Most comedians climb the stand-up ladder the usual way. Gig around the city, launch a solo show, maybe go international, and if it all goes well, land a short stint with a Bollywood celebrity. With city-based comedian Kashyap Swaroop, it feels as though someone handed us his resume upside down. He recalls writing ad films for your favourite tinseltown A-listers back in the day, has the city’s top comedians on speed dial and recently performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. After all that, he debuts his first solo, Would You Rather? in a Powai club this weekend.

“I have a full-blown identity crisis, and there’s some inherent humour to it,” admits Swaroop, who grew up in a familiar half Kashmiri and half Tamil household. Familiar for him, and for us. The 33-year-old’s parents, filmmakers Kamal Swaroop and Priya Krishnaswamy gave the world parallel cinema classics such as Om Dar-B-Dar (1988), which continues to be cited as inspiration and referenced in films by the likes of Anurag Kashyap and Imtiaz Ali.