Have you ever felt as if you were in a tug of war between two worlds?  Or even questioned traditions and customs that you at first grew to accept without really enquiring whether there is any validity behind them?  Maybe you worked your hardest to achieve something that you wanted only to be criticized and doubted?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then you will find yourself relating to Amrit Singh, the protagonist of Ocean of Pearls.  I am usually drawn to films that focus on the South Asian diaspora but are in English. Ocean of Pearls falls into this category and is now easily one of my favorite movies of all time. No matter if you are South Asian or not, you can easily find yourself relating to the situations that befall on Amrit in this movie.

The award winning film focuses on Amrit, a Sikh doctor from a very religious and traditional Sikh family. Amrit moves to Detroit to serve as the potential new face of an extremely promising organ transplant program.  Growing up in the Western world and then facing the dilemmas that his new job soon start to wear on Amrit. He begins to think that maybe the strict religious rules of his family may not be appropriate for the world that he lives in.  He encounters numerous racial obstacles in his path to success that hinder him from achieving what he hopes and attaining the recognition he deserves. After a while, Amrit decides that in order to accomplish anything the way he wants, he must take a drastic decision that his family and traditions condemn.

Amrit finds himself dealing with changes in every aspect of his life: his career, his family, his relationship, and most drastically, his values.  Ocean of Pearls explores the journey that Amrit takes to find himself when all he has known until now is confusion.

Ocean of Pearls is realistic and can appeal to a whole range of individuals, especially South Asians who often have to find a medium between adjusting to the way things are and the way their parents think things are.

You can check out the trailer below:

Ocean of Pearls is Directed by Sarab Singh Neelam

An Indian Aunty told me not to see Eat, Pray Love. It’s self-indulgent, she said. That woman is selfish and her trip was unnecessary. Taking off like that, how dare she?

Little did she know, I’d read the book ages ago, fallen in love with Liz’s prose, and already day-dreamed about traveling the world to write a book. Of course I was to see the film. Turning that kind of prose into a film was a feat to which I wanted to be a hope-filled witness.

It was a grand failure, at the end of it all. One cannot turn that beautiful of an inner monologue into a film without losing tremendous bytes of the meal along the way. On paper, I am still in love with Elizabeth Gilbert’s prose and perhaps that alone gives her as much right to self-indulgence as she’d like.

But the film, and Aunty, did get a new set of wheels to start turning in my mind. In the flesh, Liz seemed terribly un-deep. Not quite shallow, but certainly not the ocean of intellect and delectable rhetoric I’d held her to. My superhuman writer was really a woman, one of us, in search of inspiration through a set of the very same three verbs most of real-life women I deeply respect were made of.

The Indian mothers and grandmothers who showered me with delicious treats, dollops of social etiquette, boundless adoration and a nice set of home-making skills – what made them able to Eat, Pray and Love as they were, where they were, all their lives? Were they bound to their filial homes, their spouses and children out of duty, even when the free spirited women in their hearts wanted to escape for a week, or three? Were they simply not interested in the peculiar Western tradition of self-discovery through independence, even on the tiniest scale? Or perhaps they did embark on journeys just like Liz’s, inwardly first, finding a portal to the whole wide world deep within the recesses of their minds.

Perhaps their eating was manifest in the mouths they had to feed, first their parents, then their siblings, then their children and finally, all at the same time. Perhaps their praying was manifest in the lives they had to pray for, sending little oil-combed heads to school in ironed uniforms, praying the little minds within would be safe and inspired all hours of the day. Perhaps their loving was manifest in generational boundaries they were willing and able to overcome, housing at times three ways of thinking and four modes of value under one roof, providing one meal, one lifeline and one book to string them all together.

I don’t think I’ll take a trip around the world just yet, not because it’s not feasible but because I’d like to start inward. I’d like to share my eats with little hands and lace chopped vegetables with poignant vignettes. I’d like to challenge prayer in a loud room and hurdle fantastic escapades entailing twenty-four hours and twenty-five things to do. I’d like to find silence in rhythm and encouragement even on weekly plateaus, perched in reverence of the women who have shown me how.

Kal Penn on the hit TV series House.

Kal Penn, born Kalpen Suresh Modi, has made us laugh in many movies from his humble beginnings in American Desi all the way to Harold and Kumar. He has even tackled more serious roles such as “Gogol” in the Mira Nair film The Namesake. Currently, he plays a doctor on the hit FOX show House. Things you may not know about the actor: he’s a vegetarian and taught a lecture course at the University of Pennsylvania called “Images of Asian Americans in the Media” and a seminar called “Contemporary American Teen Films.”

Manu Narayan with Jessica Alba and Mike Meyers in The Love Guru.

Manu Narayan performed under the glamorous lights of the Broadway stage for the lead role of “Akaash” in the smash Bollywood Dreams. Just this last summer he played “Rajneesh” in The Love Guru opposite Mike Myers and Jessica Alba. Take note: he can sing! Narayan graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a double major in saxophone and voice. He has sung with Cyndi Lauper and even preformed for Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair!

Maulik Pancholy for the Showtime hit Weeds.

Maulik Pancholy, graduated with a Master’s degree in Acting from the Yale University School, and went on to make multiple appearances on popular televisions shows such as The Sopranos and 30 Rock. He even voices the character “Baljeet” on the popular Disney channel cartoon Phineas and Ferb. But, you may recognize him best as James Marsden’s lovable co-worker in 27 Dresses. Keep a look out for him on the silver screen this year and a role on the Showtime hit Weeds.

Information provided by IMDb.

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