Hindi movies over the decades have offered many hoary old stereotypes of minority communities. There are the Parsis, who used to be offered as comic relief, arriving in a grand old car packed with kids and piloted by a bespectacled little man in a black conical hat. There are the Christians, often embodied in plump, stern nurses, saintly priests, or wellmeaning but perpetually liquorsoaked uncles. These quickanddirty shorthands range from merely shallow to downright offensive, but for better or worse they are part of the filmic vocabulary, frequently pressed into service.