‘You are going to London?” a smirking Indian immigration officer said to me at Mumbai airport. “Our Rishi Sunak is there.” “What do you mean ‘our’?” I asked. “He’s there, but he’s ours,” the officer replied. “He’s a British person whose grandparents are from East Africa,” I added, bringing some pedantry to a humourless exchange. “Yeah, they all say that,” he concluded. “You’ll be fine.” He stamped my passport and, with a slight wave, dismissed me, certain that when I landed, I’d be taken care of by one of “ours”. Perhaps even picked up by Sunak at Heathrow and asked: “Have you eaten yet?”
India and her diaspora number about 1.6 billion people and everyone has a view on the latest British PM, with what feels like 1.5 billion claiming to not just know him personally, but also be related to him. Given what I know of my people, this could be true and not be true. It puts a lot of pressure on Indian comedians like myself to participate.
