Monday, July 14, 2003		Feature

Movie on cards
Maria Abraham

A London-based film company is planning a comic love story in which employees at a call centre in India pretend to be English while helping out British customers.

Harbour Pictures will produce the film, for which director Nigel Cole will begin shooting next year. The two had earlier teamed up for "Calendar Girls", which created a buzz at the Cannes Film Festival two months ago.

"The film will take a serious look at the cultural differences between Britain and India. But it’ll also be a celebration of those differences," Suzanne Mackie, head of development at Harbour Pictures, told Reuters by telephone from London.

"The subject is potentially serious, but also potentially funny."

The film has been inspired by a growing trend of British companies such as Prudential and BT Group moving a part of their back-office operations to India. These include customer relations, which are served by call centres.

India’s huge pool of skilled, English-speaking graduates, who are willing to work at a fraction of Western wages, have spurred global companies such as Citigroup and AOL-Time Warner to set up back-office centres in the country.

Employees at call centres are often given British or American names, taught to speak with the relevant accent and even given crash courses in the pop culture of the two countries.

Clients are thus led to believe they are speaking to someone a few miles away instead of halfway across the globe.

The British film seeks to tap the potential humour and pathos of such situations.

"How can you teach someone popular British culture? It’s a funny arena for misunderstandings and that’s where the humour for the film will come in," says Mackie.

London-based actor and writer Sanjeev Bhaskar, who featured in the British television comedy show "Goodness Gracious Me" and writes and acts in the ongoing series, "The Kumars at No. 42", is working on the script for the movie.

"Sanjeev’s family is Indian so he’s sensitive to both cultures. He can laugh and sympathise with both," said Mackie.

The cast is yet to be decided.

Cole’s "Calendar Girls", a story of a bunch of middle-aged women who stripped to make a nude calendar for charity, is set to release in the UK on September 12.

(With additional reporting by Anshuman Daga in Bangalore)