This act is bound to have you in splits. Based on a hilarious script by well-known writer-journalist Tabish Khair, “The One Percent Agency”, is all set to spoof the now-so-popular-in-the-west Indian wedding tourism. So, what you see is humorous situations, peculiar attitudes, fingers pointing at obsessions. In short, making a business out of anything, including tradition.
Khair, who debuts as a playwright with this script, admits being bound by the story idea to get down to play-writing. “I felt that what I had to say this time lent itself to a play. Not just the content but the tone too: it had to be funny, tongue-in-cheek, cutting in parts, with one-liners and a quick pace.”
The “One Percent”, Khair's name for the wedding agency, is actually a statistic: the divorce rate in India. The agency caters to Western tourists who want to attend Indian weddings; the demand for which has now risen since the success of films like “Monsoon Wedding”. As much as Khair tries to show the West's tendency to exoticise India, he also presents it as “a comedy about relations between Indians and our incredible ability to cope.” So when the agency is faced with increasingly exotic demands, “it goes about it with all the business acumen (and deviousness) it can bring into it.”
Sohaila Kapur, who is directing the dramatised reading of the play for Yatrik in New Delhi, is excited about its crisp and humorous script. “It's something young audiences identify with…its clever dialogues in contemporary Indian-English,” she says. Although it pokes fun at our obsession with commerce, she points out that “it is also a gentle indictment of our passion for political correctness and the fact that love has no place for either of them.”
Sohaila is keen on turning the script into a full-fledged play later. Khair too hopes to see its full stage versions in Delhi and Mumbai soon.
Bottomline : A comedy about relations between Indians and our incredible ability to cope
The One Percent Agency; Amphitheatre, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, March 10, 7 p.m.
