Triangulating Birmingham, Blackpool, Bombay: Gurinder Chadha’s "Bhaji on the Beach"

Abstract

"Bhaji on the Beach" is a 1994 road film, directed by Gurinder Chadha, centred on female characters who struggle in conflicts of gender, ethnicity and generational differences. Appropriating themselves of the public space of the English seaside resort Blackpool, each of these women reaches some sort of crossroads. Through the acknowledgment that identity is the outcome of negotiating difference, the film clearly illustrates a collusion of divided loyalties, weaving together the lives of this group of women from different backgrounds and generations. At Blackpool, the characters’ multiple inscribed identities, at the intersection of ethnic and gendered lines, place them in a position where they are forced to reconcile conflicting aspects of the British and Indian spheres they inhabit. It is at this juncture of transnational cultural flows that hybridised subjectivities-in-between coexist and are held in suspension.