A bunch of Bengalis will present 11 hilarious sketches on what it is like to live outside their home state
Dhruv Mookerji (top) is also a part of the cast of The Comedy Kitchen
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"Bengalis are everywhere, Mumbai is filled with them. And what's interesting is that they behave in the most 'Bengali way' possible when they are not in Bengal," believes Dhruv Mookerji, a theatre practitioner and advertising professional from Kolkata, who had a happy three-year stay in Mumbai, except for dealing with the traffic.
Based on his experience and observations and that of many other Bengalis living outside their home state, Mookerji wrote The Comedy Kitchen – A Bunch of Bongs in Bombay. A Theatrecian production, the performance is a collection of 11 short comic sketches — a mix of original and adapted pieces.
"We have adapted sketches of various English artists including Stephen Fry, John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson, and re-imagined them in an Indian context. While the running theme is Bengalis, the highlight is great situational comedy of different kinds — there is silent, clever and even slapstick comedy about a character who forgot to wear his pants and is in his boxers," says Mookerji. One of the segments is an adaptation of a sketch from British TV show, The Two Ronnies, where a man suffering from memory loss visits a doctor suffering from the same.
Mookerji says that the performance is a tribute to how the community speaks Hindi and English. He adds that if two Bengalis meet in front of a non-Bengali, they speak in their native language for the most part of the time. Then, there are also those who only speak in English or Hindi when they are in Mumbai or Delhi. "At times, it becomes hilarious when they aren't comfortable in these languages but won't budge, since they are in a cosmopolitan city. There's also a passive competitiveness among Bengalis. They won't argue or fight, but in their own little way, they will try to show that they are a little better than the other. One sketch looks at this quirk, where instead of showing how successful they are, the characters try to show how difficult their childhood was, and in an attempt to outbid each other, their stories go beyond the realm of the truth. Such are the quirks and stereotypes we are playing on," Mookerji signs off.
On May 20, 6 pm
AT Canvas Laugh Club, Palladium,
Lower Parel.
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entry '400 onwards
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