Samay Raina

🎤 Mental Health in the Wild 🎤

"The day you have to work for money, that's a day wasted. The day you spend time with friends and family is the productive day."

Samay Raina said this at the end of his new comedy special.

Last year I also had the opportunity to see it live in one of his largest sold out shows in Delhi.

And as I realized the entire theme of his special was mental health, I wished truly, that he would some day release this for others to see. I am so glad that happened.

He joins the leagues of many more Indian celebrities and influencers being vulnerable in public for an important cause.

He is definitely a great comedian, but more than that, he is a solid storyteller.

From a man who just went through one of the most brutal public moments in recent Indian internet history (of no fault of his), that reframe hits different.

From his life and career almost ending, to now being the most watched comedy special on YouTube. His comeback is well deserved.

The special isn't about the controversy. It's about what happened inside. He talks about his anxiety, his therapist, and the childhood bullying he was too ashamed to tell his parents about. He performed through all of it, because that's what you do when you've spent a lifetime learning to feel nothing on the outside.

He talks about how his father never said I love you, but it was always there. How that silence passes from one generation to the next, until you're a grown man who can't find the words for his friends, his children, not even for himself.

He tears up on stage. And somehow that's the most powerful part of the whole special. He teared up everytime he performed this. He felt the emotions each time.

Through all of it, the death threats, the lawsuits, the nights he couldn't make sense of what was happening, his friend kept telling him one thing. This too shall pass. Simple words. But that's sometimes all it takes. Someone who shows up and says, I see you, and you will get through this.

Because men in India are still not taught how to feel. The low EQ Samay talks about isn't a character flaw. It's what happens when an entire generation of boys is raised to believe that emotion is weakness.

Nobody talks about fixing it. Men's mental health in India is not a fringe issue. It is a crisis that looks like silence.

Samay stood on a stage in front of thousands of people and said,

I struggled,

I have a therapist,

I needed help.

This conversation is long overdue. And it starts with men being willing to say out loud that they are going through something, without shame.