This is my third visit to Edinburgh in three years.

My only introduction to Scotland was through the Glaswegian, Graeme O’Bree, a cyclist whose hour record, work-ethic and love for single speed bikes was legendary. My insomniacal mind had convinced me that Scotland was sunny because it had some of the greatest athletes living in it. A quick search at two a.m. further cemented my understanding of the festival having four venues and four hundred artists. ‘Not unlike a cosy Indian wedding’, I thought to myself, ‘I can handle that’. I showed up to sheets of summer rain, which froze my tropical soul in minutes, four hundred venues and four thousand shows. The good news was, I learned to swim. And fast.

Living in a little country (Luxembourg) which had close to no comedy back then meant driving or traveling by train to the closest gigs in Paris, Berlin or London. Because these outings were so precious to our little family, I remember writing and perfecting every five minute set to its best possible version before leaving the house. That is how the first hour was written. I had arrived in 2022 on eight months of standup experience. Once I caught up to what flyering meant, I sold out close to seventy percent of the tickets on a full run. I was an entourage of one. I did everything myself, as I thought all fringe artists did. The show also had several invitations to tour, including a memorable stop off-Broadway in early 2023.

The second year was even better at the box office but, I was grappling with the aftermath of an unexpected assault I was subject to in November 2022. Being a good Indian immigrant, I tried to sugar-coat the pothole but failed gloriously. Performing during one’s worst mental health crisis to sold out rooms makes no difference to one’s self-esteem, it turns out. The second year’s show was about my life as a female filmmaker. This was converted to a screenplay and we wrapped a short film as a proof-of-concept two days before the Fringe started. I thought taking on more work would make the PTSD go away. It didn’t. It only made it worse.

Both in 2022 and 2023, the people I could relate to the most were the first-generation immigrant Indian women and men working for daily wages, manning doors or working in restaurants. We had long conversations in Tamil, or Kannada, or Telugu, or Hindi. I had a huge identity crisis around whether I belonged on the stage, or outside it. Soon after August 2023, I stopped touring. I focused on editing and putting out a large cache of work, prose and film, converting my debut comedy hour into a book of comedic writing.

This January, I ventured out onto a stage again and thought I should dance around my encounter with a mentally ill man, who thought all women were evil, by joking about the assault. That was a huge flop. I could barely get myself to say the words. My tongue would swell up, I had trouble breathing while on stage and thought I would quit. It seemed impossible to speak an articulate sentence.

In March this year, I had a show in Luxembourg. The theater was forty minutes outside city limits and the show was on a Thursday night. I still had no promoters and between making Instagram reels and packing my children’s lunch boxes, I preferred the latter any day of the week. My social media allure was non-existent. I was sure there would be a dozen people at most. When our babysitter dropped out that evening, we all piled up into our two-door Yaris and made the long trek to the theater. My kids were tired but game. My partner was also my tech and my pre-show juju maintainer. On the back of an eight hour work day, we showed up with two old phones to record the show. Just as we entered the green-room, my older one spilled his orange juice on my one ironed shirt and my little one threw up. Turned out, Phyllis Diller’s kids had better endurance for green rooms. I could tell both of them were tired and we settled them in. I changed into traditional Indian clothes, thinking this would be the worst night of my life. I was failing at everything. I couldn’t keep a regular roster of baby sitters on file, I forgot to pack a spare shirt, I was stressing my family out.

When I walked out on stage, there were close to eighty people of different nationalities, experiences and ages in the room. And that inexplicable thing happened after a very, very long time. I felt alive. The hour went faster than anticipated. It turned into seventy five minutes and the laughter held me in place. Having lived in so many places in the world, I recognized that it added up to a rich cauldron of experiences. And that someone could relate to some part of it. That night gave me the strength to seek therapy to overcome whatever was keeping me off the stage. I also gave myself permission to not laugh about everything and write a theatre hour about trauma.

Being unmoored from the village that raised you never gets easier but the trick, I have found, is in paying attention to the verbs. Speaking in our own voice. Reclaiming space. Stepping outside nostalgia or denial to meet the world in the eye. As an engineer, I thought I was in the objective pursuit of truth. But the long walk inward, to become an artist, has made me aware that the truth is an amorphous baby squid, which can convince you that you are marginalia if you let it or propel you to pursue difficult milestones. Despite all odds.

Anu Vaidyanathan is performing her double-bill of comedy and theatre. Her comedy hour, BC:AD – Before Children, After Diapers, plays at 3:40pm followed by her one-woman theatre hour, Menagerie, at 5pm, both at Gilded Balloon Patter House. Tickets at: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/anu-vaidyanathan-menagerie