GURINDER CHADHA is in the middle of casting sessions, her American husband and co-scriptwriter Paul Mayeda Berges is answering calls on the cell phone and Deepak Nayyar, the co-producer, better known for anchoring darkly cynical Wim Wenders' films, is meeting a cross-section of people from the film industry. They're sitting on the executive floor of the JW Marriott Hotel in Mumbai in a frenetic rush before they fly to Europe to promote Bend It Like Beckham. With the wildly successful Bend It ... behind them, the trio is hoping to score an equally famous goal with a musical adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, to be shot in India, the US and England.

Yet, for a woman known for an otherwise jolly disposition, Chadha is sounding unusually peeved. The reason: the good press she's got for Bend It ... in India has convinced Indians in the US that they shouldn't wait for its release. "Pirated copies of the film are everywhere. We've lost out on thousands of dollars of business," she says. Chadha goes on to say that Indian students have had screenings of the film in colleges. "Fox Searchlight, which plans to release the film in March, is planning to sue the local community there," she says. Fox delayed the film because it didn't want it to get buried in the winter releases aimed at catching the Oscar nominations.

The Kenya-born writer-director who refuses to reveal her age ("I never talk about it," she says) has been making films since 1989: her first was a documentary for the British Film Institute and Channel 4 called I'm English But ... Her most notable feature films so far have been Bhaji on the Beach (which, she says, wore its heart on its sleeve), What's Cooking? (where she loved working with the best of Hollywood actors, from Juliana Marguiles to Mercedes Ruehl), and her "most accomplished work so far", Bend It ... She's now called the "most commercial director in Britain" which, in an industry on a starvation diet, is very high praise. She speaks to Associate Editor kaveree bamzai about life after making the most successful British film of all time.

Q. First tell us about your experience on What's Cooking?. How was it working with Hollywood?
A. Well, Trimark Pictures, the distributor who bought it at the Sundance film festival in 2000 where it was the opening film, got bought out. The studio that bought Trimark, Lion's Gate, dropped the film like a hot brick, the people got fired and my film suffered. After that experience, I vowed to make the most commercial film I could and make sure I controlled the release. That was the genesis of Bend It ... Thanks to David Beckham's name attached to it, it generated a lot of buzz.

Q. The film didn't get favourable reviews across the board, did it? It was compared, not always to its advantage, with Damien O'Donnell's East is East.
A. Yes, to a certain extent. And that was very interesting. I saw Bend It ... as being very specific to the East African Punjabi community in Britain. I found it amusing that people in Britain felt they knew so much about our community that they could actually question its authenticity. But they had to eat their words, didn't they, because it became bigger than East is East. That was a very different film, an honest portrayal of half-British-half-Pakistani community from writer Ayub Khan Din's perspective. Culturally, sociologically and demographically, it was poles apart. But it's good that there are so many of us now expressing ourselves in many different ways, whether it's Ayub, Meera (Syal, who wrote the book on which the recent film, Anita & Me, was based) or me. But the best part is that The Sunday Times said the acting was bad.

Q. That's really funny given how well your lead actors are doing ...
A. Indeed. Keira Knightley is the flavour of the season. She's recreating Julie Christie's role in Dr Zhivago on television and Parminder Nagra is acting as King Lear in a British film with Om Puri and Anupam Kher.

Q. But Bend It ... got some good press too, didn't it?
A. Yes. The Daily Express review picked up on how English the film was. It said the film was very structured, with short scenes. It said it was in the vein of Mike Leigh. They didn't see the Indianness of the film, they saw it as a universal story. I didn't realise it.

Q. I believe you're now working on an adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?
A. Yes. It's a musical form, a playful homage to the Hindi films of the 1960s and '70s as also Busby Berkeley musicals. It's a combination of Hollywood and Bollywood. It's very contemporary with choreography by Santosh Sivan, music by Anu Malik and lyrics by Farhan and Zoya Akhtar.

Q. They've not written songs before. Why them?
A. Well, I had gone to the father (poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar). I thought he would enjoy working on the songs of my movie. He got Zoya, his daughter, to write one song. Farhan, his son, also looked at it. Once I saw their work, I entirely agreed with him. The songs are very Indian and I loved Farhan's Dil Chahta Hai. He's extremely talented. It was good fun working with them because they're trying to run away from all the things I'm trying to do in this movie. They're also big fans of Bend It ...

Q. Are you a big fan of the song-and-dance routine?
A. Oh absolutely. It's intrinsic to the industry.

Q. So has the Mumbai film industry adopted you?
A. Well, people have loved the film. They come up, shake my hand, take pictures and are quick to say how proud they are of my movie. It's very gratifying. Wherever I go, whether it's Australia, France or Germany, I get the same reaction from Indians. But what I most enjoy is the reaction from bellboys and stewards in hotels. In Amritsar, I was mobbed by 30 young Sikh boys who surrounded me at the Golden Temple and wouldn't let me go until I signed autographs and posed for pictures. In Mumbai, so many people want to be involved with what we're doing. There's a lot of soul-searching about making things change. Can you imagine, I was even accosted at a party by David Dhawan who said he's going to Southall to make a movie like mine. That should be something (laughs heartily). There's a general sense that somehow Bend It ... is theirs, while the British too want to claim it as their own.

Q. The big question: is Aishwarya Rai going to be Elizabeth Bennett in your adaptation of Pride and Prejudice?
A. Well, she's expressed a strong interest in it.

Q. When do you start shooting?
A. By the end of next spring. We'll wrap it up in 16 weeks. It's a very Punjabi film and Deepak (Nayyar) has loved it because at heart, we're both Punjabi-in fact, when we want to abuse English people, we do it in Punjabi. And we both understand our audience and make a good team.

Q. Have you colonised your husband yet?
A. No way. He still plays basketball.

Q. With all this adulation from India, do you consider yourself Indian or British-Asian?
A. I am a Southall girl before I'm anything else. That shapes my sensibility.

Q. Is there a future for another sort of filmmaking in England which is different from the Four Weddings and a Funeral clones?
A. I think there's room for everyone. In fact, Richard Curtis, the writer of Four Weddings ... and Notting Hill, stood up halfway through a seminar on scriptwriting in England and said he loved the writing on Bend It ... It's very fulfilling.