A new sitcom for a laugh and a song

Say hello to the Finklesteins, the latest 'American-born confused desi' sitcom family

The mound of thermocol cups piling in a corner grows into a sizeable tower you can’t ignore, much like the number of people scuttling about. Some of them tug on wires that seem to run everywhere, others hurriedly run up and down the stairs and in and out of the rooms, carrying an assortment of things from makeup kits to biscuits. From the outside, it seems like they are all responding to an alarm meant for their ears alone. Despite the chaos in a place where there’s a constant chatter in English, Kannada and Tamil, no one trips over the wires, no one knocks the tripod or lights over, and no one pauses for a breather — all of them have done this before, many times over, especially in the last three days. This is what a break looks like at M V Productions in Bengaluru’s HSR Layout. The commotion fades out as the set is cleared for the next scene. The scene doesn’t make the cut even after a two retakes, and the production crew gets restless. But the moment quickly passes as the director’s voice booms across the room, ordering another retake.

The actors step in to play their parts and while all eyes are on them, it’s easy to miss the figure in the shadows: a kurta-clad man who appears to be talking to the wall. “Subu!” he says over and over, to no one in particular. This is Michael Fontana, the writer of Breakfast in Bangalore (BIB), an American-styled English sitcom based in Bengaluru. The premise follows the adventures (and misadventures) of an American family that relocates to India. The similarities between Fontana’s storyline and his own life are dots that connect on their own: Brooklyn-born and -bred Fontana, who worked as an IT professional for over 30 years, moved to India five years ago with his Chennai-born wife Madhuram.

Siring something like BIB was always in the pipeline for Fontana, who studied sitcom writing at New York Film Academy. His first script was given an edgier vibe following directions of an international comedy channel, but the deal went sour. In the absence of a producer, funding has become an unseen  hurdle for this scripted comedy. “I grew up in the Catskill Mountains watching people like Jerry Lewis and Jackie Mason perform, so comedy was always important to me. I used my savings for the pilot because I wanted to put out the story of an ex-hippie American musician who fell in love with India and brought his ABCD (‘American-born confused desi’) family here,” he says. While Fontana plays Mickey Finklestein and Madhuram doubles as his wife Latha, Lakshmi Chandrashekar of city-based Kriyative Theatre is the ladle-wielding sharp-tongued Tam-Brahm “paatthi” (grandmother) who is on a mission to de-westernise her grandchildren. The children, played by Anita Ganeshan, Brinda Dixit and Hemang Sharma (Fontana met all three during auditions) are equally quirky characters rediscovering a world they are inherently a part of.

Cast of Breakfast in Bangalore

The family framework is easy to get — they are all loaded with spunk and idiosyncrasies. The ex-hippie musician bit could have been left out, but here’s why it’s significant: Fontana was a part of a New York-born psychedelic jazz-rock outfit called Sweet Smoke in the 1960s and ’70s, who formed their own commune in Germany. “We were playing everywhere,” says Fontana (tenor saxophone, alto recorder, vocals, percussion). “I left the group because I wanted to come to India. So we made an overland trip in a truck and drove through Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more, before reaching Ludhiana in the ’70s. And when we got here, the gurus were waiting for us,” he chuckles, adding that coming to India was all the rage — why The Beatles had just done so too. “I saw a goddess like Sitara Devi [kathak exponent] perform. I learnt the north Indian and south Indian flute, met my future wife, moved back to New York, and now to Bengaluru.”

Does he still play music? “I can still sing,” he says, adding that his lungs don’t allow him to play the saxophone — this is the only indication of him being 67. “I’m blessed to have lived the hippie age. Heck, I was there when Bob Dylan switched to electric guitar with Like a Rolling Stone at the Newport festival in ’65. I’d rather be 67 and have seen all that I’ve seen than be 25 today,” he chuckles. For details about where and when Breakfast in Bangalore will air, see www.facebook.com/Breakfast-in-Bangalore-The-Sitcom-169948656535867/?fref=ts