Indian Filmmaker Casts Off Stereotypes
Md. Director Challenges Homeland's Notion of Immigrant Life in U.S.

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 28, 2008

Vishal is an Indian computer whiz with a roguish smile, melt-your-heart eyes and big dreams of becoming a software mogul in the United States. That's where the plot of an Indian song-and-dance movie being shot in the Washington area parts company with typical Bollywood fare.

Docile, marriage-minded heroines are out. Instead, the leading lady Vishal meets after moving to Washington is Preeti, a geeky gal from his home city of Bangalore who has blossomed into a poised executive and is now -- gasp! -- his boss. There's also Neelu, a U.S.-raised television reporter who throws a fit when her Indian parents try to "accidentally" introduce her to Vishal as a marriage prospect. Rounding out the love tangle is Nick, a half-Indian, half-American accountant trying to connect with his roots by dating Indian girls -- only to discover they're even less traditional than he is.

"I want to portray what life is actually like for 20-something Indian immigrants here," said Indian-born, Maryland-raised director Shilpa Priya Jagadeesh (known to her Indian audiences as Priyabharati Joshi). "The romantic struggle of not wanting our parents to arrange a marriage for us because that's not the environment we grew up in, but also of not having a lot of experience finding someone on our own because our parents restricted our dating when we were younger. . . . It's kind of 'Bridget Jones meets Bollywood.' "

So rather than setting the film's show-stopper dance numbers in what Jagadeesh calls "the Indian movie version of Washington" -- marble monuments, ethnic Indian restaurants and sari shops -- she has chosen the sort of backdrops against which life really plays out for many first- and second- generation immigrants here: offices of Northern Virginia high-tech firms; the upscale, make-your-own-meal restaurant Dinner Zen in Reston; a suburban ice-skating rink; and a mixer held by NetSAP, the network of South Asian professionals, at the Willard Hotel, where the music of choice is not bhangra but salsa.

"I'm not setting this in Washington because of the pretty architecture," explained Jagadeesh, 29, who has worked on television movies in India and has brought in several well-known Indian film actors to play the leads. She said her aim is to correct some Indian misconceptions about immigrant life in America.

"There's this stereotype in Indian movies that Indian girls raised here are morally debauched and end up being rude to their parents, promiscuous and losing their [Hindu vegetarian] religion -- you know, eating meat right and left," she said. "Also, the women characters are either long-suffering, self-sacrificing mother types who are put on a pedestal, or jezebel vamps to be reviled. Well, what about the rest of us who are just trying to live our lives?"

Of course, there are already several well-received nonmusical films that explore the nuances and contradictions of Indian immigrant life, including such English-language hits as "The Namesake" and "Monsoon Wedding."

But Jagadeesh said the Indian-language song-and-dance "Masala" genre that is the staple of commercial Indian cinema is a better vehicle to spread her message because of its mass appeal in India.

Indian audiences will also recognize stars Diganth Manchale -- think Ashton Kutcher's looks and mischievous grin -- and Tejaswini Prakash, who enjoys a sweetheart status along the lines of "Ugly Betty's" America Ferrera.

Technically, Jagadeesh's movie, "e-Preeti," is not a product of Bollywood, which refers to the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, but of "Sandalwood," the nickname for films produced in the Southern Indian city of Bangalore in a regional language called Kannada. Because Hindi is India's national language, Bollywood films tend to play across the country and are better known overseas. But India's more than half-a-dozen regional film industries are also bustling enterprises that attract tens of millions of fans within their regions.

Because movie-going is a such major habit in India -- young city dwellers might catch as many as three new releases a week -- there is also a steady market for even relatively low-budget productions. That is a boon to a first-time feature director like Jagadeesh, who has raised less than a million dollars from private investors in India and the United States.

To cut costs, Jagadeesh has drawn on the Washington area's tightly knit Southern Indian community. Dozens of friends of friends have offered her their businesses, apartments and homes to use as shoot locations free of charge. Jagadeesh's own parents agreed to put up several of the actors in their spacious Rockville house and to allow Jagadeesh to turn their large finished basement into a fully-functioning production office.

The scene there on a recent evening had the feel of an unusually efficient student film project. In one corner, Jagadeesh, who looked younger than her years in black corduroy jeans and owlish glasses -- was deep in consultation with her sound engineer over various microphone options. A few feet away, producer Manan Singh Katohora sat in front of a computer screen, watching a rough cut of a dance sequence the crew had filmed in India and bobbing his head to the beat.

In the next room over, Chief Assistant Director Rajashri Ramachandra was helping actors Bharath Babu, 19, and Nina Mahesh, 24, rehearse a scene in which Nick takes Neelu on a date.

"Why did you bring two bottles of champagne?" Mahesh -- as Neelu -- asks in Kannada.

"This one is a nonalcoholic bottle I especially brought for you because I know you Indian girls don't drink alcohol," answered Babu, as Nick.

"Not this Indian girl!" said Mahesh, making as though she was reaching for the alcoholic bottle.

Jagadeesh's mother, Jaya Shree, 55, a gene therapist with the National Institutes of Health, walked past the actors, carrying a bowl of chips with a look of resigned good humor.

This was not the future that she and her husband, a pharmacist with the Food and Drug Administration, had envisioned for their daughter when they moved to the United States almost three decades ago, she said.

Like many Indian immigrant parents, they hoped that by her late 20s Jagadeesh would have an engineering or a medical degree and a budding family with a fellow Indian from a good family. For awhile, Jagadeesh seemed on track. At age 4, she announced that she wanted to be a "pediatric neurosurgeon." At age 18, she was valedictorian of Gaithersburg Senior High School. And by 19 she was enrolled as a pre-med at the University of Maryland.

But like some of the characters in her movie, Jagadeesh always resisted her parents' attempts to introduce her to eligible young men.

"One time, she even got hold of one of their e-mails and wrote, 'Look, my mom is trying to get me to marry but this is not the right time, so please don't follow through with this meeting," recalled Shree, shaking her head at the memory.

Then a trip to India midway through college inadvertently led Jagadeesh to a job with a Bangalore television production company. She was hooked.

"I'm just fascinated with the complexity of telling stories," she said. "I'm not averse to doing American cinema some day, but the song-and-dance culture is so engrained in me that I feel like it would be a little boring."

Meanwhile, Shree said that getting a firsthand look at Jagadeesh's passion and skill at pulling together such a complex production was helping her overcome her initial horror at her daughter's career choice.

"Wherever your children go, you have to follow," she said, half-wistful, half-laughing. "Everything is an experiment in this country."