NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 22, 2004
IANS
An acclaimed magic realism novel by a California-based Indian writer
will soon be made into an $80 million lavish Hollywood production starring
Bollywood queen Aishwarya Rai.
Mistress of Spices , a novel about the dilemmas of fitting in by Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni, is being made into a film by Paul Mayeda Berges,
the screenplay writer-husband of British Indian director Gurinder Chadha.
"We are very happy to have Ash and we thi novel by a California-based
Indian writer will soon be made into an $80 million lavish Hollywood
production starring Bollywood queen
Aishwarya Rai. nk she really fits the bill quite perfectly," Berges
said in New Delhi, which he and Chadha are visiting to promote their
film Bride and Prejudice .
"She brings this natural and yet exotic beauty to the screen,"
said Berges about Rai, who also stars in " Bride ...". The
film would be Berges' directorial debut.
The 1997 novel tells the story of a young Indian spice seller who runs
a grocery shop in the US, dishing out not only condiments for cooking
but also counsel for immigrant woes of alienation, loneliness and exploitation.
But soon she faces her own traumas when she falls in love with a non-Indian
as she fights to keep her heritage and forsake some memories.
Divakaruni lived in Kolkata for the first 19 years of her life, then
moved to study at the Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and for
a PhD from University of California, Berkeley.
Her writings have been translated into 11 languages and she teaches
creative writing at the University of Houston.
"The book has a lot of subtle flavours and intricacies about immigrant
experience that I really wanted to play with," said Berges, whose
wife is increasingly the voice of the Indian community in Britain with
films like Bend it like Beckham , Bhaji on the Beach and Bride and Prejudice
More about AuthorCalifornia-based
Indian writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni