Sandy Gandhi

Sandy Gandhi (born Sandy Aranha) is an Australian comedian and columnist based in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia. Byron Bay is Australia's easternmost point, and accordingly Gandhi proclaims herself to be "Australia's Most Easterly Indian".^[1]

Biography

Sandy Aranha was born in New Delhi, India. She spent most of her time there in Bangalore before relocating with her family to Melbourne, Australia at the age of 12. At 21 she went to London, and her work there as a tour operator took her travelling all over the world. When not doing her stand up comedy or writing her column, Gandhi is a carer, working with people with dementia and people with acute schizophrenia.^[2]

Stand up comedy

Gandhi regularly performs stand-up shows around Northern New South Wales. She also featured in the 2008 Melbourne Comedy Festival. Her brand of ethnic comedy combines observational humour with Indian stereotypes, drawing also on the fact that there is a large Indian-Australian population in Northern New South Wales.^[3] Ethnic humour is a popular form of comedy in Australia, which has a multicultural population.^[4]

In early 2008 she returned to India and performed there, including an appearance at her childhood home of Bangalore. Since she currently lives near Bangalow, northern NSW, she refers to her Indian tour as "From Bangalow to Bangalore".^[5]

Writings

Gandhi also writes a humorous column titled "Enlighten Up" which appears in The Pulse, the weekly entertainment supplement to the Lismore Northern Star.

Her first book, also called Enlighten Up and containing a compilation of her columns was released (or as Gandhi put it "was given birth to")^[6] in August 2008. Enlighten Up is published by Melbourne Books, Australia.^[7]

TV appearance

On 4 February 2009 she appeared on the Australian Channel Seven Network's Australia's Got Talent program. ^[8]

She was selected to go through to the semi finals which was aired on 11 March 2009.^[9]

Sources