Filmmaker Gurinder Chadha has a knack for adapting books into films, be it her Bride and Prejudice (2004), based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or her latest, Christmas Karma, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, releasing in India on December 12. More than that, she is known for telling diaspora stories, capturing the tension, humour, and warmth of characters caught between cultures, straddling identities — a sensibility the British-Kenyan filmmaker brings to her latest with her immigrant take on Christmas.
In Dickens’ original A Christmas Carol, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is taught about the spirit of giving by three ghosts. In Chadha’s Christmas Karma, that role falls to Eshaan Sood (Kunal Nayyar), a rich immigrant, who’s taught the spirit of Christmas by three ghosts, played by Eva Longoria, Billy Porter, and Boy George.
“My favourite Christmas movie is It’s a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra. We watch it every year. And a few years back, I said to myself that I want to make a film that makes me feel like that during Christmas,” Chadha told The WEEK.
Of ghosts & grace
While adapting a story by a literary icon like Dickens is no small challenge, Chadha finds an interesting thread that weaves together her Sikh and British identities.
“Dickens was actually quite a depressive character. He suffered from depression and, as I read it, he wrote A Christmas Carol as a way to find the good in humanity. To me, what Dickens is writing about is really very close to the perspective of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. He says, ‘Ik Onkar’ — we are all connected. Obviously, being Sikh, that’s something I follow, although Dickens didn’t know it at the time,” she chuckles.
“But that’s the heart of the story — how does Scrooge redeem himself? In the novel, he does it through giving. What he’s doing is seva: offering something to someone else that they don’t have. That act of generosity is what makes him human. For me, it all made sense across every side of me — my Sikh side, my English side that loves Christmas, my Indian side that loves music, singing, and dancing. And as a filmmaker, what I try to do is connect the world,” she adds.
Stories of diaspora
Known for films like Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004), Chadha says making a film like Christmas Karma is “quite a political act at the moment because for somene like me, getting a film made is very hard right now, especially for a film that has kind of colonial discourse, and also taking a classic like Dickens, and adapting it at a time when we have seen the rise of the Right around the world. So for me, this film will ruffle some feathers because there are people who don’t want to deal with the colonial narrative. People in England don’t teach the Raj. They have no idea of British history, about how the wealth in Britain was made, how the country got developed.”
At the end, it’s about telling a personal story, “I carry the struggles of my ancestors from partition, to going to Africa, to coming to Britain. I carry those struggles, but I also carry our achievements, which is also what I celebrate in my film,” says Chaddha.
Starring Nayyar, known for playing Rajesh Koothrappali in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory, Christmas Karma also stars Charithra Chandran, Pixie Lott, and Danny Dyer.