A rebel, a nurturer, a thinker, a change maker, a mother, wild, full of energy, straightforward, a dreamer, a chaser, a woman who runs with the wolves- my name is Preeti Das and I am an academician/ teacher, a stand-up comedian and a journalist. As Gujarat's first woman stand up comic, I have always made sure that my comedy is about taking down patriarchy and sexism. 8 years as a stand-up comedian and over 16 years of working as a journalist and researcher, I have won the Ladlee Media award at the national and then the South Asia Level ( 2015-2016) for my stories on documenting the life of gang- rape survivors. From starting my career as a television reporter to working in the print media- I have constantly written about women and child rights, politics, crime, and health. Currently, I head the Department of Liberal Arts and Mass Communication in a private University in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Stand up comedy is my passion and 2 years ago I co-founded a group called Mahila Manch. We are an all-woman comedy collective that uses humor to talk about a host of taboo topics that people do not want to talk about. Our monthly shows called The Period Show are a rage in the city of Ahmedabad and some of the topics we have curated shows on include- sexism, patriarchy, body shaming, politcs, women bootleggers in Gujarat, environment issues to name a few. We have performed in various festivals across the country and during the lockdown, we have curated talks shows with guests including Vidya Balan, Swara Bhaskar, Sheeba Chaddha, Q ( the director), Meghna Ramaswamy and Pooja Swarupa . I believe in the power of humor to bring about a change and as the co-founder of Mahila Manch , I attempt to do the same while providing a space for new voices.

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I am the co-founder of an Ahmedabad based all-woman stand up comedy collective called Mahila Manch. With my business partner Shefali Pandey we started monthly comedy shows called the Period Show (because we do it once a month) at a friend's house.

Today we have over 500 people coming for each of our gigs which have had themes including - women and sexual pleasure, body shaming, question of caste, the me too story , a show called Bevda Gujarat saw over 700 people turn up as we had women bootleggers do stand up comedy with us, our Maa- Bahein show was a mix of songs and stand up and we took on media and sexism in the show as young actors from the Gujarati film fraternity joined us, our show called Tu 13 Dekh was around the globalization of polarization in which we have performers belong to the Dalit community talking about the pains of manual scavenging and our show Ek Thi Rani was about how stories of women queens never make it to the mainstream narrative. 

Mahila Manch is about 2 and a half year old and we have had the honor of performing   at One Billion Rising event in Delhi , the Gujarat Literature Festival , Sanatkada Festival in Lucknow , Matrubhumi International Festival of Letters - to name a few . Other than this we conduct a host of workshops, talks and perform at private gigs. 

Our content is what many people say bold and we are now happy with making people a bit uncomfortable with our hard-hitting content.

We make sure that humor is the spine of all our shows and we do not deviate from it . 

Kindly find the links to a few articles about us. 

https://thewire.in/women/how-women-comics-in-ahmedabad-are-using-humour-to-talk-about-real-issues  

https://scroll.in/magazine/922408/an-all-women-stand-up-collective-in-ahmedabad-is-pushing-boundaries-with-their-gentle-satire 

https://cms.ati.ms/2018/04/indian-female-comics-tackle-social-issues-humor/

https://www.womensweb.in/2018/09/6-female-upcoming-stand-up-comedians-from-india-sept18wk2mc/ 

https://www.meranews.in/news/view/smashing-patriarchy-and-sexism-not-with-sticks-and-stone-but-with-gags-and-jokes 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtReuWxd-LY 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8aYuoB7N0U

I have won the Ladlee Media Award for Gender Sensitivity ( 2015-2016) at the National and then the South Asia Level for reporting and documenting the lives of gang rape victims. 

https://www.facebook.com/jayrajeshthakkar/videos/10155193007170030/