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| KAT CALLS: Selina Hotwani, who’s hoping to do it like Katrina Kaif |
Bond it like Bollywood
With the notable exception of Katrina Kaif, not too many British Indian actors have made it in Bollywood. She has become a role model for aspiring British Indian youth with whom Bollywood is bonding in a big way.
“She really is an eye opener,” enthuses Selina Hotwani, a delightful cast member of Patiala House recruited from Britain.
Selina was speaking at a preview of the film at the Harrow Safari Cinema, a still shabby but iconic north London venue that has loyally screened Hindi films over the decades.
Patiala House tells the story of an Indian lad, Parghat Singh Kahlon aka Gattu, (Akshay Kumar) whose ambition is to play cricket for his country but there is a problem — “I’m British Asian and my country is England”. Owing to a racist murder years ago of a member of the family, the boy’s father (Rishi Kapoor) considers the very notion of playing for England tantamount to treason.
Gattu was a fast bowler who had taken Nasser Hussain’s wicket on three occasions in the distant past, as “Naz”, who puts in an engaging cameo appearance as himself — along with David Gower, Graham Gooch and Andrew Symonds — is generous enough to recall.
Patiala House, which owes something to Bend It Like Beckham, proves a good cricket film is hard to make. Still, the mostly young crowd appeared well disposed to a movie set in familiar Southall plus Lords and the Oval.
Selina, born and brought up in Kingsbury, north London, did a degree in design and planning at University College London where she is “still doing my masters”.
Fellow cast member, Ankush Khanna, 19, who comes from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was keen to do a maths degree but his parents were equally happy for him to pursue “performance arts”.
A third cast member, Londoner Armaan Kirmani, 23, who plays Akshay’s younger brother, studied at University College School, “got straight A grades” at “A” level, went to Queens’ College, Cambridge, and graduated with a 2:1 in law.
Selina compared Indians in Britain with their counterparts in India — “over here we try to get back to our traditional roots, over there they follow very much what is perceived to be western”.
Ankush agreed — “The Indians in England are constantly trying to be more Indian and the Indians in India are trying to be more western”.
Armaan, a cricketer who “grew up watching Kapil Dev and Imran Khan”, told me: “In India they try and imitate the West a lot more and over here we stick to our culture.”
But all admitted they have been badly bitten by the bug — they are keen to return to Bollywood and Rishi Kapoor’s school of overacting.
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| ETHNIC TOUCH: David Cameron at the UK-India CEO Forum with (left to right) Chanda Kochhar, Peter Sands and Ratan Tata |
Soft power
The recent photograph of David Cameron at 10, Downing Street, presiding over the recent summit of the high powered UK-India CEO Forum shows the British Prime Minister flanked by the organisation’s two co-chairmen, Ratan Tata and Peter Sands of Standard Chartered.
Opposite Cameron is seated Anand Mahindra of Mahindra & Mahindra.
But one along from Sands is the elegant Chanda Kochhar, part of the “petticoat gang” that is said to run Indian banks and especially ICICI where she is managing director and CEO. Some say it is because of the women that Indian banks, unlike their western counterparts, did not get into trouble.
In India, people have probably got so used to assertive women that they may be unaware that nothing short of a social revolution has taken place. When Indian delegations come to London, British ministers are invariably charmed by meeting someone in a beautiful sari. It makes such a pleasant change from all the grey men in grey suits.
Take, for example, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. Or the foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao. And, not least, despite the unkind things that have been written about her recently, the President, Pratibha Patil.
This, as much as anything else, is a demonstration of India’s truly remarkable “soft power”.
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Coming home
M.M. Kaye’s masterpiece, The Far Pavilions, currently being dramatised on BBC Radio 4, made me get in touch once again with Elaine Cameron.
She was the one who read the novel as a young girl at school and thought it would be ideal for turning into a film or a musical.
“I first read the novel when I was 18 years old and just about to go off to Stirling University in Scotland to read French,” Elaine recalled last week.
“I vividly remember choosing it as much for the illustration on the cover as for the description of the story contained within.”
The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation, in 20 parts, each 15 minutes long, has been done by a prolific Pakistani writer in Britain, Rukhsana Ahmad. It is not her fault that the Indian accents on radio owe perhaps a little too much to the late Peter Sellers.
But as for the story itself of Ashok/Ash (Ashton Pelham-Martyn), the English boy with an Indian heart, Elaine said: “This tale of high adventure set in what seemed a distant and incredibly exotic land, totally captivated my heart and mind. It was a heady mix of heart-stopping drama, palace intrigues, sibling rivalry and a love story that won through against all the odds. I hardly slept from the moment I picked it up to the moment I set it down, weeping buckets.”
Kaye, who was born in India in 1908, died at her home in England on January 29, 2004. At the request of her family, Elaine and her then husband, Michael Ward, who were about to put on a musical version of The Far Pavilions in the London West End, took Kaye’s ashes back “home” and scattered them over the waters of Lake Pichola in Udaipur.
“Little did I know that that 18-year-old girl would one day get to meet the novelist she held in such high esteem or, even more unbelievably, have the honour and privilege of returning some of her ashes to her beloved India,” said Elaine.
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Tropic of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, flew in and out of London last week to do just one book event.
But I was lucky enough to catch up with him at a venue where the audience were themselves either cancer doctors or researchers — at the University College London’s Cancer Institute in the Paul ’Gorman Building just off Tottenham Court Road.
Siddhartha, who was in Jaipur recently, should do a book tour of India sooner rather than later.
Emperor of All Maladies, published in the US in early November, is still on The New York Times bestseller list.
Tittle tattle
Oh, dear. Kate Middleton had lunch last week with mother-in-law to be, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. For starters, Camilla allowed Kate to eat foie gras knowing Prince Charles detests the goose pate because of the cruelty involved in making this dish.
The last person Camilla advised in a similar heart to heart before her marriage was her rival, Diana Spencer, then a gullible 19, whom she saw off the premises.
Kate is not a rival in the same sense but royal watchers say she should watch her back. It all sounds like an Indian soap.
