A ventriloquist, a freelance marriage officiant and a housewife walk into a bar. Lucky for the bartender, they’re all the same person, and they’re only there for the stage. Seema Golchha, a 52-year-old Mumbai-born comedian, picked up her first puppets in her 40s to entertain children in her family. After shifting base beyond Indian borders and globe-trotting with her fleet of talking puppets, she’s rolling up her sleeves for a comeback in the city tomorrow.

“I had no plans to become a ventriloquist when I married into a joint family. After moving to Nepal, I used sock puppets one day to put the five or six kids in my family to bed. They loved it; so did I,” Golchha recalls. Her first public show in 2011 was no child’s play. A 70-member-strong audience had their eyes glued to the stage. “I was petrified. ‘What on earth was a housewife doing on stage?’ I thought to myself. But the jokes landed well and I realised this was my calling,” she reveals.