Looking at how the ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ director has scripted a children’s fable, on the art of giving, with her holiday release that opens in theatres, December 12

A still from the British musical comedy Christmas Karma

I’ve figured a polite way to work around a rather rude question, as I first did with late Kundan Shah, about Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983).

Which is to recall that Joseph Heller was once asked why he could never write another book as great as Catch-22. Heller had said then, “Nobody else could, either!”

Likewise, for director Gurinder Chadha and her classic, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), isn’t it —that her company is named after, and that follows her still, with its ever-growing fans, no matter where she is, including onstage, with me, at the India Film Project fan-fest in Mumbai.

Chadha says, “[Bend It Like Beckham just] hit at the right time. It came out six months after 9/11, when something had shifted in the world. 

“Of course, I struggled to make that film for three-four years. Everybody laughed at the [idea of] girls playing football; never mind an Indian girl. But I pushed and pushed; Beckham supported us.”  

To emphasise on reach, Chadha says Bend It Like Beckham “remains the only film in the history of cinema to have been distributed in every country of the world, including

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