What happened after the arrests? Comedians started joking about them. Two months after the arrests of comedians Anudeep Katikala and Rafiq Mohammed and the disruption of Sarat Uday’s Bengaluru show triggered fears about self-censorship in Telugu stand-up, comics are beginning to do what they do best — turn the controversy itself into material. At a recent comedy festival in Hyderabad, jokes about the arrests sat alongside observations on cinema, politics, gender and celebrity culture, suggesting that while the anxiety has not disappeared, neither has the impulse to satirise it.
