now I feel that I’ve got to succeed,” says Singh, who did his first YouTube video five years ago. But when Singh got started, there was no stopping. As for parents’ hesitation, it soon gave way with recognition at local community events. Plus, the money started coming in through ads on his videos. “There were other parents who’d walk up to mine and tell them they enjoyed watching my videos. Eventually, there were people outside of that community started watching these videos too,” recalls Singh, who has now also taken to Vine – Twitter’s video sharing platform for short 6-second videos. Here, he has accumulated over 5 lakh followers -- a group he says is completely distinct from the bunch that follows him on YouTube.
Ask him what next, and Singh says he is up for “everything”. He is already working on reviving his merchandise line, and has set his sights on television and movies. “I wanna do everything!” he says.
(An edited version of this story appeared in the print edition of Nov 26, 2014)