Kicking Butt Desi Style

Bollywood heros often fight villains with a few “dishooms”, a couple of deadly glances, and maybe a few evil spells. All the while our heroine is left sitting on the sidelines. Lame!

Meet real-life heroine, Vanita Gupta. Back in 1999, the recent Yale Law graduate stumbled upon a documentary about a drug bust in Tulia, TX. Vanita, convinced that racism was at the heart of the problem, decided to go to Tulia to find out.

What Vanita unearthed in the small town of Tulia led her to passionately fight to appeal the verdict of the 46 defendants wrongly convicted, assembling a team of high profile lawyers to help her. Vanita and her team won and the defendants were eventually freed four years after they were incarcerated.

Oh yeah did we mention she was only 28?

Now Vanita’s amazing story is going to grace the silver screen. And Vanita is being played by none other than….. Parminder Nagra? Sheetal Sheth? Maybe even Aishwarya? Nope, the role is going to be played by Halle Berry. Yep, this is going to be interesting. The half-white, half-black not-so desi actress will be directed by Carl Franklin in the screen adaptation of Nate Blakesee’s book “Tulia”.

OK, so we would have preferred the role go to an actress of South Asian descent. But at least Halle is still playing a South Asian. It’s a little early to rush (or not rush depending on how you feel about the casting) to the theater (the movie is scheduled for release in 2008), but you can always read the book, Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town in the meantime.

Better get to reading!

To learn about updates and more Tulia news, check www.imdb.com