Art Malik (right) with the cast of Upstairs, Downstairs. (BBC Worldwide)

Art of the matter

Remember Art Malik? He was the promising 22-year-old actor who played pretty Indian boy Hari Kumar way back in 1984 in Granada Television’s 14-part The Jewel in the Crown, based on Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet novels on the last days of the British in India.

That was a triumph of British television. Hari Kumar, an Indian educated at public school in England, considers himself to be English when he arrives in India to stay with his aunt and try his hand at journalism. But when an Englishwoman, Daphne Manners, with whom he has a romance, is raped, Hari Kumar is not saved by his British upbringing.

He is wrongly accused of the crime and tortured in prison by an English police officer with an inferior education. The latter, who is hurt Daphne had rejected his offer of marriage in favour of a blossoming relationship with Hari Kumar, is also a suppressed homosexual who finds himself aroused by the Indian he is torturing.

Art Malik, born Athar Ul-Haque Malik in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, on November 13, 1952, came with his parents to Britain in 1956. He has had plenty of good work over the years but perhaps not fulfilled the early promise of greatness.

He could have been Lord Malik or even Sir Art. Instead, he has sometimes been pushed into playing stereotypical Muslim parts. Indians might remember him as the crazed terrorist Salim Abu Aziz opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994).

Last week, happily, we had Malik back on our screens in a wonderful period drama, Upstairs, Downstairs, even though his role is not a central one.

It is worth pointing out that when it comes to period drama, with excellent script, memorable acting, scrupulous attention to historical detail and gripping story lines, the British are the best in the world.

Malik is cast as Mr Amanjit, the loyal and dependable Sikh secretary to the Dowager Maud, Lady Holland, a widow who has returned to England after the death of her husband, who had been a senior member of the Indian Civil Service. Lady Holland and Mr Amanjit have also brought Solomon, a pet monkey with a weakness for thick cut marmalade.

The year is 1936, three years from the start of the Second World War, when King Edward VIII is about to abdicate because of his determination to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson, a twice divorced American woman.
We see Mrs Simpson attend a cocktail party at 165, Eaton Place, which is the home of Lady Holland’s son, Sir Hallam Holland, a senior Foreign Office official, and his wife, Lady Agnes.

As the title of the series implies, the story involves the aristocratic family “upstairs” as well as the servants “downstairs” — a formula which I think would work very well in India.

Last week’s three-part series is a revival of the original hugely successful Upstairs, Downstairs, also set at 165, Eaton Place, which ran for 68 episodes between 1971 and 1975 and covered the period from 1903 to 1930.

Thus we have a six-year gap — 1930 to 1936 — before we witness 165, Eaton Place, returning to life with a new family.

Upstairs, Downstairs, and another recent period drama, Downtown Abbey, also set in the very English world of aristocrats and servants, are definitely worth buying for screening in India.

Rani Mukerji and Vidya Balan. (below) Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Mitchell in Gia

Les fake

The Rani Mukerji-Vidya Balan passionate but promotional liplock was “les” than convincing. Anyway, compared with Hollywood, which Bollywood stars copy slavishly, desi lesbian chic is 20 years out of date. Keen to take sex beyond the heterosexual, American television has been experimenting with lesbian kisses since that between the characters CJ Lamb and Abby Perkins in an episode of LA Law in February 1991.

Lesbian sex has become almost a staple in Hollywood as demonstrated by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in Mulholland Drive (2001); Denise Richards and Neve Campbell in Wild Things (1998); Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon in Bound (1996); Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983); Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Mitchell in Gia (1998); Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions (1999); Jennifer Connelly and Kristy Swanson in Higher Learning (1995); Emmanuelle Seigner and Kristin Scott Thomas in Bitter Moon (1992); and Penelope Cruz and Charlize Theron in Head in the Clouds (2004).

Rani Mukerji and Vidya Balan wouldn’t even get to bring out the drinks.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and the Elle cover

What the Elle?

Even the Daily Mail picked up on the alleged “race row” provoked by Elle magazine’s India edition publishing a cover photograph of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan that depicted the actress as being several shades paler that she really is.

But an important aspect of the story has been overlooked. In the West, casting directors almost prefer their Indian actresses to be relatively dark complexioned. Freida Pinto probably would not have been cast for Slumdog Millionaire had she been as fair as Ash, nor Tannishtha Chatterjee for Brick Lane.

I know of a young Indian woman who was reluctant to return home to India at the end of a three-month scholarship programme in London. “Here boys call me beautiful which is a new and exciting experience for me,” she confided. “I even had a romance with a boy I met in Paris at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. Back in my office, the men ignore me because I am dark.”

In Britain, dark is often deemed more desirable — dark chocolate, dark secrets, dark looks and dark corners. I have yet to come across the expression, “tall, white and handsome”.

Last take

The Sky Heel, about to be unveiled in fashionable shoe shops in London, seems
tailor-made for vertically challenged Bollywood actresses (and a few men as well). The Sky Heel, available in either gold or sin red, boasts a nine-inch stiletto. “It’s nothing short of stilts,” noted a shocked fashion writer. “Doing anything other than standing stock still could be distinctly hazardous.”

The price ought to include life insurance.