Brain Fry-Day

Now my team comprised of seven of the most unique men I8217;ve ever worked with 8212; yes, this is a very strange thing to say because I8217;ve known them for four years and 200 episodes.

Let me give you a description of some of them. To start with my director, Kailash Gandhi. His actual name is Meri kya fault hai8217;. I mean you ask the man anything 8212; where to place the camera or what8217;s wrong with the make-up, and all he says is: Meri kya fault hai?8217;

Our cameraman Kelly Mistry is about 60 years old and week after week of shooting with us, he is still shocked that technology has moved to colour. Just kidding folks! He is a damn good cameraman. But certainly a very kanjoos travel partner.

Kelly would not buyanything, including his meals, out of the allowance given by Zee because he would keep converting the dollar rate to rupees and say, I am not paying rupees 90 for a burger.quot; Or, quot;60 rupaiya ka pani pee rahe ho tum log.quot; So he hung out at the one-dollar shop. Yes, such a shop still exists in Manhattan, mostly frequented by blacks. I8217;m so sorry, friends. That8217;s a very racist thing to say.

I retract my statement and this time say, correctly, quot;The one-dollar shops are frequented by niggers!quot; This can get me into trouble but I don8217;t think people in Africa, Uganda or even Manhattan for that matter read The Indian Express.

Then there was the writer of our show, Rajesh Sathi. He spoke to us in normal, fluent Hindi and English but if ever the need arose to ask for directions, an American accent came on. My co-actor in the show, Suresh Menon, got very excited when some Indians recognised him. But got equally pissed off when he came to know how they recognised him. They did not know him from TV butas Shahrukh Khan8217;s sidekick in Dil To Pagal Hai. We also have an excellent production guy called Krishna. At the visa office when he was asked how many days he intends to stay in America, he said, quot;Production controller.quot; If you guys are wondering how he got the visa, then go to America once to see how 99.9 per cent of the Americans Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and our Ikke Pe Ikka team got their visas.

The airline we flew was Alitalia and believe me friends, I am not trying to make any kind of political statements, but Italians don8217;t like Indians. At least that8217;s the feeling we got, with the staff on the plane as well as the airport in Milan.

I think the service in the Juhu Garden8217;s plane is far superior to the service in Alitalia. The problem with the Italians is that they don8217;t understand English and they expect you to understand Italian.

The food was as bad as some of our episodes and some of the airhostesses weren8217;t airhostesses, they werescarehostesses. I hate to show off but I travelled first class and believe me, my days spent as a juvenile delinquent in the Tihar Jail Children8217;s Reform Cell were better. Not only was our luggage lost for two days, but the plane was delayed just by nine hours and this is no exaggeration. When I say nine hours, believe me friends, it was nine hours! But all said and done, Alitalia is not that bad. Next time just for the spirit of adventure, we8217;ll fly Air Kazakhistan. Call me a true Indian friends, East or West, Air India is the best.

We stayed in Manhattan for nine days at a place called Madison Street which was a red-light area. Shyam ke saat bajte the aur raaste mein parade chalu ho jatti thi. Hookers, strippers, muggers, transsexuals, transvestites and of course the mayor of New York. Still we managed to shoot quite a few episodes.

Thanks to Alitalia8217;s nine hour delay, my jet lag is jet lagging. I8217;m going to catch some sleep while you guys try to figure out a punishment for yourself for wasting10 minutes of your life reading this column.

Sajid Khan says if you found any of this funny then I8217;ll just give credit to my genius. But if any of this did not make sense, then what do you expect? I8217;m jet lagging.