Zakir Khan: I live by imagining both my great respect and my great disrespect

Zakir Khan, who has rocked every role on OTT, from stand-up comedian to poet and actor, has now brought his/her show ‘Aapka Apna Zakir’ on the small screen. Zakir says that his/her goal is to reach as many people as possible and TV is another attempt towards that goal. Read this special conversation with him/her

You have a hand in various aspects of art like music (sitar playing), comedy, poetry, acting. Which of these do you find yourself closest to?
Let me tell you an anecdote. Once I met a baba ji in a train. Since I was talking a lot, he/she called me and looked at my palm and said that you have a line of fame in your hand. But this line of fame is connected to the line of karma, so it is up to you to decide how famous you want to be. Whether you want to be in the locality, in the street, in the state, in the country or in the world. This is a very common thing but it is very personal. We work hard believing his/her words to be true and do every work that takes us to a few more people. One of the goals of my life is that I have to reach a lot of people and whatever work becomes my vehicle for that, I use it. Be it acting, poetry, comedy or anything else. I have no love or attachment for any of these. I love people a lot. I am fond of reaching them, speaking their mind, understanding their heart.

Usually, initially, comedy artists tell stories related to the common people around them, which helps the public connect. But after becoming a star, they themselves get confined to AC rooms and halls and that fun is lost. What do you do to avoid that?
I understand this and I also understand the limitations of artists. To be honest, I don’t think any artist has the right answer to this. What if you enjoyed a lot when Shah Rukh Khan spread his/her arms for the first time. Now you want him/her to raise his/her arms in the same way every time and you enjoy it the same way every time. How is this possible? You have seen that thing before. But you want to see the same thing every time, but it should look new. So the world wants the growth of an artist’s personality to stop. People around you try very hard to stop it. Your circle, those who will give you work, those who get work because of you, they all want you to know as little about the world as possible so that their work can be done easily. Since I come from such a family background, where art is looked at with a very subtle eye. We have been taught generation after generation that why do we have to behave well when work is going well? We have to keep meeting people, we have to win everyone’s heart. Even when I was not famous, I lived like this. Now that I am famous, I still try to live like this. I meet people. I listen to them. In 2020, I realized that there was too much of house, airport, hotel, show, airport, hotel, so I broke that structure. Now we play cricket. We hang out with friends. We go to our villages and spend a lot of time with people who are better than us. They understand, speak and listen better than us. Right now this system is working well. Everything else is in God’s hands.


Before you, Kapil Sharma’s show has made a place in people’s hearts in comedy. What are you trying to do differently? Anyway, nowadays comedy has become quite difficult on TV…
We are all trying our part. Our effort is not to limit it to comedy only. My effort is that when someone comes to my house and I talk to them in a way that there is some joke, some heartfelt talk, family talk too. We are not getting into too much comedy. That is why we did not say that it is a laughter show with so and so. We are doing the show with a clear intention and putting ourselves forward 100 percent and we are ready to face all the flowers, laddoos, shoes, slippers, stones, whatever we get on our heads because we are putting our personality in it. If you like it, you will like me. If you do not like it, you will dislike me.

Do you feel that there has been a change in television comedy, especially in the era of reels, it is a big challenge to make people laugh on TV for an hour?
Change is certain, right? How can change not come? There is change in journalism as well. See, it is a simple thing that the world is a treadmill. If you move ahead, it is fine, otherwise you are going backwards for sure. Change will come and we will have to change. Not everything will remain in your comfort zone. Right now 30-second reels have come, tomorrow something shorter than that will come. Something of 10 seconds will also come, but we will keep trying from our side. When I went to 11th, I did not know 11th class studies, but I did it. Similarly, I did 12th as well and whatever challenges come in the future, we will see them.

How do you handle success and failure? How much do they affect you?
I live by imagining both my great respect and my great disrespect. So, when that moment comes, I match it with my thought and move forward by getting out of both. It takes me just three seconds to get out of both.