One of my more unyielding memories while growing up in Toronto and going often to “Gerrard Street” - a street name that doubled as an amorphous cultural catch-all idea - is the reverie of strolling past storefronts with white-toned mannequins (some with blond hair) draped in yards of sari.

What was possibly weirdest about it all is that it never really struck us as weird.

In a moment way before the larger culture had emulsified South Asians — long before we’d find Priyanka Chopra doing the Met Ball red carpet and presenting at the Oscars, or Aziz Ansari hosting Saturday Night Live or, heck, see a Sikh dude wearing a turban as Canada’s defence minister — there was no expectation of seeing anything else.

It was a time of a TV-verse (and TV, really, was our Instagram, our Facebook, our everything) where the faces reflected back to us said only one thing: no Mindy Kaling yet, no flicker of a brown face on The Good Wife or Lost or The Big Bang Theory. Hence, those white dummies in storefront windows told the tale. “Gerrard Street,” as it were, was our in-between place.

A new documentary about that byway, known to some as the “India Bazaar,” more than adeptly paints that picture. Premiering on TVO at 9 p.m. on Canada Day (because this is Canadiana, people), the doc, titled Little India: Village of Dreams, takes a peek at some of the originals that hatched the east-end Toronto hood 40-plus years ago and the generation that piggybacked on it — some with relative relish, others with dreams of escaping it.

Striking me almost like a docu-style update of that vintage CBC sitcom King of Kensington, it quickly becomes a multi-culti petri dish for probing some age-old questions: “How do new Canadians and their communities process their identity? And what changes occur when their legacy is passed on to a profoundly Westernized generation with its own ideas and independent streak?”





These are some of the things that director Nina Beveridge set out to explore, in so many words. Venturing to look past the facade of this colourful mosaic — and what she refers to us as “the push-and-pull of the Canadian dream” — she gets things rolling in the doc by reminding us that the micro-community essentially grew out of a cinema that was opened on this stretch of Gerrard St. near Coxwell Ave.

Called the Naaz Theatre, it played Bollywood movies, pandering to a diaspora that loves their movies, all right, courtesy of a subcontinent that’s long been the world’s biggest movie industry. That is to say: before the street became an ecosystem unto itself of restaurants and cafes and beauty shops, of shops peddling groceries, jewelry and clothes, it all started with one lone movie palace.

Seeing images of the Naaz Theatre — long gone now, disrupted by the dawn of DVD culture and a flight to the burbs for many Indo-Canadians — it made me wonder: is there another neighbourhood in Canada’s largest metropolis that was literally manifested because of an urge to go to the movies? The whole neighbourhood is the product of a dance-enabled fever-dream, one might argue.

For me, this whole thing traffics well with my other main takeaway of skedaddling to Gerrard as a little boy (besides the white mannequins): going to see Indian movies with my family. This was our big night out. We didn’t “do” cottaging in the summer. We didn’t even really go to restaurants. We went to the movie theatre on Gerrard and Bollywood films usually being three-hour affairs, I remember that there always used to be an “intermission” during the film, like you find in live theatre. I still love an intermission.

The extent to which movies preyed on my imagination probably cannot be overstated. As the son of a son of a son from India — my family arc involved a generational pit stop in Africa — I grew up feeling Indian and yet, not really. Movies from the subcontinent — and, by extension, Gerrard St. — nourished my complicated sense of identity.

The many shades of self-identification are on the menu, too, in Village of Dreams and its director lucked out with the subjects she found. In the movie’s quartet of entwining narratives there is, for instance, the Snapchat-happy Chandan Singh, the second-generation player at Chandan Fashion, housed in a building painted Smurf-blue and bubble-pink. His mission? It now includes running a custom bridal-wear business on the top two floors of the building.

Adding to the theme of family dynasties: a parallel spotlight focusing on Harleen Khorana, whose father was the very first to open an Indian clothing store on the street. Hurtling toward 40, and unmarried, she’s in charge now and obviously whip-smart, though we are made to wonder in at least one poignant scene if she possibly sacrificed too much for her family.

A third arc involves the Khans, the family behind Forever Young Beauty Salon and Spa. With a second generation consisting of two daughters, the dynamics of this family are interesting, in part because the eldest, Sumaiyah — the most cheerful person you’ll probably ever meet — dons a hijab unlike her own mother, a refugee to this country. It’s a case of a child carving out a spiritual path different from her elders. Her sister Aysha, meanwhile, is your classic tomboy and is agnostic about much: still in high school and a surly scene-stealer in the movie, she informs us she wants to become a police officer.

A fourth and final narrative involves the saga of Lahore Tikka House, a 21st-century beacon on Gerrard. After its founder, Alnoor Sayani, died of a heart attack in 2013, his wife, Gulshan Allibhai, left her job as a social worker and university professor, and now runs the popular 400-seat restaurant. The widow’s journey — together with her two young sons, the eldest now attending Upper Canada College — forms the heart of the movie.

“I feel like Alnoor had to pass for me to see my strength,” she says.

Allibhai also hammers the point that her husband, an Ismaili Muslim, never liked the “segregation” that sometimes occurs between cultures in Little India and he was all about being Canadian first, but also bringing together the Pakistanis with the Indians, the Sri Lankans, the Bangladeshis, etc.

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Zeroing in on a day on which Eid and Diwali coincided — two tent-pole holidays for different religions — the movie pans over the festivities on Gerrard where, at least for one shining moment, this seems possible. Oh, Canada.

Of course, villages being what they are and gentrification being its own life force, one of the more memorable scenes includes a wine-and-cheese party held in a trendy new fromagerie that’s opened on Gerrard St., next to the same-old places hawking pakora and paan. A good number of the young Indians are there and are all for the “new energy” in the neighbourhood. “There’s a barnyard-y flavour,” the owner of The Pantry is explaining about one variety he’s touting.

Village of dreams? Village of cheese, too.