A proper Chadha-type Christmas!

Irsquove figured a polite way to work around a rather rude question as I first did with late Kundan Shah about Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro 1983Which is to recall that Joseph Heller was once asked why he could never write another book as great as Catch22 Heller had said then ldquoNobody else could eitherrdquoLikewise for director Gurinder Chadha and her classic Bend It Like Beckham 2002 isnrsquot it mdashthat her company is named after and that follows her still with its evergrowing fans no matter where she is including onstage with me at the India Film Project fanfest in MumbaiChadha says ldquoBend It Like Beckham just hit at the right time It came out six months after 911 when something had shifted in the worldldquoOf course I struggled to make that film for threefour years Everybody laughed at the idea of girls playing football never mind an Indian girl But I pushed and pushed Beckham supported usrdquo To emphasise on reach Chadha says Bend It Like Beckham ldquoremains the only film in the history of cinema to have been distributed in every country of the world including North KoreardquoThatrsquos crazy She agreesThe first time I saw a film directed by Chadha Bhaji On The Beach was as a kid at the British Council in New Delhi mdash totally struck by the joyous style of storytelling while films about Indian Diaspora were usually such insulated clicheacutes on the migrant experienceEver since Chadha 65 has directed nine featuresScreenwriter and filmmaker Gurinder Chadha PicGetty ImagesChristmas Karma that opens in Indian theatres December 12 is her latest release mdash a proper peppy musical based on Charles Dickensrsquos novella A Christmas Carol starring a multiculti cast headlined by the Delhibred Kunal Nayyar as in Raj from Big Bang TheoryThe film ends with Priyanka Chopra singing a Hindi version of Whamrsquos Last Christmas in the closing creditsNayyar plays the grumpy Scrooge named Mr Sood whose lifersquos centred on money while he perceives Christmas as an event alien to his own cultureThis hardnosed gent Chadha tells me is based on a young man of Indianorigin she knew in London who had moved from Uganda once dictator Idi Amin had expelled Asians in 90 days flatThe OG Scrooge suffered from a childhood trauma So does Sood Only no two traumas are ever the same And thatrsquos the uniquely felt perspective only the Kenyanborn Punjabi BritishAsian Chadha can bring to the mainstreamTherersquos a fine episode in a documentary series Who Do You Think You Are on YouTube where Chadha traces her family roots down to prepartition Pakistan that offers you a fair sense of the history of her family that eventually moved to Southall LondonThere was a point in the early 2000s when three Indianorigin filmmakers all women mdash Deepa Mehta Canada Mira Nair US Chadha England mdash had dominated the Diaspora scene to a point that an ignoramus could confuse one for the other Chadha makes it known that she belongs to a starkly different stock In the sense that she says ldquoMira gets more identified as Indian because she grew up in Delhi As did Deepa The influences of Mirarsquos son Zohran Mamdani New York Cityrsquos mayorelect of UgandanIndian origin is more like minerdquoAt perhaps the only time the three women veterandirectors have publicly chatted together for NYCrsquos Asia Society I remember Chadha suggesting that whatever her moviersquos genremilieu itrsquoll always address racismWhich is obviously an important theme especially for the West presently witnessing an upsurge in antiimmigration as a collective political sentimentChadha says ldquoThe BBCrsquos economic correspondent told me recently hersquod done a report on Silicon Valley and met all the Indian CEOs None of them wanted to talk about the situation While so powerful they felt vulnerable in the current climaterdquoPerhaps normalising multicultural characters especially leads in purely popular entertainment is the subtle answerVery fablelike Christmas Karma is decidedly a childrenrsquos film And thatrsquos the only way to see it mdash more like a Bollywood musical since the songs neednrsquot always take the story forward The music and dance can exist for its own sakeChadha tells me she did make the film for her children revealing an incident her eightyearold went through once in school ldquoA white English boy told my son that his colour is the same as poopldquoI asked my son did he feel bad He said yes Then itrsquos racism Whatrsquos also true is that all other white kids in the school made an intervention when that incident happened telling that boy to take his words backrdquoSoon after Bend It Like Beckham had released with nobody having any idea about how big it would become an early viewer of the film in Oldham Manchester had come up to Chadha to tell her the film was far from a comedyThat it had deeply spoken to her town where a racial riot had taken place recentlyChadha remembers ldquoIrsquoll never forget what she told me mdash that itrsquos a story about how at the end of the day everybody wants the best for their kids Isnrsquot that an amazing leveler for society regardless of colourcaste religionhelliprdquoMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweetsmayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper