Director Paul Mayeda Berges was quoted in DNA today about his new movie The Mistress of Spices:
The other key element was to… give each spice its own Indian instrument so you could know when they were calling out to Tilo. The chillies warn her with a tabla. Chandan, kala jeera, tulsi, hing and cinnamon each have their own sounds.
I’ll bet that what the spices are telling Tilo is, ‘Stop exoticizing us, wench!’ Spice-tabla-Chocolat-sex: Tilo Does Oakland 
All I have to say is … Aishwarya Rai.
A new record: I needed to read only the first two words of the title of this post to guess its author.
Awesome.
Spicy.
I hope the movie will be good because for some reason, I found this book completely unreadable.
Dramatic background music
“It’s the spices…..the spices are angry !!!”
(or words to that effect).
Somebody please tell me how you can say (or listen to) those lines with a straight face.
Also, this is the third film in a row where Gurinder Chadha has portrayed a white leading actor opposite an Indian heroine. I don’t know if this is to make the movie more marketable to mainstream Western audiences (unfortunate but understandable, if she thinks that having a male desi romantic lead would make the film too “niche”), or if she’s actually got some other underlying issue going on.
Jai ~ this movie is based on a book written by Chitra Divakaruni in which the woman is Indian and the male lead is white so doesn’t have much to do with Chaddha.
Though I do always think about her white/brown fixation in her movies as well. Maybe she wants to present her own brown/white marriage through her movies? =)
Sonia,
I knew it was based on a book but it does beg the question as to why she chose yet another desi heroine-white hero story to portray (there must be other novels out there where both main characters are South Asian ?). This combo is getting a little old now — when I first saw the commercials for the new movie I thought “Oh no, here we go again”.
I used to dismiss the following argument as the usual knee-jerk desi oversensitivity when other Indians commented on it in response to Gurinder Chadha’s previous films, but — having thought the matter over — not one of her recent films has had a really sympathetic, “positive” male Indian character (apart from the fathers played by Anupam Kher). Even Bend It Like Beckham had only one such character from the younger generation, and he was deliberately shown as being gay rather than someone “mainstream”.
I’m not saying all the other male Indian characters were shown as “negative” (eg. Naveen Andrews in “Bride & Prejudice”, Kulvinder Ghir in “Bend It…..”), but they do seem to be very much relegated to secondary roles, with the most “heroic” person always being the white leading actor.
I agree — it was pretty obvious when I saw the final sequence during the end-credits of Bride & Prejudice 😉
Old for whom? Let’s go back to “normal”? I’m sorry, this doesn’t wash. The combo is her reality, and increasingly that of many other people. It’s not getting old at all. In fact, it’s all quite new. Brown on brown doesn’t need any champions, and I don’t see y’all criticizing other filmmakers for not promoting combos. Chaddha is not there to “represent” you, she’s there to be true to her artistic vision.
Intolerance is a wily creature. Be careful it doesn’t snag you.
From the very little that I read of the book, the main character Tilo is supposed to be really really old in the beginning. Is tmbwitw going to don the make up and ‘age’ herself? You can tell..I haven’t seen the previews.
Jai
You forget something – desi guys are the last ethnic group it is acceptable to sterotype and depict as nothing but scum in the world of cinema these days. When was the last time you saw a positive non scumbag portrayal of a desi man in British cinema recently? It makes you paranoid – it’s like, hey, what’s wrong with us? Plus I think that it wouldnt be commercial – white boy on brown girl is a big wish fulfilment fantasy out there, makes them feel cosy and safe. And at the end of the day it’s all about the box office. Latest in this long line of movies is the soon to be released Love and Hate about a white boy and a Pakistani girl in the north of England, ummm, yeah, it’s like, another Romeo and Juliet for our time, etc etc etc. You would think that this narrative had been done to death a thousand times but no, there’s still mileage in it. I too thought I was being over-sensitive, but you know what? I’m not. It really is the way it is.
damn, manish,
i’m beginning to suspect that you were traumatized by a cardamom pod as a child. yo! let the spices do their thing! if they decide to take over the bland and flavorless landscape of anglo-american mass culture, what’s not to love about that?
i’m calling you out, bredren. tashie is right: you need to get your fine diasporic ass out there into the city, or better yet, the country. a nation of mutineers turns its lonely eyes towards you. you’re the chosen one, the one we’ve got bridging the gap. you’ve got a higher calling than satirizing tired old jhumpa and railing against the cheap exoticists who don’t deserve your high-IQ attention.
we demand a mutiny!
Al Jibraiq
Jai is intolerant? Be careful you don’t get snagged with lame reductions yourself, my friend.
I thought Chadha’s husband was Japanese-American?
And yeah, I thought this book was crashingly, fist-eatingly boring. I didn’t really care what happened at the end but I have a nerdy rule against leaving books half-read so I finished it anyway.
I diasagree – cliche is the enemy of good art and literature and Manish does a good job of sending up the fatuousness of the exoticisation – plus it is fun. Keep it up Manish!
Chaddha has an artistic vision?
Can someone explain it to me please?
Heh heh. Good call. But still, she don’t have to toe nobody’s line. By the way, I wasn’t calling Jai intolerant. I was just saying intolerance is a wily creature, one that can lurk in the cloaks of authenticity. Ask any mixed race person if they think the white-brown theme is “played out,” or ask anyone married to someone of another race if the the combo is “getting old.” The world is not “us” versus “them” for those of us who are both “us” and “them.”
Al Jibraiq,
Do a ‘search’ here on SM regarding my previous posts on the blog and see for yourself exactly how “intolerant” I am, including with regards to dating & interracial relationships.
Since you appear to be relatively new here, I can understand your initial response, but it would be wise to refrain from making unfounded assumptions about my own motivations for making the comments above or indeed about my stance on white/South Asian relationships (both on-screen and in real life).
When I said “this combo is getting old”, I was actually referring specifically to Gurinder Chaddha’s own films — which, as we have all stated, do indeed reflect her own marital relationship — not the nature of such relationships in the real-world.
Once again, I didn’t call you anything. I just said be careful. It’s good advice.
You’re getting extremely hot under the collar yaar. I have made no assumptions about your motivations.
You say “the combo is getting a little old.” I say “old for whom”? Don’t get your knickers in a twist.
(And as for your assumption that I’m “relatively new here,” well, don’t be fooled. Things aren’t always what they seem.)
Their heat runs in my blood. From amchur to zafran, they bow to my command. At a whisper they yield up to me their hidden properties, their magic powers…”
No seriously, this looks like the reprise of an old Penelope Cruz movie where she hosts a TV cooking show but the station execs want to mainly focus on her fiery latin passion. You could almost do a word substitution trick on that plot to get to the MoS.
This was the most boring Divakaruni book I have ever read. Arranged Marriage wasn’t as bad and Sisters of my Heart was quite good -infact that would be perfect for a movie imho.
Al Jibraiq
I’m not getting “hot under the collar” — I’m saying that I don’t need the “advice”. If you really are a long-term visitor to SM then you should be aware of the true irony of regarding it necessary to advise me on this issue in the first place — even more so if you knew anything about my own personal life.
Old for many members of her audience, at least those from an Indian background and others who will notice the pattern. One can understand the “message” being conveyed w.r.t the necessity for greater tolerance of white/desi relationships these days, especially in the case of the more conservative members of the older generation — and for the record, I live in London and have spent my entire life here, so I am hardly naive about such matters, both with regards to other South Asians and indeed my own life-experience — and this was a pertinent point in “Bend It Like Beckham”, but when you have the same situation 3 films in a row, it does raise questions (especially as the first two films portrayed the lead female characters as being from the most “traditional” Punjabi families possible, obviously based in London and Amritsar respectively).
In any case, as you have correctly stated, Gurinder Chaddha has the artistic freedom — and indeed the complete right — to make her films as she deems fit. However, since these films are geared for public consumption and not for a private audience, the rest of us do also have the right to raise any questions if we deem it appropriate and possibly justified.
I agree. Even ‘Queen of Dreams’ was better.
Jay Singh,
I can’t think of any, apart from the gay character in “Bend It…..” and Anupam Kher’s fatherly character, as I mentioned earlier. Not that there are many desi characters in British films anyway 😉
British television, however, is a different matter. There have been quite a few major male South Asian characters in some high-profile dramas recently, with some very positive portrayals too.
I just think it’s unfortunate that there are hardly any such characters in British films, and in the movies which are made by British (South) Asian producers/directors, set in a predominatly Asian storyline, and with enough publicity to actually reach the mainstream market, there are essentially no “heroic” male desi figures at all 😉
Anyway, I don’t want to detract from the main topic of this thread, regarding demonic spices lurking in one’s masala box. “The spices are coming…..The spices will destroy us all !!!”
Lord have mercy…..
Msichana – Yes, the book was horrid.
Magic spices my ass.
Saw a clip of the movie this weekend, it was horrendous. The same stereotypical scene where ash is tending to Dylan McDermott, looks up catches him looking at her, eyes meet for a fleeting second. She suddenly feels shy and looks away. yuk!!
It is strange that it’s always desi girl with white boy, and not just by Chadha. I’ve seen desi boy with white boy (My Beautiful Laundrette), but never desi boy and white girl. Anyone ever seen a major storyline involving a desi boy and white girl?
dharma queen
There was one last year about a Pakistani guy with a white girl set in Scotland – but it was all so tedious in the examination of Islam and the West, a big sociology lecture more than a movie
I don’t know about that…as dharma queen points out:
By the old conventions, if the boy is white and the girl is desi, she is joining his community. But if the girl is white and the boy is desi, by that rule she is “lost” by the white community…brings up old ghosts of “they want to take our white women.”
If movie after movie portrays mixed white boy-desi girl relationships, where the available desi boys are “no good,” what does that say to young desi kids growing up in the US (and maybe UK)?
White-boy-desi-girl movies which didn’t automatically demonize the desi boys in the process would be a different story.
Heh, I sound like my dad many years ago when he took me to see “Karate Kid III” (Macchio and a Japanese girl in Okinawa, with eeevil Japanese young guy who keeps trying to fight Macchio for the girl).
It makes them feel good – love triumphs, and they can show that brown boys are scum – that’s what they want to watch – it’s a succesful formula – why should producers change it? As everyone knows, desi men are scumbags without remission, and the audiences need this reaffirmed time and again.
East is East and ABCD.
And The Namesake which should be coming out later this year.
And American Chai.
I didn’t see ABCD, but I thought East is East had a host of problems. Basically any male and most of the females who were born in South Asia were labelled ‘Pakis’ and were villains. The people born in the UK with Western attitudes were alright. I’m not sure having a desi boy-white girl storyline is so great when its set against the backdrop of a demonization of all so-called ‘Pakis’. That storyline is secondary to the larger message – which is, you’re okay if you learn to ridicule and despise your origins.
i thought the guy in the book is supposed to be native american?
the sexual assault threads from a few days ago are full of testimonial about boorish and ignorant behavior by desi young men, enabled by patterns of gender privilege and preference within the community — and family — that can be subtle or strong but never completely fade away.
i was a teaching assistant in grad school when the first big crop of us-raised desis hit college in the early 1990s and it was a real eye-opener to hear the complaints of the young desi sisters about how weak, immature, and sexist the desi brothers were, and of the desi brothers about how stuck-up the sisters were.
if desi female writers and filmmakers are finding material in stories that have desi sisters finding their way in the world by exploring outside the community for their relationships, well, surely that means that there is some material there to be mined.
time has passed and there are numerous counter-stories and whatnot to be told as well. to the brothers who are upset at all these portrayals, i say, start writing your own book, or making your own movie.
better than criticizing the narrative is making the narrative. that’s what a mutiny is all about.
peace
“i’m beginning to suspect that you were traumatized by a cardamom pod as a child. yo! let the spices do their thing! if they decide to take over the bland and flavorless landscape of anglo-american mass culture, what’s not to love about that?”
that was funny! (sorry manish, just found the wording funny, not going to get into the whole exoticization thing again). speaking of exoticization and stereotypes, did anyone see the Simpson’s episode last Sunday?
don’t know what all of Chadha’s or any other director’s motivations are but i think money and commercial acceptance plays a part. i think they sometimes underestimate the intelligence of a western audience and assume you have to have a Hollywood or western star in any movie that will be acceptable to western audiences. Mira Nair proved with Monsoon Wedding, a decent hit in the west, that that’s not necessarily true. but it’s hard to change pre-set notions. anthony minghella took the novel English Patient, in which the main story revolves around the romance between the indian kip (naveen andrews) and the western woman, and turned it into a movie in which this is a secondary romance and storyline compared to the storyline involving Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott-Thomas. guess they thought an indian man-western woman story wouldn’t sell as well as the other, although it could also have had something to do with Ralph Fiennes being a much bigger star than naveen andrews. after all in the past, Yul Brynner and Omar Sharif used to have the prime leading romantic roles against western women like sophia loren and ingrid bergman. in some ways hollywood has moved forward, in other ways it has regressed.
“Anyone ever seen a major storyline involving a desi boy and white girl?”
Lagaan, Mangal Pandey, Rang de Basanti…
or are we just talking non-indian films?
“Anyone ever seen a major storyline involving a desi boy and white girl?” Lagaan, Mangal Pandey, Rang de Basanti… or are we just talking non-indian films?”
that’s the indian version of the western hang-up with white men and women of colour (for sake of convenience, although i really detest both those phrases)
ok… os what you’re saying is we need a more homogenized rep in the entertainment – been a while since the college stage but i’ll take one for the team and step back on the stage – here’s the story summary – desi college student in unnamed north american city (Toronto) faced with money pressures with family honor at stake goes berserk and kills evil loan shark – runs, finds doomed love with a hooker with a heart of gold but is psych-pressured into admitting his guilt.
is that a winner or what…? trust me, you’ll make tons of money. you make it low budget with a desi guy as the emaciated raskolnikov, an ukrainian gal as sophya, a chinese guy as the detective (a columbo type) – you got a winner here boys and girls – you’ll rake it in.
must agree with a few folks.. this book was damn boring..along with brick lane by monica ali… UGH!
This is my point too. The issue is that, at least in the case of Gurinder Chadha (who, ironically, I remember vehemently defending a few years ago on Sikhnet — but this was before her recent “third strike” ie. MoS), there are 3 consecutive films where the running theme appears to be an Indian girl from a fairly hardcore desi background who needs to be “rescued” from her situation by a (literally)-white knight.
As mentioned earlier, fortunately this isn’t the case so much on mainstream British television programmes nowadays (although this doesn’t appear to be the current situation over in the US — “Neela” in ER appears to have no desi friends at all, and going by the lack of brown faces present, you would think that her wedding to Gallant was actually boycotted by all her desi friends and relatives) — there are numerous examples we could list — but the problem appears to be the case of films, as presumably the aim is to target a potentially-international audience.
I don’t think having a male desi-female desi romance would necessarily be an issue if we are talking about a mainstream British audience (assuming the film was good, of course), but perhaps the reluctance is because such a movie may not have a correspondingly-accepting American audience.
there was my son the fanatic, but then, he was a fanatic, so it worked for the first bit of the movie, not the rest. although, the 2nd half had the pops with the white women, so maybe it worked after all.
in the streets of ny, u almost always see the white dude/ deshi girl pair, maybe i am hanging ou tin the wrong streets.
why does everyone who is not indian have to be white?
thank you!
Not in Mississippi Masala and Bhaji on the Beach (B on the B, although by Chadha, is actually a really good movie).
Actually, thinking of Bhaji on the Beach, there were no “white knights” in that movie – the mixed-relationship there is with a Black boy of Jamaican background. That makes me think that Chadha’s white-boy desi-girl mix is largely for the sake of attracting audiences.
I at least am just talking about non-Indian films, because the non-Indian films are produced and seen largely by non-Indian people, and the relationships and dynamics in these films can affect how the majority non-desis can see the minority desis in their society, as well as how the minority desis see themselves and other desis.
True too!
Oh no you you di-int! Ha, to each her own I suppose…
I thought Mistress was bearable, atleast quick, while Arranged Marriage made me swear off all other Divakaruni’s for as long as I live.
Heh, I only read “Sister of My Heart” and that was e-NOUGH.
Having read ALL of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s books, I have to say this one stunk! It was just bad. I dont know what happened here, but her other writings are so much more interesting/thoughtful…this was like .lets give Chitra some acid and see what she does…OY
But I like the films of Gurinder……so I will see it, but I dont think Aishwarya would be the right one… I mean, she can’t be the star of ALL crossover films…..they will pick someone more “Indian looking”……hey, quit throwing chapatis……..
Bride and Prejudice was the worst movie evah! And that includes all the Bollywood B-movies.
I still totally enjoy Bend it like Beckham anyday. Dunno what happened to Gurinder after that.
About desi guys getting the raw end of the stick: true in general, other than a few exceptions: Naveen Andrews, Kal Penn. In general however, the women from other races get accepted first and paired up with white dudes. Just hafta deal with it.
Pretty sad to see that flicks involving desis with non-desi interests can be so easily counted. The only thing sadder to count is flicks involving desi same sex relationships.