Drag Fest

Last week I went for a drag show. I wondered for a while whether I should write about this man-woman who wowed Bangalore audiences. Had it not been for Kumar (say it with me – Cooh-maar!) and his troupe of gorgeous young men-women (for want of a better word for them).. I don’t think I would ever have managed to watch a show of the sort. They don’t have entertainment of the sort in Bangalore.. come to think of it, I doubt if they have stuff like that anywhere in India.

Though I must add that we have our fair share of eunuchs floating about the place, threatening to display themselves in public unless you pay them whatever you have in your wallet. Its rather scary to have them walk up to you in saris and speak in hoarse manly voices demanding large sums of money. Anyway, I digress.. this was NOT a eunuch. She was just a woman trapped in a man’s body. And boy, what a body! I couldn’t believe I was thinking at one point of time – wow! what a flat stomach! Thwack!! Yes well, I wanted to slap myself, but I WAS in public.

Kumar.. err Cooh-maahr! (yes he said it with much excitement, hence the exclamation mark) was also a stand up comic. Wow! What a treat I say. This means that apart from lip-syncing the now-famous drag theme “We are family”, he-she also has a sense of humour. Joy! However, the humour was not side-splitting, tears-in-your-eyes, cant-bear-to-have-him-her-say-another-word-because-you-cant-open-your-mouth-any-wider-to-let-the-laughter-out funny.. but it generated the occasional guffaw.

The male portion of the audience, however, did find the show quite hilarious. A little more than the female portion of the audience. I think the women were just sour with the whole man-who-looked-better-than-them deal. Ah well, Cooh-maahr! of Singapore (mind you, he knew Tamil as he was of Indian origin, it seems… they are omnipresent those Tams I tell you) sang and danced and made the high-society of Bangalore (err yeah, it was really high-society – at the interval, people lost no time in whipping out their cigars and diving to the bar for some wine-la-di-dah) laugh.