Diversity within the UK Asian clubbing scene is still very much in evidence. While a significant number of Asian youth choose Bhangra/Garage clubs for their ‚big night out‘, an ever-dwindling minority of older ‚trendies‘ frequent the few remaining ‚Asian Underground‘ one-off gigs. By far the biggest development is amongst the more mature 20-somethings who are swept away by sophisticated R&B or Bollywood events.

There is much that can be said about Bollywood. The multi–million dollar industry, spawned from the streets of India’s West coast city Bombay, bigger and more productive in terms of output than Hollywood itself, churning out new movies almost daily, creating actor stars who are worshipped as gods, and generating styles and fashions across the Subcontinent and beyond. The glitz, the glamour, the MUSIC,... and the glaring absence of money and tv sets across Asia for many years ensured that Bollywood was THE essential fodder for the masses, food for escapism far away from the daily struggle for life. But all this has been said before... here is a more personal diasporic account.

We’ve come a long way, baby, since the 1970s England I grew up in where my Asian life was a completely separate and secret world I kept from my English friends. I went to school and did English things: played netball, talked about Top Of The Pops, and ate beef cobbler and jam rolypoly. At home, family life rotated around work, work, and work, plus chappatis and family parties. Occasionally we had ‚special‘ outings – my parents yearning for a little taste of ‚back home‘ – when we’d go to see an ‚Indian‘ movie, maybe once every two months or so at some beaten-up, grubby cinema hall in East London, where suddenly I would see brown faces – faces like mine (!) – on the big screen. This felt very different to watching ‚Chitty Chitty Bang Bang‘ and ‚Oliver‘ though the the format as musicals was similar.

I remembered each ‚Indian‘ movie for months afterwards, the impact was so strong on various levels. The music, singing, dancing, the story, the gorgeous actresses, and the fact that this movie was made in the country I came from but had never been to – my country of origin – India! So you see I lived in two worlds: England, and English India, informed largely by Bollywood movies... My mother used to buy her saris in a little shop called Damini’s in London’s East End. At that time there were no Asian music stores, but to my delight sometimes my mum would treat me to one of the Indian film records which Damini kept on a lower shelf next to the bangles. I aquired the soundtracks to films like Aradhana, Mera Naam Joker, Pakeezah Sholay and other classics in this way. No matter that we didn’t have a record player at home. At least I now had a piece of my favourite films, and English India at home!

Something changed over the last 30 years and I’m not sure we even noticed it doing so...

And so here and now in the present, the year 2002 and I take my original vinyls into nightclubs across the world and play them to audiences both Indian and not. My English India is no longer a secret, but instead an experience I have learned to proudly share with everybody. Both London nightclubs that I run, ‚Kuch Kuch...‘ and ‚Club Kali‘ are shriving with clubbers of every nationality rockin‘ to bollywood beats. Damini‘s is now a multinational fashion leader with branches in Dubai, Europe, and central London. There are LOTS of Asian music shops, but you can also buy ‚Kuch Kuch Hota Hai‘ in HMV... Curry (and presumably chappati) is officially Britain‘s most popular food outstripping even fish & chips. Just in the last three years more and more Bombay-made films are entering the British (mainstream) top ten – ‚Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham‘ held the NO.1 spot for a few weeks earlier this year! Amir Khan’s cricketing movie ‚Lagaan‘ was nominated for an Oscar. The British Film Institute have just launched an eight-month high-profile project called ‚ImagineASIA‘, while The Victoria & Albert Museum is set to stage a huge Bollywood poster exhibition throughout August. Last year ‚Asoka‘ became the first Indian movie to premiere in London’s Leicester Square. And this year, Andrew Lloyd Webber – the man himself – will unleash his ‚Bombay Dreams‘ theatre production into London’s West End. It’s all gone Bollywood here in the UK... so you see, we HAVE come a long way, baby.