When Meera Syal was a child, her family would holiday in Blackpool. In the early 1990s the British-Indian playwright and actress told the then Channel 4 film commissioner Karin Bamborough that she’d like to write a film (her first) based on those trips to the seaside. Legend has it, Bamborough said yes on the spot. That film became 1993’s Bhaji on the Beach, a dark comedy about an intergenerational gaggle of Indian women, and a subversion of the “British” summer holiday. It was the feature debut of a young director named Gurinder Chadha, and was nominated for Best British Film at the Baftas in 1995.
In the film, feminist organiser Simi (Shaheen Khan) corrals the members of Birmingham’s Saheli Women’s Centre on to a minibus and off to the beach for a “female fun time”. “Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, Assalamu Alaikum,” she greets them, a hint that this is a varied group of women with potentially clashing world-views. Among them are Asha (Lalita Ahmed), a middle-aged shopkeeper prone to daydreams, Ginder (Kim Vithana), a single mother getting divorced, and soon-to-be medical student Hashida (Sarita Khajuria), who has just discovered she is pregnant. Extra friction is provided by bratty teenage sisters Ladhu (Nisha Nayar) and Madhu (Renu Kochar), and conservative auntie Pushpa (Zohra Sehgal).
Content from our partners
