34-year-old Infosys employee Comedian Praveen Rao recently changed his Facebook profile photo to a shot of him holding a microphone, NDTV reported late Thursday evening.
The incident sent shockwaves to Praveen’s 754 Facebook friends who were completely unaware the Masters in Engineering student from a leading US university had turned his hobby into a profession.
“This totally changes everything. When I saw the pic of Praveen holding the Shure SM58 microphone in a dimly lit coffee shop I thought wow, he’s finally turned pro. There must have been at least 12, maybe 15 people in that audience. NOT COMICS,” remarked Nivi Arora, who was in the cafe to catch up with friends and had no idea there was a comedy show.
The Pulitzer prize winning photo was captured by amateur photographer and college student Shunky Sharif, himself an aspiring comedy enthusiast.
“I was just really excited I got the focus and dedication in his face as he delivered that line about cheap Gujarati uncles. Fu*king edgy stuff” Shunky remarked while packing his camera into the seat of his Activa. “I was hoping Praveen would return the favor and take a photo of me, but I guess I’ll just leave my DP as the shot of me holding my DSLR looking into a mirror.”
“I really like that one,” he added.
The photo was uploaded at 10:42AM IST and immediately accumulated 74 likes and 13 comments, the success of which was attributed to the insanely insightful caption “FOLLOWING YOUR DREAM TAKES GUTS!”
A slew of supporters left encouraging remarks such as “Way 2 Go” and “All d best macha.”
Praveen’s uncle Suman Hinduja also contributed to the career-defining milestone with a game-changing “Superb Snap.”
“Thanks Uncle…Looks like SRK and Russell Peter (singular) has competition!” replied Praveen, immediately liking his uncle’s comment as well as his own.
“Hey check it out, it’s Louis OK!” added jaded comedian Sanjay Manaktala, who then received more likes on his comment than Praveen’s entire post.
At 11AM the photo started trending on major social media sites, albeit with a tad bit of controversy when fans of the twice-on-stage comic pointed out proper photo credit attribution was not given to Shunky for pressing the shutter button.
“Ahem, *cough cough*, nice pic” remarked one supporter, Kritarth Banerjee.
Sources confirmed the caption was later updated to include “PC: Shunky” and believe Praveen will be using this photo for years to come in all future comedy business, once a high-resolution version has been mailed to him for which he will pester the photographer until received.
At press time it was believed Praveen was opening up a Facebook fan page while torrenting a series of comedy specials from Bill Burr and George Carlin.