Is this supposed to be some kind of a joke?” regulars who show up to the salon at shop 10 in Queen’s Lawn building in Vile Parle West this week might wonder. They’re not entirely wrong. The jokes are inside, at the new Ink-A-Laugh comedy club that stands where a compact salon once operated. Revamped by hand by comedians Rohan Chawda and Akshat Davla, the 40-seater space hit the ground running late last month.

“Rohan was a diamond jewellery designer, and I was working for an automotive company when we met at an open mic in Dubai,” Davla reveals. Turning the infamous tax-saving jugaad on its head, the Mumbai duo first established the comedy business in Dubai, and later moved it to India in 2018. It didn’t do their pockets any favours, they agree. “But you can grow only so much performing in a third-party venue. We wanted a space of our own where we called the shots, and that comes with a heavy price tag in a space-jammed city like Mumbai,” he admits.