A British Indian-Pakistani romcom sparked by diabetes
Daniel Nelson
Sweetmeats is an elderly Indian-Pakistani romcom set in London about past marriages, new love, food and diabetes. It’s a delight.
“Scary Indian woman” Hema, 62, meets “irritating Pakistani man” Liaquat, 66, at a class on how to deal with your type 2 diabetes. It’s an unusual meet-cute setting, but highly relevant because of the high incidence of the disease in the South Asian community.
She’s self-controlled, trying her hardest to stick to the medical advice dished out by the gori (white woman). He’s playfully rebellious, more interested in consuming sweet delicacies than restricting his sugar intake.
Widow and widower sit facing the audience at their regular workshops or meet at the bus stop outside the classroom, sparring with each other, different but similar, private but increasingly affectionate after Hema’s initial annoyance.
After class, they return to their respective lonely homes. We see them both simultaneously, their rooms side by side on the split stage, hers tidily comfortable, his more casually neglected, clothes strewn around rather than tidied away.
They learn more about each other as their relationship progresses: or rather, their relationship progresses as they learn more about each other. A kitchen accident accelerates the process, but it is writer Karim Khan’s sparkling dialogue that drives the play.
He has said that he wanted “to shine a light on a generation of people we rarely see in our stories - our elders - and to make them the characters of their own love story.
“We often see our elders as mothers, fathers and grandparents - foils to their younger counterparts, and yet we all know the dynamic and complex forces they really are.”
He also writes in the Methuen book of the play’s text that “some of my favourite stories are about the brief connections that burn slowly between people - ones that feel delicate but intense, destined, irreversible and ephemeral.”
He has achieved this brilliantly, and Shobu Kapoor and Rehan Sheikh do him proud in giving such tender, moving, witty life to his characters.
Sweatmeets is not perfect. The kitchen scene in Liaquat’s home is a little too pat, for example, and you are left guessing about social and family pressures, particularly on Hema, that might be affecting their feelings and actions. Their back stories clearly drive and hinder their relationship, but we have to assume so.
Nevertheless, this is an engrossing evening, bursting with tenderness and humanity, staged with immense care and skill.
Sweetmeats, £10 - £35, Bush Theatre, 7 Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ, until 21 March. Info: Bush
+ Diabetes UK estimates that more than 5.8 million people in the UK live with diabetes, an all-time high.
+ The organisation’s website says people of Asian (including Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), Chinese, Black African and Black Caribbean ethnicities have been found to be two to four times more likely to have diabetes than White populations. Type 2 diabetes is also more likely to develop at lower weight thresholds for these groups compared to people of White ethnicity.