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UK SPECIAL: LONDON DIARY
New Song
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TUNE TIED:
Najma Akhtar (top) and Preeya |
The ghazal singer,
Najma Akhtar, who possesses one of the loveliest voices on the Asian circuit,
has achieved what is almost certainly a first for Britain. "I am
a playback singer for Preeya Kalidas in Bollywood Queen," discloses
Najma, who adds that in British films actors are expected to do their
own singing. Preeya, a 21-year-old Gujarati girl born and brought up in
London, has just been picked as the female lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber's
forthcoming musical, Bombay Dreams. She also plays the lead in a £1
million-independent British feature film, Bollywood Queen. "I do
seven songs in the film," confirms Preeya, who donned a mask for
a Bollywood Club night in London. Najma, who translated the lyrics from
English into "Urdu/Hindi" before undertaking the playback, explains:
"The songs were difficult to translate. The English lyrics are beautiful
but a lot of people wouldn't understand the pure translation of a phrase
like 'Venus and Mars'. So I had to make it 'chand ka tara'." Najma
would be flattered if she were to be nicknamed the "Asha Bhosle of
Britain". "Like her, I like being experimental," she says.
Good Neighbours
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ASIAN BOND: Vir with English cricketer Usman Afsaal
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No one is more aware
of how the war in Afghanistan is damaging community relations in Britain
than director Parminder Vir, cultural diversity adviser to Carlton Television.
She has just organised the first multi-cultural awards ceremony for Carlton
at which British achievers of Indian, Pakistani and Afro-Caribbean origin
were honoured. Her own life mirrors how culturally intermingled British
Asian life has become. "I was born in Hoshiarpur and came to Britain
at the age of 10," she says. "I am Sikh on my father's side
and Hindu on my mother's. My husband, (writer and director) Julian Henriques,
is born of a Jamaican father and an English mother." Vir sums up
the British Asian dilemma: "We try and bring up our children to respect
each other's cultures. But they watch TV and learn about Islamic people
being labelled terrorists. When the north of England erupted and there
were riots in Oldham and Bradford, we had Indians saying, 'This is not
an Asian problem; this is a Pakistani Muslim problem and I am Indian.'
But as Asians, we have to live next door to each other."
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LONDON NIGHT: Khan's name up in lights
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In A Blaze
Although Asoka has
not made it as a "crossover" movie, it has taken enough at the
box-office to enter the Top Ten British films at number nine. For the
world premiere at the Warner Village Cinemas in Leicester Square, Shah
Rukh Khan, the film's producer and male lead, saw his name up in lights.
This was probably a first for Bollywood, as were the steel barriers outside
the cinema to hold back the crowds.
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THE TOP GUNS: Benegal (above) and Gulzar
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Bollywood Boys
On
his first visit to London in nearly 15 years, Gulzar, the distinguished
poet, film director and lyricist, held a packed master class, "Play
On", at the School of African and Oriental Studies. It was his sartorial
style which most impressed an admirer. "Every time I saw him, he
wore a fresh kurta," she observed. Gulzar owned up: "For a few
days, I have brought 10 kurtas-I wasn't sure I could get them washed in
London." He was comforted by bumping into Shyam Benegal, the equally
distinguished film director. When Benegal turned up for a question and
answer session to accompany a screening of his film, Zubeidaa, at the
Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, he found his audience was substantially
white-and polite. "Mainly deferential listeners," sighed a witness.
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