England in the late 1970's and early 1980's, especially in the metropolitan centres, was incredibly volatile. Unemployment was high and prospects were bleak for any type of quick recovery. As is usually the case in these sorts of situations people began casting about looking for somebody to blame. It just so happened that around the same time Idi Amin Dada, President of Uganda, expelled everyone of South East Asian ancestry from his country, instantly creating tens of thousands of refugees.
Forced to flee with almost nothing but the clothes on their back they were initially dependent on whatever country took them in for survival. In England, where there was already a sizable South East Asian community, the sudden influx of these refugees brought long simmering racial tensions to a boiling point and gave people a target for their resentment and anger. Neo-Nazi groups like the National Front fanned those flames into open hatred that resulted in waves of rioting sweeping through London.
In the early 1980's an adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel My Beautiful Laundrette into a movie captured that time period beautifully. In the 1990's he adapted another of his novels set in the same time period. This time instead of a movie, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), took The Buddha Of Suburbia and made it into a television serial. Now for the first time, through BBC America, it's available for home viewing as a two-DVD package containing all four of the original episodes.
Set in the suburbs of London in the late 1970's, The Buddha Of Suburbia tells the story of a young man trying to find his place in the world. Karim's life up until now has been quite conventional; his father is a civil servant, his mother is a house wife, and he's been living the life of a typical teenager. He listens to The Rolling Stones, The Beetles, and Frank Zappa; he wears jeans and is just like the rest of his crowd at school. He might be Indian by birth but he's assimilated by choice and habit.
However this comfortable little world is going to start crashing down around him, precipitated by his father's version of a mid-life crisis. Spurred on by an attractive English woman, Karim's father begins to instruct his neighbours in the delights of Indian mysticism. Despite the fact that he's easily as assimilated as his son, he not only becomes a hit as a guru, he scores a hit with the English woman Eva, and eventually leaves his wife for her.
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