LOC : Life Out of Control
About the Show
‘The Peace’ restaurant in London is owned by Simon. But despite the name, there is no peace within, reason being the tension between India and Pakistan. It is because the head cook of this restaurant is Gurpreet Singh Malick - an Indian, while the headwaiter is a Pakistani called Chand Mallik!
Whenever there is tension between India and Pakistan, it results in a war between Malick and Chand and the restaurant is turned into a war zone. And the owner of this restaurant, Simon York, has no other alternative but to curse his British fore-fathers for partitioning India. Simon cannot throw the two sworn enemies out because his restaurant’s clientele love Gurpreet Singh Malick’s curry and the Mogul treatment that Chand offers while serving them.
In the same restaurant works Monica, a waitress, who is Chand and Malick’s passport to obtain a green card. She has promised to marry Chand as well as Malick. Then there is also the Chinese security guard Chu Cha Chow who aligns himself with Chand in harassing Malick. There are also the Kashmiri cousins, Noora and Shera; the former is a resident of India and the latter, a Pakistani. Noora is an assistant to Malick and Shera an assistant waiter under Chand.
Malick and Chand use them like their armies and pit them against each other, much against their wishes to settle their own disputes.
Just beside the restaurant is Rehman General Store, but in reality, Rehman’s wife Lucy owns it. Rehman Bhai was also an employee of ‘The Peace’ restaurant before he fell for Lucy and married her in the hope of becoming the owner of the General Store. But his hopes were dashed and he is now reduced to being just a servant.
There is Roger Patel, the Gujrati cop, who enjoys the delicacies of the restaurant with his wife Ranjana but also keeps warning Malick and Chand that he will put them behind bars if they don’t hold their peace.
And because of a lot of complications, Malick and Chand are forced to share their apartment as they both cannot individually afford to pay 500 dollars as rent. The house is partitioned in to two sections, the dividing line running through the drawing room. On one side stays the Pakistani family and on the other side the Indian Family.
However, Chand’s wife Saira sees her older sister Sufi Appa in Malick’s wife and Malick’s wife Manpreet is ever ready to welcome Saira. On the other had, Malick’s son Virendra sees Raj Kapur’s Heena in Chand’s daughter Reshma, while Reshma finds her favourite hero Govinda in Virendra. Malick and Chand’s sons Dharminder and Sultan are forever engaged in playing cricket with each other. Whatever happens between the two families has to do a lot with the current relations between India and Pakistan.
Outside the apartment is a common lawn, which the families again fight over. It is what Kashmir is to India and Pakistan; and this is triggered by Chand’s brother-in-law Imtiazi a.k.a. ISI. Even the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Wright, take optimum advantage of this quarrel between the two families and keep producing exorbitant bills for the old furniture, which is frequently broken by Chand and Malick.
But despite these daily slugging matches, the two stand by each other in times of trouble. Against this love-hate relationship are played out the lives of these two families, producing great moments of laughter at the restaurant and at home.