A mid-term assesment of botched up love signals, stand-up gigs, a comparative study with a fellow Iranian and more

Au00a0mid-term assesment of botched up love signals, stand-up gigs, a comparative study with a fellow Iranian and more

Dear Reader,

For the past few months, I have been filling this column with observations about my life intended to provide mild amusement if not the occasional chuckle.

Yet as I sit here to write, I am not sure whether you would be more interested in Barack Obama's State of the Union speech or the question of whether I should call the BBC producer who gave me her business card after a stand-up gig I just did and ask her for a date (Jenny is her name).

The reason for this is that communication between us has only been one wayu00a0 me to you. There was some feedback on the MiD Day website when I first started in June, but there has been none since. As such, the only evidence that anyone might be reading these words is the fact that my editors at Sunday MiD Day have kept the column. This means that they at least are reading it.

You will notice that my learned colleague on the page opposite, Devdutt Pattanaik, has his own MiD Day email. This allows both he and the reader to exchange views and ideas and, in short, have a dialogue.

This, however, is not an appeal for an email (although it wouldn't go amiss) but, if you like, a mid-term assessment.

I am trying, dear reader, to build a picture of you. "Oh, stop whining and tell us, who's Jenny?" you say. Ah, reader, I hear you. Well, she's slim, brunette, slightly younger than me and according to a female friend of mine, "sent you all the right signals when she stopped to talk to you."

Having been off the market for a year and a half, in a cosy relationship with a lovely woman, (I'm still in mourning and self-flagellating) it's difficult to know what a signal is. In fact, I've never been very good at signals in courting. In fact, I've been colour-blind, mistaking red for green and vice versa.

This has caused considerable embarrassment but time heals, or at least memory fades.

Talking of appeals, here's another. It's almost a year since I did a stand-up gig in Mumbai, at Bootlegger's in Colaba and it has been four or five months since I was in Mumbai.

In the 1930s, Sadegh Hedayat, Iran's Kafka, came to Bombay where he published his masterpiece The Blind Owl, after having gotten into some trouble with the authorities in Iran. I fancied the idea that he might have frequented Brittania but Hedayat was vegetarian (a persecuted minority in lamb-chomping Iran) and did not like killing animals.

I also fancied the idea that I would produce my masterpiece (relatively speaking) but, alas, this did not happen. I spent most of my time in Goa catching up on my reading while it rained outside. What Hedayat didn't do, however, was a stand-up gig.

So I can only ask my friends at the one and only Bootlegger's to have me back. Why? I miss Mumbai. As an exile from Iran, I cannot go back to Tehran where I was born, and even when you have stepped out of Mumbai and are on the Tube in London, it taps you on the shoulder and says 'come back.'

As for you, reader, I've covered everything from NRIs to Facebook and still, I am not sure what's really up your street (please don't say Jenny, I mean I'll probably send her a message and will be delighted if she responds and will keep you posted in any case. If that is, you'd rather not read about the rebranding of Mickey Mouse and Mr Obama's latest speech).