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The division is necessary to balance their conflicting personalities, best described by Mathews as "Sunil has the ideas; Sandhya makes them work."

Sandhya, an associate producer, wrote every check relating to Yaar's expenses and basically functioned as the production's left brain. She also took care of the couple's two young children and did the cooking every night, waking every morning at five or six to brace herself for another day of Thakkar's obsessive creative impulses. Thakkar was especially consumed with the film's soundtrack, easily one of the movie's highlights.

Although some songs are used for only seconds at a time, securing the music took well over a year, Sandhya says. In order to get the rights to several songs by the Indian-U.K. band Cornershop, Thakkar ambushed the musicians in their tour bus after a Houston gig. Sandhya says her fanatical husband begged the band to watch a rough cut of the movie. They allowed Thakkar to use the songs, but only after Sandhya reluctantly brokered a deal that, if the film is a smash, will probably make Cornershop the biggest beneficiaries.

"If it grosses a lot, we owe them a lot," she says, cradling her head in her hands.

Most surprising, the Thakkars and the rest of the crew ignored potential interest from Miramax and Fox Searchlight representatives, who the Thakkars say called them after Bend It Like Beckham became a hit. Even though backing from those two studios might have put Yaar into more theaters, the Thakkars say they can market and distribute the film better by giving it their undivided attention. They don't want their film relegated to the bottom of some studio's priority list.

The movie has already achieved a good buzz from film festival screenings in cities like Austin and San Francisco. It's scheduled to open in seven major cities, including Houston, on September 5.

And although it sounds like the sort of aw-shucks thing he's supposed to say, Thakkar comes across as sincere when he says Yaar's financial future isn't as important to him as the fact that he simply helped make the film in the first place.

"The Indian dream is to make a movie," he says, sitting still for the first time. "The American dream is to make it on your own. I feel like I've got both."

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