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Episode 2: Mumbai

BBC Radio 4 - Home from Home, Mumbai

Hardeep tests his talents at the Mumbai Comedy Store.

Hardeep Singh Kohli meets more British Indians who have left the UK for a new life in India. He tests his talents at the Mumbai Comedy Store.

As India's economy has boomed, many British Indians - born or brought up in the UK to immigrant Indian parents - have been encouraged to make the reverse journey.

In two programmes Hardeep Singh Kohli visits the centres of Bangalore and Mumbai and tracks down some of those who have decided to change their lives and make a go of it in India. But do they see themselves as Indian or British? What do they relish and what do they miss?

In the second programme Hardeep is in Mumbai - 20 million people crammed into this coastal centre offering everything from Bollywood to Banking. One of the most successful British entrepreneurs is Nanesh Patel who from his factory in Leicester managed to export samosas to Chennai. So successful and so tasty was their reception that he built a factory in Gujerat and now sends them throughout India and the world. An equally successful export is the rap singer Hard Kaur. Born in India she came with her mother and brother to Birmingham when she was 12 and started singing after leaving school. But, as she tells Hardeep, it was the Indian fans that have made her a huge star, and though she returns to visit her mother in Birmingham, Mumbai is her base.

There's also Anita Patel from Leicester who's running her wedding planner service taking couples to glamorous locations, and Yusuf Hatia who's set up a public relations company from scratch and feels the dynamism and energy. 

Would Hardeep join these and the others who have taken the plunge and sought new opportunities in India? He tests his own talents as a stand-up performer when he does a gig at the Mumbai Comedy Store, an offshoot of the London centre for stand-up comedians and aimed at the young liberal Mumbai middleclass. If they laugh loud and long enough, would he be tempted...


Producer: Richard Bannerman
A Ladbroke Production for BBC Radio 4.

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Hardeep Singh Kohli meets British Indians who have left the UK for a new life in India

Hardeep Singh Kohli meets British Indians who have left the UK for a new life in India, encouraged by its tiger economy

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