What is the recipe for success for an Indian who wants to be a successful Hollywood director? Well, if you are not one already become a female using available technology, (refer to Michael Jackson's book on the same), get a few non-resident Indians, along with an unsuccessful bollywood star (wannabe bollywood star) from India, and make a movie that ridicules anything Indian.

And so you become an Indian successful in Hollywood. You have rave reviews in the New York Times. You get interviews done by boring UK television hosts, and with luck some Indians in India might actually know you.

But its not that simple is it. You have got to be an Indian woman, a die-hard feminist at that and sometime that's just not enough. From the looks of it you might need to look a touch hideous as well.

Well yes, I am talking about the successful Indian directors, making it big in Hollywood. Suddenly those low budget flicks that can pass of as the diploma film of someone who could have failed the class are big blockbusters. One of them even claims making 50 million US dollars even before it's released in the US market. The film is about a girl who instead of making Alu Gobi makes football magic. Inspiring, but that's not the reason why people watched in all the places. It was watched so that non-Indians as I would like to refer to other people in the world, who have not lived in India ever, could laugh at a culture they have never understood. It's like people going to the zoo, you know, because they think the animals are lesser things, to be watched in amazement and for amusement.

Amazingly India has been a place of mystery for most western peoples. And when these audience see the sarcastic way in which Indian culture is portrayed they think that is what it exactly is. It can be agreed that a culture that cannot laugh at itself can never progress. But the formula that these so-called international directors of Indian movies use time and again is making the bad elements of the culture more common place.

I mean western "exclusivism" as I would like to call it does not need one more excuse to laugh at India. Don't think its easy for me to describe this Indian "pain" that I have, as I have to type into a program, where I have to right click and hit "ignore" to type in "Alu Gobi" without it telling me that it's a word that does not exist.

So Indian ladies and ladies who are fortunate enough to have NRI money to make movies, please be real, make movies but please do not belittle the potential of a woman who can make good "alu gobi". Please do not show that all Indian men as drunk losers, who have had some kind of mental handicap when it comes to bringing up their girl child. Please do not make a mockery of the "protective" love of an Indian mother, and project it as general nuisance. Please do not make male Indian protagonists, if they ever exist in your movies, confusing with their female mannerisms. Please do not "bend it like the ladies who have already done it!!!!"

Pavan Malladi
20th February 2003

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