It is Valentine’s day, and for the first time ever, an enormous multi-faith, multiple wedding has been arranged in Mount Abu, Rajasthan, and the whole town has come out to celebrate.
There’s a wonderful illogic about India that drives many mad, but is also a great part of its appeal. The printed sign outside the Kathakali dance venue summed it up; tonight’s performance, it announced, would be postponed “due to technical reasons at the end of every festival.” Of course, it would be easy to sneer at every mistranslation, and if I tried to explain myself in Malayalam or in Hindi, I would no doubt appear quaint and bungling, but nevertheless[…]
Reggie Singh, in a blazer, white shirt and old-style cravat, greets us with a billiard cue slung nonchalantly over his shoulder. Traditional jazz music is blaring out of his huge sound system. “Hello,” he booms in his educated Indian English, “So glad you could make it, would you care for a gin and tonic? Just potting a few balls.”
Nigel Planer is an actor and writer working in London. He was a co-founder of London’s Comedy Store and Comic Strip clubs and went on to star in many TV comedy shows including the classic ‘The Young Ones‘ for the BBC which aired on MTV in the eighties and nineties. He has written over seven books, including two novels – ‘The Right Man‘, and ‘Faking It‘ – as well as the best-selling ‘A Good Enough Dad‘, and the spoof theatrical biography[…]
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