The consensus is that Russell Peters was a hit in Bombay. He flew in a few months ago to work on local material for this city, Bangalore and Delhi. I ran into him late one night at the Taj Lands End in Bandra; he had three groupies on his arm, whom he probably expensed as research. His new routine was mostly different from his recent show Outsourced and was tailored to Indian audiences.

The big question hanging over Peters’ tour was whether India would get his humor. There’s little tradition of American-style standup in India, and culture clash is notoriously lost in translation. Indian reviewers tended to treat Monsoon Wedding as little more than a documentary and shrugged over the popularity of The Namesake.

Judging by the raves, Peters knocked it out of the park. Two shows sold out three weeks in advance. He added another; it sold out. He added a fourth, but tickets lasted only an hour. Peters might have made more money on his Indian shows than in America. I saw him perform a hilarious set in NYC at a small bar for a minimal cover and drinks. In Bandra, he performed at St. Andrews Auditorium, which holds a few hundred people, at U.S. ticket prices (Rs. 1500/$34, Rs. 1000/$23, Rs. 500/$11).

Peters’ prosperity here is for the same reason that desi arts are so much bigger here than in New York: here, they are the mainstream. At music stores, Hindi dominates the racks, and American music is relegated to the world section. India will be seeing a lot of Russell Peters in the future.

Adding to the take, the tour was sponsored by a whisky label which bought advertorials on local style pages. The ads were so ineptly written that the brand was mentioned in almost every sentence. I actually felt bad for the marketing manager, who was probably under the impression that the Times of India would sell out with some, y’know, subtlety.

Peters razzed a father in the front row for bringing his young son to the show. ‘You’re going to learn a lot of interesting words today,’ he promised the kid, ‘mostly about sex.’ And when the nasties came, some aunties held their hands over their mouths and said ‘Oh, my,’ faintly embarrassed. Others slapped their knees and guffawed in the general direction of their trembling husbands. It reminds me of the sex-filled stage adaptation of Midnight’s Children, where aunties in niqabs stayed quiet between the speed-shags.

The comedian’s popularity really took off when his clips were posted to video sharing sites, which he never fails to note on stage. ‘Cheap, downloading motherfuckers,’ he says, ‘you finally bought a ticket.’