In a performance at London’s Apollo Theatre in 2019, stand-up comedian Sindhu Vee, AM’97, began to describe an argument with her husband, then stopped herself. “I mean, I say ‘argument,’” she reflected. “The fact of the matter is, after 21 years, my husband and I don’t really have arguments. We have throwdowns.”

There’s simply no point holding back anymore, she went on: “After 21 years and three kids, nobody’s fucking going anywhere. We’re just trying to get to the end of this, somehow.”

This kind of unsparing vivisection of domestic life has brought Vee fans and acclaim in the United Kingdom, where she lives, and India, where she was born. She’s performed in both countries and recently completed her first US tour, Sindhu Vee Live.

Vee’s comedy, she explains, is “deeply rooted in me trying to figure out, with your help, what is the matter with me?” (It is also, in fairness, a loving account of what is wrong with others in her life; her husband, three children, and late mother all get their turn under Vee’s gimlet eye.)

She has always been something of a searcher. After graduating from the University of Delhi, Vee bucked her parents’ expectations—that she would marry and find a job in the Indian civil service—by taking a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. She went on to McGill University in Montreal, where she earned a master’s degree, and then to UChicago, where she enrolled in a PhD program (first in political science and then at the Harris School of Public Policy) with hopes of becoming a professor.

But Vee’s plan for an academic life was quickly tested: “They made me do math,” she recalls, horrified. And although she loved the material she was studying—she planned to write her dissertation on political philosophy and the formation of Indian democracy—she was hungry to begin the next phase of her life.

She ran full speed into the quest for a plan B. “I was shameless in telling people, ‘I need help,’” she says. Her fellow International House residents, many of whom were enrolled in the MBA program at what is now Chicago Booth, encouraged her to consider consulting or banking. They even snuck her into recruiting events intended for business school students, where she innocently added her CV to the pile.

“I’ll tell you what,” Vee says, “nothing makes you as inventive and ingenious as the fear of having no safety net.”

She landed an interview and then a job at Barclays Capital in London. But the start of her investment banking career was tinged with terror: “I used to think that if you said yes to a job, and you didn’t know how to do it, you’d go straight to jail,” Vee remembers.

It came as a pleasant surprise to discover that she would—and could—be taught. And she found the traditionally White and male industry to be surprisingly meritocratic, though not without its problems. “Everyone is only as good as their last trade,” she says. “So if you were a Brown woman who did well, all the traders were like, ‘Fuck you, man, well done.’” Though she doesn’t regret leaving the industry to raise her children, the decision was bittersweet; she’d worked hard to prove her mettle.

Vee’s first exposure to stand-up came through a workshop hosted by the UK organization Funny Women that she enrolled in on a whim. At the time, having a chance to share what was on her mind felt like finding an oasis in the desert: “When you’ve been married for 15 years and you have three kids, you have a lot to say.”

She found telling jokes on stage to be strangely effortless. “If you’re like me, it’s hard to accept something unless it feels difficult,” she says. And, of course, stand-up was and is challenging, “but the actual wanting to do it was like my beating heart. It was like, let’s get these kids to school so I can start reading about stand-up and watching it.”

She began going to open mic nights, gradually amassing jokes about her mom, her marriage, and rearing children in a culture totally unlike the one in which she’d grown up. In one bit, Vee compares the gentle discipline of the UK today to the more forceful behavior modification techniques she recalled from her own childhood: “‘I told you to put one scoop of chocolate in your milk. Why have you put two? Because you want me to die?’ Very effective with small children!”

By 2018 she had written her first hour, Sandhog, which she performed at the famed Edinburgh Festival Fringe. From there, Vee began touring and making the rounds of UK comedy shows and podcasts; along the way, she also started acting, appearing in Matilda: The Musical and in the British TV series Sex Education and Starstruck.

“Acting is seductive, because you don’t have to be yourself,” Vee says. Trying her hand at it, she explains, has felt a bit like starting a new relationship—full of excitement, but also self-doubt and fear of heartbreak. Stand-up, by contrast, is like a great love that has all the benefits and challenges of familiarity: “It’s lovely, and you love them, but you know them so well, and it’s like ‘Do we have the hots for each other?’ But the minute they leave town, you’re like, ‘I’m sad.’” She pauses. “Make of that what you will.”

Vee is currently at work editing the filmed version of her second special, Alphabet, and writing her third hour. She isn’t sure what it will be about yet, but she imagines it will return to the themes and preoccupations that undergird much of her comedy—that both being married and raising children are hard but worth it (but hard!).

“There’s a grit in life,” she says. “And I think my stand-up is constantly alluding to that.”