Sanjay Rajoura listening to his fellow Indian comic Saif Mahmood on stage at the festival.—White Star
Sanjay Rajoura listening to his fellow Indian comic Saif Mahmood on stage at the festival.—White Star

KARACHI: The desi stand-up comedy act by Indian comedian Sanjay Rajoura in the main garden of the Beach Luxury Hotel on Friday evening relied more on the satire quotient than humour. Rajoura invited his fellow Indian Saif Mahmood on stage to accompany him. Mahmood largely resorted to reciting amusing Urdu couplets on the topics that Rajoura touched upon in his stint on stage.

Rajoura started off by saying that he was an Indian Hindu and Mahmood was an Indian Muslim, and both loved Pakistan. He said Pakistan was a dry country, and finished off the argument by suggesting that now he knew why there were minorities in Pakistan because they ran shops from where (hard) drinks could be bought. Poking fun at the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers he said recently Nawaz Sharif held Narendra Modi by his pinky at his residence despite the fact they were against homosexuality.

Mahmood talked about the visa process. He said filling out the visa form he found out that there was a question in it which required him to answer whether he belonged to any terrorist organisation. Another question sought his reply about how many children he had, and the question also had the phrase “add extra sheet if required”.

Rajoura said since he was at a literature festival he didn’t approve of the title ‘desi stand-up comedy’ that the organisers had given it. He said it should have been something like dialectical materialism. Things went a little sour when Rajoura joked about the fact that Pakistan was made for Muslims and today it was being debated in the country as to who Muslim was and who wasn’t, and that the Quaid-i-Azam said Pakistan would be a secular country. A member of the audience objected to his remark, which led Rajoura to request her to listen to him patiently.

Rajoura then asked if there were any PTI fans in the audience. A section of the crowd clapped in affirmation. He said he couldn’t understand Imran Khan because on the one hand children were being killed at educational institutions, and on the other hand he (Khan) was talking about the good and bad Taliban. He remarked as if the Taliban were like cholesterol. He commented that the society which didn’t question things became a stagnant society.

Referring to the Indian actor-turned-political activist Anupam Kher, Rajoura said he was a joker who claimed he was denied visa by Pakistan. He said Kher had claimed that he wanted to come to Pakistan to talk about peace. He said in order to talk about peace one didn’t need to go to another country.

Taking a jibe at Narendra Modi, Rajoura said the Indian prime minister was a strange individual who wrote his name on his clothes. This, he said, reminded him of someone from his village who was a little crazy and whose parents used to write his name on a chit and put it around his neck so that he didn’t get lost.

Rajoura said these days there was a debate on intolerance going on in India and Anupam Kher was at its forefront who spoke against his fellow actors Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. He said and you [the organisers of the festival] were inviting such a man to Pakistan. He blamed Pakistanis for helping the Indian film industry run by watching its films. He said there were girls in Pakistan who went to India to get married to Salman Khan. He said India had a wicked sense of humour, since it executed Yaqoob Memon on his birthday.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2016

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