Zakir Khan on becoming first Asian comedian to perform at Royal Albert Hall, an advice that changed his life and more

"It (the first performance) was not that great, but that's the reason why I'm here," Khan said. When asked if he was embarrassed about it, he replied, "Not at all, in fact its the opposite."

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Quoting Javed Akhtar, he said, "once you delete chapter number 19, which is the lowest phase of your life, the chapter number 72 will also get deleted which is the highest phase of your life". "I'm very proud of that (performance). I attempted something which was out of my comfort zone and it's because of that day that I'm standing here."

On October 8, the stand-up comedian scripted history by becoming the first Asian to perform solo at the Royal Albert Hall. "I feel very good, I feel amazing about it. I think God has given me this opportunity, and I'm grateful for it."

Born to a music teacher and a homemaker in Indore, Khan initially trained to be a sitar player. However, things didn't turn out to be as he expected, so eventually, he dropped out of collage to pursue a career in radio.

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He left everything and moved to Delhi, which was the start of his struggle in life. Just before his performance at Royal Albert Hall, he said, "While I was in London, going to perform at the Royal Albert Hall, in my ancestral village in Rajasthan, from where my grandfather is, they put up hoardings and posters congratulating me. It was a great moment for me, bigger than seeing my hordings at Leicester Square in London. When I saw those congratulatory hoardings in my grandfather's village, that moment made me feel all the struggles were in life were worth it."

Khan has zero regrets. "I only have learnings," he said. "I'm very proud of all the decisions I have taken because all the decisions I took in my life were well calculated decisions, even the ones that went wrong. I completely own all the decisions so I've got zero regrets. I'm very happy right now, and I'm far away from any regrets in my life."

Talking about the best advice he ever received, Khan recalled what his father told him in 2016, when one of his videos went viral. He said, "aache aadmi ki acting nahi chahiye" (no need to put on a act of a good man). If you want to be popular where people love you, you have to genuinely be happy meeting everybody. You can't fake it all the time."

Khan recalled, his fathers words changed him. "I worked a lot on myself to be in the public eye, to meet people, to be part of their lives, and genuinely care about them."