ON A SUNDAY morning in a Wan Chai bar last month, three well-dressed patrons are having an argument in Hindi. In walks a police officer. 'Lieutenant,' says one of the customers, 'arrest that man.' The cop pulls out handcuffs to clamp them on the culprit - and bursts into laughter.
'They're too small for his wrists,' he says.
This is not a blunder by one of Hong Kong's finest, but a shoot for Sindoor Tere Naam Ka, an Indian soap opera. The show, which filmed for a week in Hong Kong and featured local fans, has more than five million viewers in India and tens of thousands of Indian expat fans, according to broadcaster Zee Television.
It's a lucrative market. Advertising revenue for the Indian cable and satellite television sector surpassed $7.75 billion in the last financial year, and still has room to grow as the population of nearly 1.1 billion becomes increasingly wealthy.
On this particular morning, three local fans are acting on the show. Bobby Natesh, who plays the cop, says he didn't have to practise before auditioning. The financial analyst already had memorised lines from movies starring his favourite Bollywood actor, Amitabh Bachchan.
'Since I was young, I've dreamt of entering this industry,' says Natesh, who does community theatre with the Indian Arts Centre. 'My dad forced me to study computers, but the love was still there.'