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The Indian flavour in cine curry
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Vijay Singh does not mock at Indian culture to cater to the sensibilities of the West in "One Dollar Curry".
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For a taste of his curry...Vijay Singh in New Delhi. Photo:R.V Moorthy.
THE IDEA of One Dollar Curry was mooted at The Hindu office in Chennai in 1987 when its writer-producer-director Vijay Singh was going to Sri Lanka and had requested the then editor to talk to IPKF Office there. As inspired by his own life, he was then writing a book on a tragic story of a Jaffna Tamil who moves to Paris as immigrant. There he attempts to survive, from humour to cooking.
"Humour is the best weapon for self-defence," says Singh, in New Delhi to promote the film. And in a country like France where the native population still has to learn to adjust with and accept the existence of other people and cultures in the country, a film like One Dollar Curry, which caters to the sensibilities of the immigrants, should not come as a surprise.
Selling curry
And that's where Singh, a Jawaharlal Nehru University product and activist who migrated to France 24 years ago, brings in his own feeling of alienation in this film slated to release this January. Hence his hero Vikram Chatwal, "a virtual destitute" in the film who has lost everything but his sense of humour, lands in the country and tries to encash that while selling curry for one dollar on a weirdly-decorated three wheeler, a first-time attempt in an NRI-made film. Chatwal markets himself as the best chef of India boasting his fake lineage to the famous chefs of the country, though he can't even cook to save his life.
He also befools Parisians by declaring that he knows tantra massage, treats people with ordinary yellow oil passing it off as something brought from ancient Indian locale and so on.
"This is what happens when you land in another country where you can't identify with anyone and vice-versa. If you don't allow people to laugh at you, by laughing at yourself, you can't survive. I have not mocked at Indian culture but French," he assures. As he belongs to Punjab and as the "French find Sikhs very sexy", he chose his hero to be a Sikh. And the backdrop is France because he is now "well aware" of the French sensibilities, their culture, food and worldly wisdom.
To make this film the food habits of the French and the treatment to Indian food there was a must-know. Informs Singh, "The first immigrant to France were people from Pondicherry. They used to make North Indian cuisine there. These people proved to be among the best Indian chef then. Noticing that, I made a three-minute documentary on the best Indian chef in France in 1988," and naturally a bit of this flavour too happens to be a past of the film. "Now Paris has some 500 Indian restaurant which are not top-end but improving fast," he informs.
Vijay who comes to India "six times a year" is now ready with another film based on his own book "Whirlpool of Shadows" which earned the status of the Best Book in France in 1999 and is published by Rupa in India.
"It is a story of an English actress who comes to shoot in India and gets involved with a man."
Now, how many dollars curry would this film prove to be, remains to be seen.
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Madurai
Mangalore
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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