Hasan Minhaj - Always Her Hasan-Bhai

 

Yeah, one ring to rule them all, right? Because I just got married, my dad decided to sit me down and tell me how he met my mom. See, I'm first generation, and my parents are immigrants. If you know anything about immigrants, they love secrets. [audience laughter] They love them. They love bottling them up deep down inside of them and then unleashing them on you 30 years later when it's no longer relevant. All And you're like, “What, Mom's a communist? Dad's a ninja? Why are you telling me this right now? This is not the born identity. Why is this happening?” [audience laughter] 

 

I had never known. For 30 years, I had never known how my parents had met. So, my dad, he sat me down and he told me the story about how he married my mom. And 30 years ago, in this small-town in India called Aligarh-- Any Aligarhians here tonight? No? Okay. All right. Aligarh is not in the house. Okay. [audience laughter] 

 

30 years ago in this small town called Aligarh, my dad had heard a lot of buzz in the streets about this girl named Seema, my mom. Seema was that chick you guys like. Like the buzz on Seema and Aligarh was crazy. She was like the new iPhone. People were like, “Oh, have you heard of Seema? She's very slim and slender. And her family owns a camera. What? A camera? I don't believe it.” [audience laughter] And so, my dad just beelined down to my grandfather's house where my mom lived, and he just laid it all on the line, he's like, “What's up? I'm Najmi. I'm a chemist. I'm going to America. I want to marry Seema. YOLO.” Bam. 10 minutes. [audience laughter] 

 

My dad married a woman he had never laid eyes on. That's crazy. So, Najmi marries Seema. They come here to the States, they have me and here I am telling you guys stories about them. But my mom had to go back to India to finish med school. So, the first eight years of my life, it was just me and my dad. It was just two brown dudes trying to make it in America. [audience laughter]

 

I grew up in this town called Davis, which is right outside of Sacramento. It was a really hard transition, because my dad, he's trying to adjust as the only brown guy at work, and he's in this new country and I'm trying to adjust as the only brown kid at my school. It wasn't easy on me, like, Roll Call was the worst. People are calling me Hanson, Menaja. Sahan Minha. Saddam Hussein. It was horrible. 

 

My dad, you know, he did his best at being a good dad, but birthdays weren’t really his thing. I remember one year he woke me up on my eighth birthday. It was like 07:30 in the morning, and it was one of those cold Davis days. It's foggy outside. And he's like, “Hasan, get up.” I get up. And he's like, “Get in the car.” Eventually, we get to this intersection where the mall is Arden Fair Mall. And to my left, I see the store that's the haven of every eight-year-old kid, Toys "R" Us. I was like, dad saw the clipping that was in my room from the Toys "R" Us Kids catalog. 

 

I had a clipping in my room of the kids catalog and there was a BMX bike that I wanted. I was like, “Oh, my God. Turn left. Turn left. Turn left.” And then, my dad turned right and I was like, “Home Depot? No.” [audience laughter] We're inside Home Depot. I'm like, “Dad, did you even remember what today is? It's my birthday.” And he's like, “Yeah, of course, I remember. That's why I'm going to let you pick the door handle for the bathroom.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Why don't you let me pick the toilet, because you're [beep] on my dreams? This is the worst.” [audience laughter] But I didn't say that. I didn't say that, because when you're an immigrant kid, you only get so many hands, you can play with your parents. You're going to have your battles, so pick and choose them wisely. 

 

You want to go to that dance? You're going to play it. You want to be a dentist instead of a doctor, you got to play that hand. [audience laughter] And that day, I decided to not play any of my hands and stay quiet. It didn't make it any easier, because when my mom would come visit, she would just kill the mom game. I remember one year she showed up at Pioneer Elementary School and brought me a Ghostbusters proton pack for my birthday. Yes, the full backpack and the gun. She shut Pioneer Elementary School down. Kids were losing their minds. It was incredible. But it made it that much harder when she had to leave. 

 

I remember my dad told me the date when she was coming back and we'd finally get to be a family again, August 3rd, 1993. I was so excited, I ran to my room and I put on my proton pack and I was waiting for her in the living room. I remember my dad's like, “Hasan, put on Indian clothes.” I was like, “All right, I'll be an Indian ghostbuster.” [audience laughter] I put on my clothes. I'm sitting in the living room waiting for my mom to come here, so we can finally be a family again. My dad walks in, and then my mom walks in and then right behind my mom, there's this little brown girl with a mushroom cut. 

 

See, when my dad was going back and forth to visit my mom, he ended up knocking her up and I had a sister, but they didn't tell me about her. [audience laughter] Remember how I told you how immigrants love secrets? This was a huge secret. [audience laughter] This was like an iTunes bonus track that I didn't get to download till eight years later. [audience laughter] And this girl with this mushroom cut, she was so excited. She knew that she had a brother and she was supposed to live in America. So, she just runs towards me and is like, “Hasan Bhai,” and hugs me so tight. I'm in full hover hands mode. I'm like, “Who is this girl?” [audience laughter] And my mom was like, “Hug your sister.” [audience laughter] 

 

It was like, Maury for immigrants. [audience laughter] I'll be honest, I hated that brown girl so much. [audience laughter] I was a little Republican. I was leveling with my parents at the dinner table. I was like, “Look, Mom, Dad, these brown people, [audience laughter] they're coming into our house. [audience laughter] They're eating our gushers. [audience laughter] They don't speak the language. [audience laughter] I say we tell them to go back to where they came from.” That's just me though. That's just me. 

 

But my parents always reminded me, they were like, “That's your little sister. You only have one little sister look out for her.” I remember we had to go to elementary school together. It was hard enough being on the playground, trying to fit in and being the only brown kid at school, and now I have this little brown minion following me around everywhere. [audience laughter] She was just following me around everywhere during lunch. I just couldn't take it anymore, so I just ran into the boys’ bathroom, and she followed me into the boys’ bathroom. 

 

All these kids are peeing, and they stop. They turn from the urinals, and she runs in like, “Hasan Bhai, Hasan Bhai, Hasan Bhai.” And they're like, “What is she saying?” And I'm like, “It's a term of endearment in my culture. Shut up, Cody.” I just couldn't explain it to them. And so, I was just like, “Get out of here. You're not my sister.” She couldn't speak English, but she understood what I was saying. And my dad really, really wanted my little sister's first birthday in America to be very, very special. So, for her fifth birthday, my dad brought everyone into the living room. We were all standing there, and he drags this big brown box into the living room and it says Toys “R” Us on it. And then, he just lifted up the box, and underneath that box, there's this beautiful blue BMX bike. And I was like, “What the hell?” Like, all of a sudden, Home Depot’s dad became Danny Tanner. This is so messed up. 

 

My sister could see how mad I was. And so, she looked up at me and she was like, “Hasan Bhai, why don't you take it for the first ride?” We opened the door, and she's like, “Just take it for one lap around the cul-de-sac and then bring it back.” I got on that bike, and I immediately was like that, [beep] this is my mom, this is my family, this is supposed to be my bike. No. I just beeline down the cul-de-sac, and I am flying on this BMX bike, you, guys. I mean, 17.6 pounds? It is 17.6 pounds. It is as light as advertised. I'm booking it, and I take a left outside of the cul-de-sac, and I see a curb and I'm like, “Oh, man, I'm going to pop a wheelie on that curb. Yeah, I am.” 

 

I pop a wheelie on that curb, and I go left, and that bike goes right and it crashed into the sidewalk. All that blue paint just chipped off the side of the bike. I'm lying there on the asphalt and I hear the pitter patter of her feet in the background. She runs over and she's crying and she's like, “Hasan Bhai, why did you do that?” She's picking up this bike and it's just ruined. She's like, “Why would you do this to my bike?” And in that moment, I just looked at her and I was like, “Man, I'm being such a [beep]” 

 

Like, this whole time, I've been looking for acceptance from Austin and Dylan and Cody and Corey. [audience laughter] Meanwhile, I had this acceptance that this whole time right underneath my nose with her. Ever since that day, even though she's my younger sister, I've always looked up to her. She ended up growing up to be this incredibly beautiful and talented and amazing human being. She ended up becoming an attorney. She went to an Ivy League school, and she's living the Indian-American dream. Meanwhile, I [audience laughter] didn't go to grad school. I became a comedian. 

 

And then, when it was time for me to get married, I decided to marry a girl outside of my religion. We're Muslim, her family's Hindu. And that, if you don't know, is some serious Montague and Capulet [beep] like. It goes back centuries. I remember the day we were supposed to meet my fiancé’s parents, we're standing there on the doorstep, all of us, and all of a sudden, my mom and dad immediately start getting cold feet. They're like, “I don't know if we should do this. Let's just go back home.” They're about to walk back to the car, and my sister steps forward, puts her foot down and lays down one of her cards from me and is like, “Everybody, shut up. I'm the lawyer. I did everything right, all right? Let him do what he wants to do. And if he doesn't marry this girl, no one's going to marry him, all right?” [audience laughter]  

 

And I got to say, there were so many years I just didn't want to be around the little girl with the mushroom cut. But from that day and for so many days after that, I couldn't have been more proud to be her Hasan Bhai. Thank you, guys, so much.