'Ash is very clever'

On a recent visit to Mumbai, Gurinder Chadha says she did not have the time to breathe, amid the interviews, non-stop phone calls, and television crews.

Her latest film Bride And Prejudice or Balle Balle! Amritsar To LA (in Hindi) is releasing simultaneously in both India and the UK on Friday, October 8.

News Editor (Entertainment) Syed Firdaus Ashraf spoke to Gurinder about her new film.

Why a strange name like Balle Balle! Amritsar To LA?

Initially, we only planned Bride And Prejudice. After completing the film, the distributors got excited and insisted on a Hindi version. They said if we don't do this film in Hindi, we would deny entertainment to the Indian masses.

So I said, chalo, phataphat!

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We got all the actors involved during the dubbing. Javedsaab (Akhtar) wrote the Hindi lyrics. The title Bride And Prejudice was a problem. We finished the Hindi version in less than a month's time. We decided to keep the name Balle Balle as a song in the film starts with that.

But just Balle Balle would not reflect the flavour of the film, so we came up with this name because it starts in Amritsar, and ends in Los Angeles.

How close is the film to the Jane Austen classic, Pride And Prejudice?

Very close. In the novel, the family lives just outside London and there are five daughters. They are a middle-class family trying to marry their daughters into good families. Most of the daughters are obedient, but one wants to marry for love, and not for money. That is what I am showing in the film.

Ash plays Austen's Lizzie Bennett as Lalita Bakshi, and I have used four daughters instead of five.

Darcy is a nobleman from a very posh family in England, and thinks he is upper class and better off. We made Darcy American because they feel superior to the rest of the world (laughs).

I have tried to show a new India through this film, the consumer-driven society et al. You get everything here and don't need to go abroad unlike earlier. In America, people have no idea about these things.

Will you call your film a Bollywood or Hollywood film?

This film is a tribute to great directors like Yash Chopra, Manoj Kumar, Raj Kapoor and others. It is not a pure Hollywood, Bollywood or American film. It is just like me -- a combination of everything!

Why do your films revolve around marriage? Even Bend It Like Beckham had marriage at its core?