Actors:
Director: Piyush Pandya, Producer: Gitesh Pandya
American Desi is a fun, frivolous comedy about the cultural conflicts of a young Indian-American guy, Krishna Gopal Reddy (“Could you please… please… call me Kris”) whose departure for college forces him to confront his identity as an American of Indian origin. This indie film, released earlier this year, is written, directed, and produced by Indian Americans Piyush Dinka Pandya and Piyush Dinker Pandya, Gitesh Pandya, and Deep Katdare (who also stars as Kris). It’s a light-hearted look at the situation in which many Indian-Americans find themselves as they struggle to assimilate their cultural heritage with their geographical locations, often against their will.
Kris leaves his home with best friend Eric after a hysterical puja ceremony which Eric mistakes for a marriage ceremony (he subsequently becomes addicted to receiving kharchee from generous Indian uncles). Feeling more white than Indian, Kris thinks he’s gained freedom from the myriad traditions and cultural lore to which he feels no emotional ties. He’s forced to think again when he arrives at his dorm and finds he’s been roomed with three – count ‘em – three Indians: Jagjit Singh, a turban-wearing artist trapped in an engineer’s body; Salim Ali Khan, the Muslim whose only desire in life is to find a wife as beautiful and pure as the actress Rekha; and AJ, whose ghetto pimp act can be described by one of the best lines in the movie: “Man, somewhere out in Jersey there’s a black guy who’s driving a Honda Accord and praying to Bhagwan.”
Despite Kris’s attempts to distance himself from all things Indian, including an overweight engineering tutor who embodies the most embarrassing aspects of Indian students abroad, he is inadvertently drawn to the beautiful Nina Shah (no relation to the author), a fellow engineering student. Kris realizes he’ll have to rethink his non-Indian stance when he finds out that Nina is very connected to her Indian roots, speaking Hindi, loving Indian movies, and semi-attached to Bollywood-gangster type Rakesh (who travels with two goons that call him “Boss” and are continually ruining his high quality Raymond jackets).
Once Kris begins to slowly tackle his prejudices against Indian culture, Kris’s roommates overcome their suspicion of “Coconut-Boy” and conspire to help him win Nina’s heart. They try the traditional Indian approaches: sending matrimonial ads by e-mail, trying to cook an Indian meal, teaching Kris a garba dance to impress her at the Indian club Bhangra Night. In the meantime, the roommates confront several of their own cultural issues. Jagjit Singh must convince his father that art, and not calculus, is his true love. Also, a nice little side plot is played out between Salim Khan and fellow Muslim student Farah. Salim is convinced that all Indian girls raised in America are corrupt (sound familiar?), yet he realizes that he has been stereotyping Farah when he sees that she is as culturally mobile as any girl from India.
The film ends with a parody of an Indian film in the same manner that Scream parodied horror movies – with an interminable dance scene followed by a fight scene. Of course the guy gets the girl in the end, as must always happen – after all, it’s an Indian movie. What makes the movie fun, though, is its ability to combine stereotypical Indian behaviour, whether it’s oppressed artistic son, ABCD, Ali G reincarnation, or bumbling FOB, with the freshness and individuality that transplanting a culture to a new world always brings.
The most touching aspect of the movie is the way the Indian characters bond, which will make anyone nostalgic for his or her college days when it was you and your desi brethren against the world. The characters are not deep, and don’t require much analysis, but they are completely familiar, as if you’re watching a movie about your cousins (or even yourself). The movie may not do well with non-desi audiences just because there are so many in-jokes, but it will strike a familiar chord with all desis, American or otherwise.
