Bollywood style meets Kiwi dairy

Ishitta Arun (right) gets a taste of life behind the counter from local expert Naz Shabana. Picture / Kenny Rodger

The PR woman wants to take Bollywood star Ishitta Arun to a dairy for a photo op "because Indians are the dairy-owners of New Zealand".

The journalist is sighing over the inspirational paucity, but Arun, 25, is a true pro, sweeping into the Freeman's Bay dairy managed by the Ahmed family in good humour.

Ijaz Ahmed and wife Naz Shabana don't recognise her straight away, although they are two of Bollywood's estimated 500 million fans. Well, it's context, isn't it: they have served members of the public named Helen Clark and Jonah Lomu, but it's not so usual to have a Bollywood luminary stride into your shop.

An actor, model, presenter and video jockey, Arun stars in The Merchants of Bollywood, a lavish 30-person, high-energy overview of the Indian film industry's 50-year history.

She describes the show as Bollywood for beginners. You don't need to be Indian, or to have already enjoyed Bollywood's joyfully over-wrought melodramas, she says - just an open mind and the capacity to have a good time.

Arun is a husky-voiced charmer, articulate and friendly. She has been married to composer Druv Ghanekar for only six months, but on the road in Australia, she complains, for both of them.

Has someone told her about transtasman rivalry?

Quite unprompted, she says: "I am very happy to be in New Zealand and not in Australia. It's more green in New Zealand. Australians are happy and fun-loving, but I think New Zealanders beat them to that."

Leaving the dairy, Arun says she is pleased to see the Ahmeds, who are Pakistani, working so well with the dairy's Indian owners; this is not necessarily common where she comes from, the north-western state of Rajasthan bordering Pakistan.

I wish that sort of cooperation happened at home, she says: "Our culture should come here and check this out."

* The Merchants of Bollywood plays at the Civic Theatre, Auckland, tomorrow to Sunday. Tickets $69 from Ticketek.