Try naming the variety of things you can find along Garnet Avenue. Chances are your list will not include DVD copies of “Sholay” and “Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai.”
Yet those and other titles from India’s film industry are available via mail order from Indoportals Inc., an operation roughly a mile from the beach.
Since starting business in June, the company reports its top offering has been “Sholay,” a 1975 film done in Hindi. The business’ Web site (www.indofilms.com) describes it as “India’s best-known take-off on the typical Western genre,” combining murder, revenge and romance.
The small-town boy who makes good is one theme of “Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai,” one of many 2001 releases on the site.
All told, Indofilms’ library offers roughly 1,400 titles in a variety of languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam, Punjabi and Kanada.
The business sells and rents DVD copies of movies. In some cases videotapes are available.
Students, restaurateurs and a family from Long Island have gravitated to the site, said Cyrus Bharucha, vice president of the company. A Las Vegas doctor has become a particularly good customer: He ordered 200 titles for his collection.
The business grew out of a database of Indian films created by company founder Raghu Sugavanam, a resident of La Jolla who founded, then sold, Mercantile Software.
Sugavanam was filling a need by cataloging films from the subcontinent. “The Indian film industry is particularly badly organized,” said Bharucha.
Bharucha said the company employs staff in both San Diego and Bangalore, on the southern tip of India. With employees on opposite sides of the world, the enterprise is literally a 24-hour business.
One of the company’s biggest stateside challenges, he said, is not technical.
It’s finding the right envelope that goes through the mail economically and still protects the DVDs.
The Indofilms Web site also has offerings for those who speak only English, and for those who want to look back at India under British rule.
They include the British television comedy “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum,” and the 1983 epic “The Jewel in the Crown.” Both look back to World War II. And on the louder side, there is “Queen , We Will Rock You,” about the rock group of the same name. (The India connection? Front man Freddie Mercury was from Bombay.)
