Gurinder Chadha

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the writer-director and producer Gorinda Charder. Baji on the Beach, Bend It Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice. Her work is unashamedly populist and undoubtedly popular. Full of vitality, music and laughs. But, as well as incorporating a healthy dose of the feel-good factor, she tackles the big stuff too. Female empowerment, race, the shadow of colonialism.

Presenter0:57

Her biggest movie hit launched the career of Keira Knightley, and thirteen years on from its big screen release, Bend It Like Beckham is now a hit musical on the West End stage. Born in Kenya to Sikh parents, she came to London with her family as a toddler. At school, she was the only Indian girl in her class, navigating her dual identity with the help of not just her parents, but clothes and music too. Indeed, an early publicity shot

Presenter1:21

Shows her in a traditional Indian clothes, accessorised with a leather jacket, Doc Martens, and some natty Union Jack socks. She says, My job is to make sure we are visible. We are out there in our three-dimensional ways. We are part and parcel of the world, and we go with the world. Welcome, Grunda Chada. We being who?

Gurinder Chadha1:43

Everyone who looks like me.

Gurinder Chadha1:46

My whole entry into the world of uh film and television and radio was really me trying to make people like me visible. Our stories weren't there, people who looked like me and thought like me weren't really visible on the screen in any shape or form. And so I tried to find a way to make that happen.

Presenter2:03

That takes a lot of guts, that. Are you does that if I were to say, you know, she's a gutsy bird, would that cover it? Are you are you somebody who you know, you you don't shirk from a challenge?'Cause that's a big challenge, the one you've just described.

Gurinder Chadha2:14

Yeah, I think that when you're in that situation you think, Okay, I've got to do something, I've got to achieve something and you go about it. But if you were to sit back and go, you know what, this is against me, this is against me, this is against me, you wouldn't get anywhere.

Presenter2:28

Let's take a little look at your list of music, Grinda Chada. Tell me about the first one we're going to hear. W what is it, and why particularly is it on your list?

Gurinder Chadha2:36

Well this first song is Downtown by Petula Clark and I could have chosen The Beatles, She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's the first song that I remember actually singing at my Childminders in Victoria Road in Southall, getting up on a chair with a broom actually, and singing that song while she sat at the table eating Rye Vitas, which I thought were terribly exotic, you know, because Indian people never ate Rye Vitas then. However, this song speaks to me of my childhood. Now when you listen to it, I realise how filmic it is. That combination of the music and the images that she was creating and the mood and how you go on a journey with her in the song. It's all very filmic in retrospect.

Speaker 43:19

When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go.

Speaker 43:26

Downtown, when you've got worries all the noise and the hurry seems to help unknow.

Speaker 43:34

Downtown, just listen to the music of the traffic in the city. Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty. How can you lose the lights?

Presenter3:47

That was Petula Clark and downtown. So, Garinda Chari, you were born in Kenya. Um you travelled over in'62. Your father was already here. Yes. You travelled over with your mother and your sister. You were a toddler.

Speaker 43:55

Uh

Gurinder Chadha3:55

Yes.

Gurinder Chadha3:58

Yes. Uh

Presenter3:58

Why had your parents decided to move the whole family halfway round the world?

Gurinder Chadha4:03

Kenya had become independent, and something called Africanization was going on. My father had grown up in a land which, as far as he was concerned, was England. So, every morning when he went to school, he would sing God Save the Queen. And so, for him and a lot of people like him, suddenly everything was shifting and changing, and nobody knew what was going to happen to them. And so, there were offers at that time for people to come to England, to the motherland, as it were. And he decided he had two young daughters. He was going to come to England and see what was what.

Presenter4:33

And so they settled in South Hall in London, which now, of course, has a thriving Asian community, as anybody who lives in that area will know. But at the time.

Presenter4:41

Early, mid sixties London what sort of welcome did your family get?

Gurinder Chadha4:44

Well, I think my father says if he'd had the money to get a plane back he would have.

Presenter4:48

Uh

Gurinder Chadha4:48

Yeah.

Presenter4:48

Yeah.

Gurinder Chadha4:48

Uh

Gurinder Chadha4:50

That inhospitable and that cold. How did he start making it? You went into business. Well, he used to work for Barkless Bank, and then when he came to Southall, he went to the Barkless Bank in Southall and was duly thrown out.

Presenter5:03

It was literally thrown out of the thing.

Gurinder Chadha5:04

Literally, yes. Why you can't have those expectations, you know. Damn you for having that kind of audacity to think that someone who's got a turban and a beard can ever dream of being in a bank. But because my father grew up in Africa, he kind of loved the outdoors and so he decided to go for the post office. And then he was very happy being a postman.

Presenter5:25

And the Post Office didn't mind the way he looked, unlike the bank then. He was

Gurinder Chadha5:29

No, sadly, he did cut his hair and shaved his turban because he couldn't get a job.

Presenter5:34

And being a Sikh, that I mean that is fundamental.

Gurinder Chadha5:36

Yeah, for him it was upsetting definitely at that time. And there's quite a sweet story where when my I was too young to know, but when my sister arrived, you know, with us, she hardly recognised him and she couldn't quite work out who he was. My parents' generation did it for their kids, making a life for the children, education for the children. So when we hear the sort of clichéd version of every Indian parent wants their child to be a doctor or a lawyer, or, you know, that comes from truth. That comes from struggle and hardship. So what were your parents' expectations of you?

Speaker 15:46

Now with

Gurinder Chadha6:08

That I'd become a doctor and that I'd marry a nice handsome Sikh and um you know do everything uh as was expected of me.

Presenter6:19

Let's have your next piece of music, Gurinda Chada. Tell me about this. What are we gonna hear?

Gurinder Chadha6:23

This next song is actually my dad's favourite song. It's called Odunya Kira Kavale, and it's really an appeal to God to say, God, if you've given us this life, you've got to give us the means to help us endure the life. So he loved to sing, he would sing continuously. He loved his whiskey as well. And whenever a few mates would get together or relatives would get together, out would come the songs and they would all sit there and sing. And this sounds sort of dirge-like, this song, but actually it's quite cathartic, I think.

Speaker 46:54

Magawa

Speaker 46:59

But go on

Speaker 47:07

There we go.

Speaker 47:18

He is a

Presenter7:19

That was Mohammad Rafi with Odania Keir Kwale. And you have interestingly said that there is a lot of your father's spirit in your films. Was that something that you felt was beholden upon you to sort of almost partially express his spirit because of what he'd gone through for you, he had never had the chance?

Gurinder Chadha7:41

Oh, undoubtedly undoubtedly.

Gurinder Chadha7:44

It's an interesting thing being the child of an immigrant because you carry

Presenter7:49

Yeah.

Gurinder Chadha7:50

You know, you carry so much with you'cause you carry sort of their struggles.

Gurinder Chadha7:56

Now I'm getting emotional. I don't want to get emotional.

Gurinder Chadha7:59

You carry their struggles, but at the same time you carry their pride.

Gurinder Chadha8:04

I mean, Bender Light Beckham is about me, my dad. I mean, that is that story. It's about a daughter wanting to do things differently and the father sort of trying to find that path of sort of wanting her to follow the path that is expected of her in terms of the community and the family, but at the same time trying to understand that she might want to do things differently. See, because it's very easy to say, oh, she's a rebel, she's going to go off. And it's a very easy choice to go, you know what, Sodu, I'm going to go off and do what I want to do, which is how often people were shown on TV, particularly Indians and women. And that's not the reality. So many people like me negotiate. You know, we negotiated what we wanted, but at the same time, what we hoped would make them happy. And I made that film just after my dad died. So a lot of it is sort of me grieving for him, if you like. It's only now that I realize that the way I pushed all the emotion between the father and the daughter that I was grieving.

Presenter9:00

Let's have some more music. Tell me about the third.

Gurinder Chadha9:03

This track for me sums up a whole part of my life and a part of history in Britain. And there are several bands that I love from this period. But I've chosen this particular song because I think all the other bands that I love from this time, which is the specials, which is the jam, a lot of bands will look up to this band and this particular singer.

Speaker 49:41

Late night to the same

Speaker 49:44

Man, what's up the world?

Speaker 49:51

Judge and a little white fire.

Presenter9:54

That was The Clash and White Man in Hammersmith's Pally. And let's talk a little bit about your sort of.

Presenter10:01

Can I call it a political awakening? Because it's it it is tied up with with that musical awakening and the moments of the clash and the specials and all that kind of music.

Gurinder Chadha10:03

Because it's it

Gurinder Chadha10:09

Absolutely. I mean, I grew up in a shop. You know, my parents, after a while, bought their own business, and I grew up like many Asian kids in a shop.

Gurinder Chadha10:17

It was a time at the rise of the National Front, and there was this kind of threat of violence everywhere. And I remember once my mum was in the shop, and these boys came in and sort of bought all this beer. You know, they put all this beer in bags, and then they sort of walked out. And she said, Well, hold on, you haven't paid. And they all turned around and sort of mooned her, you know, which was quite shocking. And I actually put that scene into Bardie on the Beach, actually, my first film, you know, with the boys mooning the women. But there were other shopkeepers we knew who'd been attacked, you know, particularly in Lewisham. I remember there was an uncle of ours who had a shop and he'd been knifed and everything. And eventually, my dad did get attacked, which was when we gave up the whole shop business. At that time, the National Front was on the rise, and England was quite an ugly place, late 70s. And for someone like me, I was sort of searching for who I was and what I was. And on this one occasion, there was the first Rock Against Racism March. And so I wanted to go on this march, but my dad sort of really wouldn't let me and said, No, you're going to get because it was the time of the SPG as well. And so he really thought that I would get beaten up. And in the end, I said, Okay, I won't go. I'm going to go shopping instead.

Gurinder Chadha11:26

So I went off, and of course, I did go on the march, but I was too scared to actually go on the march. And so I went straight to Victoria Park, where the concert was after. And I remember getting to the concert, and of course, there was nobody there. And as I was about to leave, I sort of heard this sort of chanting, this kind of sound. And as I looked down the street, I just saw thousands and thousands and thousands of people walking towards the park, carrying banners. And everyone was joined together in sort of both anger and celebration. It was that combination that spoke to me. And that was the moment when I became political.

Presenter12:10

And did it give you a faith in in a place that you weren't sure you were connected to? Did it make you feel British?

Gurinder Chadha12:16

Right, absolutely. It made me feel like I was part of this world. And having grown up with a kind of us and them attitude, which had come from my parents' generation, a door had been opened to say we are born here, we're raised here, this is who we are, and we're all going to stand together.

Presenter12:35

You spoke with a smile on your face, and indeed a hearty laugh, about your your parents thinking, you know, you can become a doctor and marry a a nice uh handsome Sikh boy. What did your school teachers expect from you? What advice did they give you about your future?

Gurinder Chadha12:47

We had our usual sort of careers teacher advice, and I had thought at that point I was going to do development studies, third world, sort of economics and politics. And when I saw my careers teacher, she sort of looked at me and said, Well, I think your ambitions are too high, and I really think you should do a secretarial course. And I remember the sort of injustice that I felt. I was so furious that I actually now think I have to credit her really for everything that I've gone on to do because I just really needed to prove that woman wrong, which I did.

Presenter13:19

You may, if you like, dedicate the next piece of music to our Grinda Chada. If you're that uh warm-spirited and warm-hearted, tell us what we're gonna hear next. This is your fourth of the morning.

Gurinder Chadha13:27

Part of the wonderful time with Rock Against Racism of course was my love of the specials and the clash but at the same time what was happening in Britain was something so exciting to me because it was a new form of music and the best proponent of that was a man called Bally Sagu. Although it's a bit dated now but at the time it was the most radical thing to take a very traditional Punjabi folk song and fuse it with reggae like he did. For me it was like a revolution.

Speaker 414:06

What a die

Speaker 414:08

No

Speaker 114:11

Yellow B

Speaker 114:12

Uh

Speaker 114:21

What?

Speaker 114:22

From the moment that I saw you, I was instantly in love with you.

Presenter14:28

Meru Longawacha, Bally Saguing. That track was used in Baji on the Beach. That was 1993. Yes. That was released. Yes. And that was your breakout film. It was a very, I mean, it hit such a different note from films that we were used to watching at the time. And it does have all, you know, your signatures still. A lot of laughs, a lot of vibrancy, kind of the truth of the best bits of life. But it tackles the biggies. Domestic violence. Yes, exactly. I was going to say that.

Speaker 114:33

Yes.

Gurinder Chadha14:54

It's domestic violence again.

Gurinder Chadha14:58

Uh

Presenter14:58

Yeah.

Gurinder Chadha14:58

Mixed mixed relationships. I worked on the film with Mira Seal and we both thought that we were never going to be able to make another film again. So we thought, let's put everything in it. All the taboos, all the issues, everything to do with Asian women. Let's chuck them all in this one because they're not going to let us to make another film. But incidentally, the money to make the film ended up going in the same Barclays bank in Southall that had thrown my dad out 30-odd years earlier. So that to me was a great piece of irony.

Presenter15:24

Earlier.

Presenter15:27

You had had uh periods at the BBC and at Channel Four, I think, making programmes. You'd done a a documentary, I'm British Butt. Yes. Does it start with you with the message you want to give and then you create the wrapper? That's sort of what it sounds like.

Gurinder Chadha15:43

Well, you know, it's political, isn't it? It's uh I think it takes a lot of time and effort and money to make a film. So you better be damn sure what it is you're trying to say. I feel for me, you know, I entered the profession wanting to talk about making us more visible and therefore combating racism. It was as simple as that, really.

Presenter16:04

A movie with the title like Bajie on the Beach and with the you know the the publicity posters that it had would certainly put plenty people off going to see it. Well, you know, that's not for me, that's for them. Here's the thing Bend it like Beckham.

Speaker 116:14

That's for them.

Presenter16:18

How smart were you? First of all, putting Beckham in the title, you know, certainly at that point a hugely famous certainly not in the States, but in Britain and the rest of the world, you know, the most famous footballer. Did you have to ask him permission to be able to do that?

Gurinder Chadha16:29

Did you have to ask him permission to be able to do that? Yes, but I reckon he wasn't that famous when we s first approached him because it took us about four years to get the film off the ground. By the time the film came out, he was of course mega, mega superstar David Beckham, and he was going to come down for the premiere, but the day before our premiere, he broke his foot. That was the metatarsal, yes. Yes, and then of course the headlines were always mend it like Beckham or break it like Beckham.

Presenter16:50

That was the metatarsal, yes.

Presenter16:56

Which must have been mana from heaven for you.

Gurinder Chadha16:58

For the PR

Presenter16:59

Department

Gurinder Chadha16:59

But yes, but upsetting for me'cause I really wanted him to come and be part of it.

Presenter16:59

Yes, but

Presenter17:02

Yeah.

Presenter17:03

Tell me what we're going to hear now. It's uh it's your fifth.

Gurinder Chadha17:06

When I came to do the musical of Bende Light Beckham, I said I will do this musical if I can include Heer in it. And Heer is from Heerunja, which is a Punjabi folk tale, which is a bit like Romeo and Juliet. But then the magic of it was the way Howard Goodall, who in many ways was sort of part of my soul beat, you know, during this whole experience, was able to take Waris Shah's tune to fit beautifully in a 2015 West End stage musical.

Speaker 417:41

Doli char dea mariyane richi ka k

Speaker 417:55

Menu Lachali Paul

Speaker 418:00

Let your lip.

Presenter18:06

That was Here Golden Moment from Bendit Light Beckham the musical, composed by Howard Goodall, with lyrics by Charles Hart, and performed by the original Bendit Light Beckham cast, featuring Rick Asoni and Natalie Dew.

Presenter18:19

When you hear that, do you feel a sense of pride? Do you think Crikey I did that?

Gurinder Chadha18:23

Uh

Presenter18:23

I do actually. I feel immensely proud of that. It's co-created, am I right, with your husband Paul? Yes. So you wrote it together. Yes. And you met in America.

Gurinder Chadha18:23

Yeah.

Gurinder Chadha18:28

So you

Gurinder Chadha18:30

Yeah.

Presenter18:32

Yes. And so at that time when you were in America and working for the studios, you know, a lot of successful and creative people can find themselves entirely disillusioned and ground down by that system of projects that they can work on for a long time that they feel passionately about that are never it's green lighted, isn't it? That's what they say. You know, you never quite get the green light, or suddenly the funding drops away or the stars no longer available, and everything that you've worked towards can just crumble to dust in front of you. What what was your experience?

Speaker 118:46

By that sc

Speaker 118:52

That's what they say, you know.

Gurinder Chadha18:59

And every

Gurinder Chadha19:05

Yeah, my experience was similar to that. But what you have to understand is LA movie making is a business. You can't really go there with a dream in your heart and a passion project.

Presenter19:16

So you didn't? You weren't.

Gurinder Chadha19:17

No, I signed on to do studio films. I think if you go there to try and do a passion project, I think you will get completely h screwed over and hurt because they won't understand the passion in the same way unless you have a lot of power and you can make it happen. And then of course when I was there I got pregnant and that was the best thing.

Presenter19:37

By your mid-forties, you sort of know how life goes. How much of a, I mean, a beautiful explosion, but a.

Gurinder Chadha19:41

Yeah.

Presenter19:44

A huge change in your life at that stage, did you?

Gurinder Chadha19:46

Oh yes. I mean my I'm a very young person at heart and physically as well, which is why I think I was able to carry children in my forties and the rest of the world.

Presenter19:55

And then we can't do that. Uh

Gurinder Chadha19:58

But my children have been the best gift I've ever been given. And it was really having my children that has given me the courage to actually aim even higher and to tackle the partition of India, which is what my new film Viceroy's House is about. It's because of the kids that I had the courage to then go back and tell that story.

Presenter20:19

Because you felt a sense, and I think this might be familiar to a lot of women, that sense, did you, of if I'm not going to be there at home, I better leave the house doing something I feel is really important and significant. Was that it?

Gurinder Chadha20:32

Absolutely. If I'm having time away from them, I'd better make damn sure it counts.

Presenter20:37

Let's have some more music, Grinda Chada. What's next? We're on your we're on your sixth.

Gurinder Chadha20:41

So this is a man I absolutely love to the core. To me he's a prophet. This particular track is definitely his theme song and it reminds me of earlier this year one of the happiest nights of my life which was being in the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square and I'd gone along to a sing along with Bruce night and me and a whole bunch of people were singing along to all Bruce tracks at the top of our voices.

Speaker 421:07

Sprung from cages on highway nine, throne with human jacket and stepping out over the line.

Speaker 421:16

Oh, maybe this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap. It's a suicide rap. We gotta get up while we're young.

Speaker 421:27

Cause translation we were forced to rain

Presenter21:39

That was Bruce Springsteen and Born to Run. Your husband, Paul, is a a screenwriter and a director too, and you you have written several things together. You've worked together a lot. Yes. How is that for marital harmony?

Gurinder Chadha21:49

For medical harmony.

Gurinder Chadha21:52

It has its ups and downs.

Gurinder Chadha21:55

I do write and I come up with storylines and I'm very good at structure and script editing, but I would say Paul is the proper writer, whereas I'm a bit bing bang bosh, let's get on with it.

Presenter22:06

Is it true that you gave your husband a camcorder to film the births of your twins?

Presenter22:13

I absolutely cannot believe you did that.

Gurinder Chadha22:15

I I I film everything, you know, I film everything. But I was obsessed with the fact that he had the camera in the wrong place and it was getting flare from a glare from a a light in the wrong place, so I kept telling him to change the camera angle.

Presenter22:28

It's interesting to think about those intentions of of that

Presenter22:32

you know, fairly young, thoughtful filmmaker as she started those first steps trying to change things and trying to put

Gurinder Chadha22:35

Do you start?

Presenter22:39

Herself and the people that she'd grown up among out there into popular culture to make it part of the landscape.

Presenter22:47

I would say you've successfully done that. By your own standards, do you feel that you've moved things forward?

Gurinder Chadha22:52

Oh yes, I do. You know, I don't often stop and take time to sort of pat myself on the back. And part of that is to do with the fact that I lost my dad. And for me, my measure of success is because it made my dad happy. But now I have my children. And so, you know, when on the set of my last film, I was explaining to my son, you know, he was there with me when we were filming. And we were in a big refugee camp that we'd created in India. My grandmother had been a refugee during partition. And he turned round and he looked at me in the middle of the set and he gave me a big hug and he said, Good for you, Mama, good for you, Mama, like that. And it was the most awesome experience. And to be very honest with you, I haven't felt that good about myself and my work since my dad died, actually.

Presenter23:40

Let's have some more music, Grindichata. Tell me about your seventh. What's this disc?

Gurinder Chadha23:44

I loved growing up in England as a child. You know, I loved reading about Millie Molly Mandy and her thick slices of bread spread with butter and jam. And for me, this represents a side of England that I really, really love deeply. But also, I lost a very dear friend of mine recently to cancer. We lived together for many, many years. And on Sunday mornings, we used to love

Gurinder Chadha24:12

M's.

Gurinder Chadha24:15

Which sounds really bizarre, but we would pull out the old hymn books and we would sing at the top of our voices. And this was something that Sally and I always used to love singing.

Presenter25:30

Jerusalem, and that was the BBC Concert Orchestra with the Royal Chordal Society conducted there by Barry Wordsworth.

Gurinder Chadha25:36

Uh

Presenter25:36

Yeah.

Gurinder Chadha25:36

They sing it a lot better than I do.

Presenter25:37

You take

Presenter25:39

Sure, you're doing yourself down there, Grundy Scarlet. You're just back then from India. You were filming this new drama called Viceroy's House, and it is about partition. Has it come at a time when it could only be now that you could do it?

Gurinder Chadha25:53

Yes, I think so. I think that I've sort of in my career sort of focused on making what you might call light affair, you know, comedic films about cultural issues. And I was scared, I think, to go deeper. And not many people have talked about it in cinema in the West. There's been films made in India for sure, you know. But I kind of wanted to make a film on this, but not focus on the violence. I wanted to do something else, something more emotional and something a bit more

Gurinder Chadha26:29

philosophical, I guess. And I was given a precious gift, if you like, by Prince Charles himself, who gave me a story that I didn't, I at that point didn't know. I had the rights to freedom at midnight, the seminal book on partition. But Prince Charles at this reception, he told me about another text. And because Mount Batten was one of his favourite uncles, he told me you have to tell this story. And I was mesmerized by that. And I went and did my due diligence, did my research. And so my story is an altogether different take on that history at that time. And this will be the first film by a British director from the colonies, as it were, the natives, you know, telling that story of empire from a British perspective.

Presenter27:18

On your C V I notice that you are Gorinda Charter OBE. You were awarded that in two thousand six, and it is, of course, the most excellent order of the British Empire.

Gurinder Chadha27:21

You're a

Gurinder Chadha27:27

Yeah. Was there any bit of you that paused before you accepted? No, not at all. I thought it was a fantastic sense of achievement. People here were a bit iffy about it, but all my relatives in India were delighted. And they all wrote letters to my mum saying, Oh, we're so proud, we're so proud. So that was a bit ironic, I think. But no, I think that the empire, you know, that's part of my history. I can't say, oh, I'm British and just take the good things. You know, I have to take everything. I can't say I'm Indian and just take the good things. I have to take everything.

Presenter28:01

People who make movies and who make movies at your level are indomitable and are copers. I can only imagine a little desert island with a palm tree and some nice lapping water will be an absolute breeze for you. You'll cope. You're a copper?

Gurinder Chadha28:15

Do you know, I don't know if I will because I thrive on human contact. Just in the way that I think people look at me and think.

Gurinder Chadha28:23

They think I'm one thing and then I turn out to play Jerusalem or Bruce Bristina whatever. In the same way, I like to meet other people and really have a fixed idea of what they might be, but actually come up with something else.

Presenter28:35

Let's have your final track, Gorinda Charter. Tell me about this disc.

Gurinder Chadha28:39

This is a song that I think whenever anybody is struggling to do what they want and can't quite get there, they should put this on and listen to it and dance around their kitchen. Because it was written at a time when things were very bad politically for black people in America. No one would have ever thought there'd be a black president when Curtis Mayfield wrote this song. For me, it's dedicated to the human spirit and how if we set our mind to it and we find the right strategy, we can and we should achieve.

Speaker 429:28

Hush Not Show!

Speaker 429:31

And don't crack.

Speaker 429:35

Your folks might understand you

Speaker 429:38

Bye and by

Speaker 429:41

Just move on.

Speaker 429:44

Uh Uh

Presenter29:45

Uh

Speaker 429:45

Your description

Presenter29:47

That was Curtis Mayfield, and move on up. Okay, it's time now, Gurinda Charlie, for me to give you the books. I give everybody the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Gurinder Chadha29:54

And

Presenter29:56

And you get to take another book along too? What's your book going to be?

Gurinder Chadha29:59

Well, I'm actually going to choose a book that's about to come out, which is by Professor Christopher Shackle. And it is the first or really comprehensive translation of the He Ranja love story. This will last me a few years, you know, going through the original text and learn the Punjabi as well as the English, because for me, it's so important that I can speak Punjabi. It's a window into a whole way of life and a whole culture.

Presenter30:31

It's yours then. You're allowed a luxury as well.

Gurinder Chadha30:34

I would need some device where I can watch uh videos of my children. My daughter does this amazing dance. She did it when she was four to Shakira, you know, wiggling around and I and I whenever I'm feel down about anything, I watch that and it's j it just makes my heart sing.

Presenter30:51

Okay, we're going to go old school then, given that you're a movie director. We'll give you a screen and we'll give you the film on reel to watch of your children, of the whole movies. It's yours. And finally, if you could only save one of these eight discs, Gorinda, which one would it be?

Gurinder Chadha30:57

Uh

Gurinder Chadha31:07

I think I'll have to go with disc five here. I've got the book, I've got the tra English translation, I'll have the Punjabi translation, I'll go with the actual music as well and see how I took that and moved it into a a different space, keeping the spirit of Warishah alive.

Presenter31:23

It's yours. Gorinda Chada, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Highland discs.

Gurinder Chadha31:27

Thank you.

Presenter32:08

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter32:11

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4