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Analyze This: The ABCDs

A P Kamath

The kid cannot resist joining his friends to a trip to McDonalds -- not to eat just french fries but the hamburgers. But at home, beef is taboo. At school, he attends sex education classes but when his parents overheard him discussing Bill Clinton and oral sex, the kid -- who will go nameless because his experiences are typical -- his parents rebuked him. At 15, the kid often hears his parents complaining how America is a greedy country filled with materialistic people, and the kid, who is 15, wonders what made his parents migrate to America.

Like many children of immigrants, particularly conservative Jews, the kid feels at times of being an outcast, wondering which part of his culture he should retain, if at all. He knows he belongs to the generation of ABCDs or American-Born Confused Desis. He may grow up into a young man who will be make his own rules and compromises and become an Indian American, or just an American.

But before he does, he might have watched the just launched English language film, American-Born Confused Desis, being shot in Clifton, Chatham and other New Jersey locales.

The film-makers too in a way belong to the ABCD generation. Gitesh Pandya, who is a co-producer with his older, 30-plus brother Piyush Dinkar, is in his late 20s. Pandya's two-year-old Box-Office Guru is a widely quoted website for the box-office figures of new movies in America. He is also consulted byUSA Today, Fox Channel and CNN for the analysis of box-office performance of new movies.

"Soon I will be analyzing the performance of my own movie," he says with a chuckle. Unlike many of their peers, the Pandyas knew how to overcome their ABCD angst.

For, their independent film, made reportedly for $ 1.5 million and directed by Piyush Pandya, tells the story of an Indian kid who grows up in a traditional Indian family, and cannot wait till he goes to college to savor what he thinks is freedom: partying and boozing.

"He wants to do the all-American things," Gitesh Pandya says. "But at college, he meets a girl who happens to be Indian, and he is challenged to understand the culture of his parents better."

In a way, the film reflects the autobiographical elements in the lives of some its actors and film-makers.

Newcomer Deep Katdare who plays the lead grew up in a Marathi-speaking family in New Jersey. When he was 14, he heard whispers that his parents were planning an arranged marriage for him -- no, not the next day or next month but several years from then.

His American friends were curious about his culture and tradition, and respectfully so, but Katdare did not want to have anything to do with India.

But when he went to college, Katdare started questioning superficial valuation of any culture, Indian or American, and began studying the culture of his parents and appreciate many things in it.

Gitesh Pandya, who rebelled against Indian culture when he was in high school in Clifton and had mostly non-Indian friends, began to delve into Indian culture and religions when he attended Rutgers University. Within two years, he was sharing an apartment with four other Indians and studying Hinduism and Indian history for his personal edification. At the school, he studied economics and business.

"Embracing my heritage was a part of growing up," he says, "And becoming a true American. For this is still a nation of individualism, isn't it?"

The movie, which will be wrapped by the middle of September, would be ready for release by early next year.

The Pandya brothers will have cross-cultural appeal.

"Many of the things that happen in this film happen in other immigrant families, too," he says. "The Russian and Polish immigrants go through an angst that is similar to Indian immigrants. And the Arabs, the Ethiopians... You name any nationality."

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