Ramkumar Natarajan has moved six companies in his 16 years in the IT industry. He once put in his papers in a company, officially citing “the lack of no good Andhra mess near his office” as the reason.
He does miss his IT days a little — Ramkumar is now a full-time stand-up comedian — but has no regrets.
In this upcoming show, he will appear as ‘Annachi’, a character he designed during the lockdown days. To the uninitiated, ‘Annachi’ — clad in a crisp white shirt and speaking in the Nellai Tamil dialect — is a hit fictional character who talks mostly about IT-related aspects, in a humorous manner.
So, how was ‘Annachi’ born? “One of my video sketches explored a concept: what if a food blogger goes to review a petrol bunk? While doing that, we featured a petrol bunk owner character, for which I starred as an ‘Annachi’ from Tirunelveli, as I hail from there. That character and his kind of Tamil clicked with the audiences.”
He followed up that sketch with another video on the subject — what if ‘Annachi’ was an IT manager — and later decided to extend that thought as short video concept for 15 weeeks. Manager Annachi’s comical thoughts on escalation, moonlighting and status updates caught the fancy of many IT employees, with some of them becoming viral hits.
Today, ‘Annachi’ has put out more than 70 one-minute videos/reels and has a fan base of his own. In his upcoming show, ‘Annachi’ will take the stage to use power-point presentations and graphics to bring out IT-related humour. “People remember ‘Annachi’ more than Ramkumar these days,” he laughs.
This character might be his identity now, but Ramkumar has dabbled in humour and public speaking since his school days in Tirunelveli. “I would spend more days attending Tamil oratorical competitions than school,” he says. That passion took a backseat once he entered the IT industry, where he was besieged by coding and programming-related tasks. A stage appearance at one of his workplaces re-kindled his interest in public speaking, and soon, Ramkumar became the go-to guy to entertain the audience in corporate events. “Instead of hiring a stand-up comedian from elsewhere, they started using me for free. They were sure that I would entertain them for 15 minutes or so, especially with office humour,” says Ramkumar, who later attended several stand-up open mic events that honed his craft and one-liners.
He does not have a workplace to go to now, having plunged into the stand-up scene full-time, but Ramkumar does have an exciting line up. Armed with more comedy content and upcoming gigs at Chennai, Madurai and Singapore, he is looking to appeal to a wider audience as well. Living in a gated community that is home to a cross-section of people yields a lot of humourous content, as does still being in touch with his IT colleagues. He adds, “I’m still on multiple WhatsApp groups, and their everyday conversations about IT life gives me material.”
Catch Ramkumar Pathi Annachi Meedhi on May 14 (3.15pm and 5.15pm). For tickets, log on to rcomic.in/shows/
