British filmmaker of Indian origin Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (BILB) was a game-changer that brought a fresh, spirited take on Punjabi culture and Bollywood to western cinema in 2002. Chadha’s films paved the way for diverse storytelling long before Bridgerton made interracial love stories mainstream. Her upcoming project, Christmas Karma — a Bollywood-inspired adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Kunal Nayyar — continues that tradition. Currently in Mumbai, Chadha spoke with Bombay Times about the much-anticipated BILB sequel, her love for Bollywood and telling stories of immigrants. Read on...

Well, I am exploring the idea. I loved working with Eva Longoria on Christmas Karma, and we were talking about BILB because Eva co-owns several football clubs. I was never interested in returning to Bend It Like Beckham because it’s such a special film for so many people, but the incredible growth of women’s football around the world has made me excited to return to this world. So many international players have told me that Bend It Like Beckham inspired them to play, so I want to celebrate women’s football and look at the challenges that are still there for women to thrive on an equal playing field. I’m excited to bring back all of our beloved characters and see where they are in their lives now. Can you imagine? Jess Bhamra in her forties!

What can I say, I am always ahead of the game (smiles). The world takes time to catch up with me, but it’s okay. Bride & Prejudice is very popular around the world. I was surprised — I was in LA and had gone for dinner to my friend’s place, and her niece (an Italian girl around 12) told me that when she and her friends have sleepovers, this is the movie they watch and the one they dance to as well.”

I feel it’s like a soothing balm for a lot of people. I grew up celebrating Christmas in England as a child, with stockings and cookies. My father would place carrots and whiskey out for Santa Claus. Then he would get up in the morning and say, ‘Look, Santa came and drank my whiskey!’ And we would exclaim, ‘Oh my God! Santa drank your whiskey!’ It was party time, where we all ate together. That was our version of Christmas. So, I was going to make my unique version with a holiday movie that celebrated Christmas the way we did. I am super happy because I have the first Christmas bhangra song in the world in my movie.

It’s all about economics. The first thing that people do when things go down is blame the immigrants. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. The problem in England is that there are no manufacturing jobs. The people at large don’t have the educational qualifications to do the kind of jobs that they would like and earn the kind of money that people who are educated and work hard have. So there are scapegoats with nowhere to run. My children and their generation see race in a very different way. They actually don’t see colour. Times are changing, but I also feel there is something called the English culture. I grew up with it. For some people, it is also important to have English culture and traditions. We should uphold our traditions, but not lose theirs either. So, this Christmas film is from a nation of both cultures and also about what Christmas means to someone like me, or say, Jess Bhamra from Bend It Like Beckham, and how she would be celebrating with her family. It’s a very British interpretation, and I think the message and meaning of Christmas is to give thanks, to do charity and to be kind.

I want to work with Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan. There are so many great actors in India that I’d love to work with. If I ever get a chance, I want to make a Punjabi film. I do have a subject, and I am talking to someone. Let’s see if I can make it happen. I’d love to make a film in India in an Indian language. I have done so many crossover films now, it would be a great experience to do something different. 

Gurinder met Virat Kohli at a charity event in London. Does she follow cricket and can someone like him be the centre of her film in the near future, given his global fan following?

She replied, “I think it’s his wife (Anushka) we need to ask. She’s the actor. We met at a charity sporting event and there was a lot of security around him. At one point, I tapped him on his shoulder and he just turned around and said ‘Oh ma’am, ma’am!’ And he called me ma’am, Oh My Lord! And then we got out and he told me, he loves London and he’s settling in well. So that was a nice interaction. My father loved cricket but I am not an expert. I think a true cricket lover should make a film about Virat – it would be a smash!”

Director Gurider Chadha and producer Anushka Shah

It’s been two weeks since Gurinder Chadha released her upcoming feature, Christmas Karma, in the UK, the country where she lives. It’s a week before she releases the film in India, the country she carries with her everywhere. Like her film, Chadha has always found her belonging there and here.

So, as we sit with her, in a Mumbai suburb club, to talk about the film, we can’t help but ask her, “What’s home for you?” “Southhall is my home,” Chadha replies promptly, while browsing through her phone gallery to show us the street she grew up in.

 

“And I always end up going back to those streets. I was there last week and I did a little activity with local school children to open their Christmas festival. I saw one particular area where the first Indian shop in Southall opened, where my parents used to go. Next to it was a playground where I played as a little girl,” the filmmaker shares with a child-like excitement.

Her love for her British roots and Indian origin is reflected throughout her filmography. Christmas Karma is no different, in that context. But something else is different this time, Chadha says. “When I adapted Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice (as Bride & Prejudice), no one asked why Gurinder Chadha should do this. But because the country’s moved a bit to the right, there are people who feel emboldened, and they are asking, ‘Why should Gurinder Chadha do Charles Dickens? How dare she make a film on Christmas? It’s our holiday’.”

In such times, a film like Christmas Karma that puts an Indian immigrant in the UK at the centre of the story is only timely. Chadha says, “There’s a fight going on for who decides what British cinema is and whose voice is considered to be British or not. It’s really important that those questions are being asked at a time when racism is on the increase. I make films for those fighting the good fight, ones who talk about inclusivity. I don’t make films for bigoted racists or colonialists.”

But it’s not to say that the director doesn’t feel isolated at times. “Sitting here, we’re all Indian women, right? I’m not anything unusual to you. In England, I’m a complete anomaly. Where are the Indian women? Where are the actual directors?”

That’s a question that does need to be asked. Throughout her career, Chadha has been a force to reckon with when it comes to telling stories of the Indian diaspora, including successes like Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Bride & Prejudice (2004). But there haven’t been voices after her that have been able to make themselves heard and seen. The first thing to understand, Chadha says, is the struggle that theatres in the UK have been facing since  the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“In England, people are saying, ‘It’s a miracle that you’ve got a film made, because there’s so little getting made right now.’ Post-pandemic, it’s been a tough time for all film industries, everywhere. So, that is also something to be kept in mind,” she says. But that just scratches the surface. The bigger obstacle for any South-Asian filmmaker in the west is still rooted in his/her identity.

“When you try and make a film with a person of colour as the lead, it’s very hard because people don’t see it as necessarily as mainstream and commercial as we think it is. And this is when I have proved the opposite with my films. I have examples. I have numbers to support it. I tell them, ‘I don’t understand. Why are you hesitant? Look at the successes.’ I am shocked by the lack of films from the diaspora. I also didn’t make a sequel to Bend It Like Beckham because I felt that that was a film that I couldn’t really emulate,” she says.

But her single-minded pursuit to tell stories of Indian immigrants stems from a personal emotion, which she is not sure motivates the generations of filmmakers that came after. Even Christmas Karma, the adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, is born out of the endeavour, Chadha says, of showing that the struggles of her ancestors, who had to leave their land behind, weren’t in vain.

“Christmas Karma comes from the same wheelhouse as Bend It Like Beckham. It’s a human empowerment movie. It’s about having the muscle memory of knowing that your parents and your grandparents went through some kind of migratory movement. In my case, it was a partition that my grandparents went through. Then my parents were born in East Africa. I was born in Kenya, but I grew up in England. And you carry all that with you. So, the successes of my generation are really about wanting to show that our parents’ lives were worth it. And their struggles were worth it,” she smiles.

And in her endeavour, she always ends up finding allies. Even though the director initially struggled to find investors for Christmas Karma, she eventually found a partner in producer Anushka Shah, whose Civic Studios has backed the project. And if her films have been unifiers for Indians around the world, in her life, she has forged a sisterhood with Indian women, who walk the same path as hers.

One such bond is what she shares with filmmakers Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta. The trio has a WhatsApp group as well, which goes by the name “Behenji Brigade”.

“Mira gave this name. I congratulated her on Zohran’s (Mamdani, Nair’s son) win. I messaged her, ‘Bohot Mubarak, Mira. What wonderful news to wake up to. It is great that my son has such a role model to look up to. Kya baat hai.’ Then Deepa wrote, ‘Bilkul, Mira. Many, many congratulations. Waah Bhai Waah.’ Mira said, ’It’s the dawn of a new day. We’re bursting with joy,’” Chadha shares.

And if there’s another friendship that the filmmaker is proud of, it’s with Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra, who even sang a Hindi cover of George Michael’s Last Christmas for Chadha’s film.

“She is just amazing. She is always sending me messages, where she would say, ‘Keep breaking new ground.’ She doesn’t have to do that. She sang the song to support me. Priyanka is also a woman who left the safety of Hindi cinema and went abroad, and had to knock on doors to get recognition. She did it the hard way. Maybe some people in India don’t see that struggle but I have seen it. I know what it is like for her because I know what it has been like for me.”