AI Summary
5 min readBollywood Dreams
In February, an email arrived from a listener named Raja. His father, a retired pharmacist in his 70s living in Florida, had been sending large sums of money to a stranger in India—a Bollywood director he'd met through cold calls—to finance a movie he'd dreamed up in a week. The film, set partly in 1780 and partly in the present, would "heavily feature cauliflower." Raja's question was straightforward: "My dad is making a Bollywood movie. Is he being scammed?"
The father's history of long-shot ventures
Raja's father, Runjit, emigrated from Mumbai to America about 50 years ago. He built a career in pharmacy, but alongside it he maintained a restless appetite for improbable side businesses. He tried competing with Home Depot by selling nuts and bolts from his garage; he started a photocopy business that never had a single customer; he turned his basement into a chemistry lab to develop a hair-bleaching gel that ultimately burned his son's hand. His wife, Raja said, was "extremely frugal, extremely conservative" and saw each venture as another waste of money. The scoreboard, as Runjit himself put it: "If it is a successful business and my attempt, the score is 100 to 0."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:37) **A Son’s Suspicious Email** - A listener, Raja, emails the show worried his retired father is being scammed after sending large sums of money to a stranger in India to produce a Bollywood movie.
- 2 (07:38) **The Bollywood Pitch and a Suspicious Director** - Raja details how his father, who doesn’t even watch Bollywood, found a director named Kamalchandra through a cold call to a Mumbai studio.
- 3 (11:27) **The $300,000 Question** - Raja reveals the total movie budget is around $300,000, a huge sum for a retiree, and he shares his failed attempts to verify the director’s legitimacy.
- 4 (21:05) **The Bollywood Landscape** - The host interviews a Bollywood journalist and screenwriter, Ankur Patekar, to understand the industry Raja’s father has entered.
- 5 (26:49) **Talking to the Father, Runjith** - The host speaks directly to Raja’s father, Runjith, who explains his motivation and how he found the director.
- 6 (32:04) **A Deal Struck on a Handshake** - Runjith details the agreement with the director, revealing a relationship built on trust and shared vision, not contracts.
- 7 (36:47) **The Promise of a Finished Film** - Runjith is confident the film will be finished and even make its money back, inviting the host to India for a screening.
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Show Notes
An email hits our inbox with the subject line: “My Dad is making a Bollywood Movie… is he being scammed?” We investigate.
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