Loins Of Punjab Presents

DIRECTOR: Manish Acharya

So what do NRIs, primarily in New Jersey, like to do most? Eat Bollywood, sleep Bollywood, as a Bollywood actor once said famously. Self-confessed Bachchan fan Manish Acharya qualifies as a primary member of the Bollywood-mad club. And makes his first feature a heart-felt portrait of the larger Hindi-Bindi community in Aapro Amrika.

And how better to do it than stage a Desi Idol contest, importing real-life singer and veejay Shaan, to be chief guest in a huge New Jersey auditorium? The contestants typify the diasporic spectrum: the gregarious Patels, papa (Darshan, flourishing in comedy after a serious turn in Gandhi, My Father) mummy (Loveleen, very nice), uncles-aunts and cousins, all eating their khakras, the New York girl (Seema Rahmani) who wants to be a Bollywood actress even if she doesn't know Hindi (if she can do bole choodiyaan with a Kareena-like latak- jhatak, who cares?), and a Long Island Society matron who will win at any cost (Shabana Azmi who does as only Shabana Azmi can).

Acharya's film has a few rough edges, and fumbles some cues. It also hasn't managed to rid itself entirely of the NRI-experience-in-NJ clichés. The whole Patel clan which crowds in a hotel room meant to sleep two, and its insistence on pure-'bhej snakes' has been done to death. But Loins of Punjab Presents has such a transparent motive to entertain, mainly by making you laugh, and perhaps shed a tear (when the sole white singer breaks into the National Anthem, much to the delight of Ayesha Dharker, his Indian girl-friend) that it charms you.

It makes us look forward to what Acharya will do next.