Koffee with Vasanth?
Over the last two years, Vasanth- a middle-aged man from Nagercoil’s Thamaraikulam village who has travelled the world and eventually landed in Chennai- has taken it in his stride to ensure that we watch every episode of Koffee with Karan. It has been instrumental in our relationship. If you ask him about this topic though, he will feign disinterest.
Two years ago, in the thick of the pandemic, I was drowing in some serious sadness.
I was living all alone Madurai and had stopped communicating with my family by May. This would manifest in the form of ignoring calls, especially video calls but I’d try to occasionally talk to Vasanth and my mom once every two days so as to not have them freak out all over me.
By this time, Vasanth and I were ‘peak dating’ as they call it. He was properly in tune with my general moods and could tell that this was no seasonal depression. It was somehow, just a bit deeper. Some disassociation and some weird mental health stuff that we were still not able to put our finger on.
It had been 60 days since we had last seen each other and he was getting concerned about where I was headed. He decided to converse with Amma, Manu and Suju- a chunk of my support group- to conduct a rescue mission of sorts.
Vasanth brought me back to Chennai, movie style. That is a cinema story for another day with lots of lies and masala. When we came back though, he spent a lot of time in my house. We spent so much of quarantine together with Amma and Anuchu, cooking, eating, reading, playing games and planning our wedding that was now seeming more and more impossible by the day.
During this time though, we spent many hours distracting ourselves with mugs of coffee and Koffee with Karan.
I didn’t expect Vasanth, a middle-aged man from Nagercoil’s Thamaraikulam village who barely followed Bollywood gossip, to like the show. He may have lived for many years in Bangalore and Australia, eating lamb soulakis and drinking black labels (or which ever is more expensive. Is it blue?) in foreign lands. He may have landed up in ACJ, doing pretty well in his class. I’ve seen his assignments.
He was generally the kind that would sit down to read Tamil Ilakkiyam/non-fiction English literature, listen to Ilayaraaja and simp over the Kamal of old times. He was generally choosy about the shows he watched and would never ever convincingly state that he loved a piece of work. You’d never see him speak in hyperbole. I made up for both of us though in all these areas- watching the Kardashians, listening to Hip-hop Tamizha Adhi and spending hours calling him a snob even though he really isn’t one. He’s just a Tamil boy dissing on Bollywood dhinchak.
When it came to Koffee With Karan, it somehow became different. “Why are we watching this, Sanj and Anuchu? I thought you guys promised to watch Lincoln with me today,” he cried.
Ignoring his pleas as usual, we continued playing one of the episodes from Season 4 trying to convince him to like it. (Was it the Bebo-Ranbir one? I forget)
I’m not sure about what really clicked. Was it Karan’s intrusive questions about the dating lives of these celebrities or was it idea of seeing celebrities being silly, unabashed and candid? Did it have something to do with Vasanth wanting to understand the nepotism allegations against Karan and his Bollywood posse.
Through the next few months between June and November, we had completed watching all six seasons of the show. He was mostly appalled that the first few seasons had the general public voting on the hotness of actors and actresses. Vasanth was eventually able to catch Anusha, Amma’s and my occasional b’wood references and high-five us when he got something right. It was and is very cute. He knew about the existence of Viral Bayani, Bastin and airport looks after that and then went on to generally keep this Bollywood gossip news in his general repertoire of knowledge.
Over time, he has come to quote lines from the show- his latest being Bebo’s “Minus” and laugh at Sonam’s “Shiva №1” comment despite calling this show his cringe watch. To his credit, he also cringes heavily and says ‘what the fuck, man’ a lot through each episode.
He is generally curious about the contents of Karan’s hamper each season. He knows the nicknames- Bebo, Lolo, Fubu, Guddu, Tutu, Lulu and everything else. Besides all this, he is convinced that the coffee quiz is the most boring segment now.
He thinks that the ongoing season 7 is the worst of the lot. He is bored through a lot of episodes now, he says and adds that even general firecrackers Bebo and Ranveer were boring this time. He hated Akshay Kumar and Vijay Devarakonda. “Akshay is fucking annoying. Look at how he picked Samantha up. What’s his problem” and “This cheese discussion is so yuck. VJD sounds like he is parroting his PR manager,” he says. He also dislikes the long speeches that Arjun Kapoor gave through the episode, making it sound as though Arjun was a really good guy struggling in an industry that would not give him a chance. To Vasanth, that sounds like an excuse and hardly any injustice.
For me, Vasanth’s love/hate/neutral opinion of the show is perfect. It gives me company and insight into this man that I love. Who would’ve thunk that this man who calls The Wire and Better Call Saul ‘good’ will end up doing Thursday watch parties of this silly yet phenomenal show. No, really. Who would have thunk?
