LONDON: One-hundred-and-fifty
people are crying tears of laughter in the darkened auditorium in the bowels of
the fortress-like US embassy in the British capital. A huge bearded
Indian-American is on stage and he’s being fantastically funny and very
rude about desi accents, Indian dads, Asian Auntyjis, Pakistani pretensions to
importance, Bollywood movies, modern Muslim culture and the world’s
erroneous belief that Muslims can never ever be
funny.
"Indians smell,
let’s face it...it’s all the masalas in our food, we literally sweat
it out, but there’s a great branding business opportunity out here –
a new fragrance, ‘Paseena’ from Calvin Klein", deadpans
US-born-and-bred Patna boy Azhar Usman, sniffing his
armpits.
And then there’s
the one about the stereotypical world view that Muslim men are terrorists and
Muslim women oppressed. "Don’t believe that," yells Usman, aka ‘bin
Laughin’, "Have these people ever been in a Muslim household? It’s
the other way round, believe
me".
clipped from: timesofindia.indiatimes.com 