It was Gurinder Chadha’s 2014 romantic drama Bride and Prejudice, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Martin Henderson, that got a woman living in Illinois interested in Indian film stars. So much so, that she reached out to a local video store that stocked a vast collection of films in all languages, courtesy a major international university in the town, and borrowed the DVDs for two films, one of which was Mujhse Dosti Karoge (2002), starring Hrithik Roshan, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Rani Mukerji. Beth Watkins says, “I definitely did not understand it very well. The best thing in that film was the song medley, and although I did not know any of those references, it was fun! I still love Rani Mukerji and Kareena Kapoor.”

Watkins, 47, who works with the exhibits and education department at the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures at the University of Illinois, began her love affair with Indian cinema with the launch of her blog, Beth Loves Bollywood. Here, she would talk about the films, often from a critic’s perspective. But her interest in Indian films went beyond Bollywood. Watkins claims to have watched 1,101 Indian films, out of which 850 are Hindi, 175 Bengali, and the rest a mix of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.