Sarfraz Manzoor on the young British Asians aiming for Bollywood

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday May 31 2008 In the article below we wrongly attributed to Sukesh Khosal a long quote beginning: "If I didn't know directors, if I didn't know producers, if I didn't have film offers on the table I wouldn't have come here because it's just way too hard." Those remarks were made by Ateesh Randev. It is a fiercely hot afternoon in Mumbai and my jeans are clinging to my legs as the rickshaw weaves through the traffic-choked streets. I am on my way to meet Upen Patel, a young British Asian who last year won the Best Newcomer award at the Indian Film Awards, held in Yorkshire. Not bad going for someone who grew up in Brent, north west London, and who only a few years earlier had been studying computer science at the University of Hertfordshire. Patel was spotted by a model scout while a student, and, after his work led him to India, he found himself catapulted into Bollywood stardom. The rickshaw splutters to a halt outside the offices of the model agency Patel owns in the hip district of Bhandra, sometimes referred to as the "Beverly Hills of Mumbai". Inside, the walls are filled with monochrome portraits of models from Britain, Brazil and India; a giant plasma television screen is tuned to Fashion TV India and the air conditioning is humming furiously. Patel strides towards me, lantern-jawed, stubble-faced, with arms like tree trunks, and immediately urges me towards the pakoras and samosas on the coffee table. "It's been an amazing journey," he tells me as we sit down. "I've been in the film industry for two years now and already won 14 awards." With success has come other rewards: as well as the model agency, Patel owns a restaurant, properties around the world including a house he bought for his mother in Mauritius, a Porsche, a Suzuki cruiser and a BMW M3. Alongside Katrina Kaif, Patel is arguably the most successful example of a new generation of British Asian Bollywood stars, and many others are hoping to follow their lead. Indian films have long proved an important source of nostalgia for Asians far from home. In the 60s, the first generation of Asian immigrants in Britain watched Indian films in special Sunday afternoon screenings. When I was a teenager in the 80s, my parents would hire a video recorder for the weekend and we'd watch Bollywood films; two or three in a row. For second-generation Asian immigrants, such as myself, Indian films were both escapism and a means of remaining connected to our Asian culture. We idolised Bollywood stars such as Amitabh Bachchan because at a time when Asians on British television were usually comic foils in bad sitcoms, men such as Bachchan weren't fall guys - they were heroes. But, much as I loved watching those Indian films, I never imagined someone like me could actually star in them. Two decades later that has changed: today more and more British Asians are leaving Britain for Bollywood. It's the morning after my conversation with Patel and I am on my way to meet Ateesh Randev, another aspiring British Asian actor. Randev grew up in Hounslow, west London, and studied at Kingston University. A friend suggested he screen test for a television show on an Asian satellite channel and, after he won the presenting job, the film offers started coming in. He left London and moved to Mumbai where he enrolled at the prestigious Creating Characters acting school. We meet at McDonald's (Randev's suggestion, as it offers a respite from the heat), and take a rickshaw to the offices of Creating Characters. "The biggest surprise I got coming to Mumbai was the number of people who are trying to get into films," Randev tells me. "I go to my gym, and everyone there has a six-pack and is an aspiring actor. I go to my local coffee shop and it turns out that everyone is an actor hoping to be discovered. Just being British isn't enough because there are so many people here. Why would they take a foreigner?" Why, then, I wonder, are British Asians prepared to take a gamble on India, rather than trying to succeed in Britain? It's a question I put to Sukesh Khosal, who grew up in Britain but is now studying at the Actor Prepares school in Mumbai. "I grew up watching Indian cinema," says Khosal, who bears an uncanny resemblance to an Asian Russell Harty. "I remember watching an Amitabh Bachchan film and telling my mum that when I grew up, this is what I wanted to do." As an aspiring Asian actor in Britain however, Khosal realised his roles would be limited. "The best I could hope for was to get to be in the Asian family in a soap like EastEnders," he says. What about the role of a Muslim terrorist, I suggest. "I've done that," he responds. "I've played the extremist but that's not why I went into acting. I went in to play the leading man." And so Khosal is studying everything from yoga and martial arts to Hindi, as preparation for Bollywood. From this autumn, a college in Ealing, west London, will be offering a similar course for British students willing to pay £6,000 for three months' tuition. They have been astounded by the level of interest, they tell me, which is both a vote of confidence in Indian cinema and, arguably, an indication of dissatisfaction with opportunities for Asian actors in Britain. However, Bollywood has its own limitations. The industry remains, for the most part, a closed shop, with a small number of dominant acting dynasties. A recent issue of Time Out Mumbai magazine detailed, through a series of intricate family trees, just how family connections operate in Indian cinema: the vast majority of actors, directors and producers are the offspring or relatives of film industry figures. "Bollywood is pretty much a family business," the film critic Mayank Shekhar tells me. If you are the son of a famous actor, he says, "you can make 20 flops and still keep working. But if you are just a regular guy and you get a break and it doesn't work out, you are out of the picture." "If I didn't know directors, if I didn't know producers, if I didn't have film offers on the table I wouldn't have come here because it's just way too hard," says Khosal. "Talent means nothing. They'll first look at your pictures and see if you're good-looking enough. Then it's all about who you know. Then there's the whole casting-couch thing. It's really awful for girls who don't know anyone." Khosal later admits that he, too, has faced sexual harassment. "I am not allowed to do any catwalk modelling because I have been told that I will be sexually propositioned by guys in the industry, who will tell me that if I don't go with them they will make it impossible for me to get on here. I've already had situations in clubs where I have had guys - I'm talking about famous actors who everyone thinks are straight - try to force themselves on me, saying, 'I can make it happen for you.'" But there are encouraging stories from the Bollywood industry as well. In the bar of the sumptuous Taj Hotel I meet Ferena Wazeir, a young Glasgow-raised British Asian who is now working on her third film. "I started out in theatre in Britain," Wazeir tells me, "and I studied at Rada, but there aren't many parts for girls who are Asian, but very fair-skinned, like me." While travelling in India, Wazeir visited a camel fair in Rajasthan and was spotted by a photographer. She featured in a number of big campaigns, and the film offers began rolling in. "I've been really lucky," says Wazeir. "I recently had the honour to play Mumtaz Mahal - the woman who inspired the Taj Mahal - and I have just landed a three-movie deal with a big studio in Bollywood." Beauty often opens doors in Bollywood, but for British female rapper Hard Kaur it was her music that brought her to the attention of the film industry. Kaur was born in India before moving to Birmingham, and her music has now become hugely popular in her home country; so much so that she spends part of the year in Mumbai, and is in talks to star in her first Indian film. It is fair to say that Kaur does not look like a conventional Bollywood starlet and with a street-slang accent that melds Brum and Bombay, she doesn't sound like one; so the fact that film producers are considering her for film roles is one indication of how much the industry has changed. "If you are a Miss World or a Miss Universe, at some point they are going to ask you to become an actor," Kaur tells me as we sit in her apartment. "Now I am not the type of girl to jump around in a sari, but I'm getting offers for films." I ask if she has had any acting experience. "No," she laughs, "but I am a drama queen." For producers, the appeal of casting someone like Kaur, or other British Asian actors, lies in the economics of today's Indian film industry. The cost of a film ticket in Britain can be up to four times that of one in India, so one audience member in Manchester is worth four people watching the same film in Mumbai. Which is why so many Indian films today are catering for what is known as the NRI market - non-resident Indians. Nearly half of Bollywood films are now shot outside India, and many involve plots that revolve around the dilemmas and tensions of the diaspora. Namastey London was one of the biggest Bollywood hits of last year. Starring both Patel and Kaif, the film was a depiction of the difficulties facing second-generation British Asians, torn between their desire for love and their parents' expectations for an arranged marriage. "In the 70s, a large proportion of Indian films were about Indian themes," says Shekhar. "They would be about an angry young man, usually Amitabh Bachchan, trying to deal with institutional corruption: one man against the world. But today's films are about the great life that Indians are having in London and the US and so on, so a large part of Indian life is not actually being represented in Indian films." Among those hoping to capitalise on this demand for fresh stories is aspiring screenwriter Shakir Kadri, who grew up in Slough and is now studying at Whistling Woods, a training academy for future filmmakers located in Film City near Hyderabad, a sprawling complex where many Indian films are shot. "Writers have excellent prospects in India," he tells me, "because we are part of a new wave of screenwriters who are taking the industry in a new direction. As a British Asian studying here I have a sense of objectivity; of seeing a culture that is different from my own. I can use the nuances of that in my work." In the week that I meet them, both Randev and Patel are preparing to travel back to Britain. Randev admits he can't wait to get back to Hounslow. "Britain is home to me so I don't see myself staying in India," he tells me. "It's so different from the way I have lived my life. I get goosebumps just thinking about going home - the first thing I am going to do is have fish and chips and a proper English cup of tea." Patel, meanwhile, is preparing for an Indian film awards event that he is attending. "Returning to Britain is like a homecoming ," he says. "To hear people screaming my name and to know my family is seeing me doing well is amazing." No doubt many of those screaming with excitement at a glimpse of their favourite Bollywood idols will be harbouring their own film fantasies. "They can do it," says Patel firmly, "if they want it enough and are prepared to do what it takes. If I can come from Brent and make it in Bollywood, so can anyone." Just as the Asians who left for Britain have transformed what it means to be British, so this new British Asian invasion of India is changing the way India thinks about itself, and the stories it tells. · Sarfraz Manzoor's documentary The Brits in Bollywood is on Radio 4 tomorrow at 11am.