You do find a lot of your time in the West kind of searching for your place in the world - your voice, your identity, like, who am I? Like, what is my reason for being here, you know? And in that same way who am I to be partnered with, you know?
Comedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.
Actually I'm more culturally Muslim than religiously but being Muslim is an important part of my identity. As Muslim, I feel it's important to counter any form of bigotry, be it anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, etc. These forms of hate share a common denominator of misinformation and intentional fear mongering.
In some ways for many years I was off the hook.When my niece was born after that their attention was focused on that and she did that. You know, that was in our family that's what she did. I went off and chased this dream and this career that very other few people in our, you know, in my family, but even culturally were doing.
I think family dynamics are definitely very interesting. And in my case my sister did get married. She gave my parents a grandchild.
It is ironic that it doesn't matter how successful I am in any other capacity. Ultimately, my parents marker is do you have a wife? And do you have children?
We are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes.
It's an ironic thing about being an immigrant kid, growing up - 'cause I grew up in the UK and went to a British boarding school and we would go to chapel every Sunday morning. And we'd actually have religious studies and religious studies means Christian studies where you study the Bible.
Of course the law's not racist.
I think you had the GOP down there in North Carolina reaching out to African-American voters and this guy coming on television and using the N-word and saying what Don Yelton said.
My father got a job at Bradford University in textiles. And he came for - I guess, you know, why do people immigrate? - like, for a better life to find, you know, a new world. And, you know, I think he always - he saw it as an opportunity. And so yeah so we came to this coal mining town in the north of England and that's where I grew up.
Because to Americans, Chechnya might as well be a suburb of Narnia.
You can get samosas in any pub in England today, pretty much. So, "Gunga Din" has come back.
I said we are Ghodratis and there's nothing that Ghodratis like more than a bargain.
For my parents it was all about getting a deal, my dad came to America and he heard of this concept of brunch. He didn't quite know what it was. And he thought it was this other meal that existed between breakfast and lunch. He was kind of like - I remember he sort of was like America has so much food that between breakfast and lunch they have to stop and eat again. They have brunch. It was completely legal it was, like, a legal meal that you could have. I mean, clearly it wasn't the only reason he came to America, but I think it certainly sweetened the pot for him.
From my parent's generation the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love. It was a partnership. It's about creating family. It's about creating offspring.
