Jan Bostock calls his wife, Arati, his Indian Princess.

The couple and their children, Alisha and Anya, live in Goa, running a guest house.

But if it hadn’t been for a daring deep sea rescue, Jan’s life would be very different.

Back when he was living in Bradford, he could never have imagined how his life would be transformed when he met Arati.

Now there’s talk of turning the couple’s love story into a Bollywood movie. Their story begins in Nigeria, where Jan was working in sales. One Sunday morning, he was sleeping off the night before at home on Ikoyi Island near Lagos. “The telephone started ringing. With a heavy sigh, I reached for the receiver,” he recalls.

It was Jan’s friend, Martin, who was 25 miles out at sea with a boatload of passengers. His boat had broken down near the ‘drop’ into deep waters and he wasn’t able to contact anyone at his boat club.

Jan dashed to the club, but discovered the only remaining boat had been taken out.

“Unfortunately, Lagos authorities don’t see the need for a working coastguard,” says Jan. “I was worried that if the boat was out there too long the current would take it way off course, and it’d be virtually impossible to find off the dangerous West African coast.”

Before he’d chance to consider the dangers, Jan launched his boat, a single engine Glastron.

“There are two rules about going out to deep sea – one is make sure you have back-up power. I didn’t. The other is make sure you have a compass. I didn’t,” he says. “But I was a man on a mission. I filled the boat with additional fuel canisters and set off up the creek.”

Jan’s plan was to keep the port mouth behind him. “After a few miles, it was virtually invisible,” he recalls.

“A couple of hours later, I still hadn’t reached the drop. To say I was scared would be an understatement. I’d rushed out to sea, no compass, one engine, a single bottle of water, a less-than-fully-charged radio and not a thing to eat. Reaching the drop, I turned, keeping the blue sea on my left and the dark sea on my right.”

Several hours later, Jan spotted the boat. “I gave a cry of relief that I was no longer alone,” he recalls. “Martin was up front waiting to throw me a rope. We pulled the boat alongside and fastened ourselves together. I took on board several canisters of fuel, as I was down to my last canister.”

They set off, with Martin’s boat in tow, and reached the boat club mid-evening. “I thought ‘thank God I’m back on dry land’, as I made my way to the bar” says Jan.

Overlooking the jetty where passengers were getting off the boat, he noticed a young Indian woman. “Everything seemed to slow down,” he says. “She was so beautiful. I told myself this woman was my future wife.”

As passengers entered the bar, for food and drink, they thanked Jan for his rescue. “I felt like a million dollars,” he says.

“Then I noticed the Indian lady sitting across the bar, I waited for her to look at me so I could raise my glass and say hi, cheers or something.

“Our eyes met, I smiled – and her nose flared, her lips went crooked and she looked away. Why did she treat her hero like this?”

After she left abruptly, snubbing Jan’s attempts to be friendly, he was crestfallen.

“I later discovered she hadn’t realised it was me who’d risked my life to rescue them all,” says Jan.

He couldn’t get her out of his mind. “A week later, I bumped into her in a bar. She was with someone I knew, who introduced her as Arati. At last, I knew her name!”

Arati Vasavada was new to Nigeria, working for an airline called Belleview.

After another frosty reception, Jan was dejected but determined. “Everywhere she went, I was there, but she didn’t seem interested. Her friends told me to give up,” he recalls.

Jan tried to get her out of his thoughts, then he got a phone call out of the blue. “It was Arati, asking if I wanted to go out. I tried to play it cool and said I’d check my diary. Putting the phone down, I jumped with joy,” he grins.

Jan arrived at the restaurant an hour early, nervously pacing about.

Over an hour later, he realised he was at the wrong entrance.

“I ran like a wild animal, leaping over bushes and benches, wet through, looking like I’d been dragged through a forest. There, in a Belleview car, was Arati, looking through a half-open window. She said, ‘if you can’t come on time I’m not interested’, slowly raising the window.”

But Arati gave Jan a chance, and that Christmas he visited her parents in India.

“I was nervous as Arati’s father used to be in the military – all I could think about was the movie Meet The Parents. I thought he’d interrogate me!”

On Christmas Eve 1998, Jan arrived in India. It was late evening and Arati was due the following morning. Arati’s brother took Jan to a party, where he was handed a large whisky. He was told to drink it or he’d cause offence. By 3.30am he’d glugged several more.

“We got home at 4.30am – and there was Arati’s father in his best suit and her mum in her sari. I nearly collapsed in embarrassment,” says Jan.

Waking up at 6am, Jan was greeted by a less-than-impressed Arati.

“She looked as if she had bleeding fangs and fiery red eyes,” says Jan. “I asked why she was early, since she wasn’t due till 7am. ‘I did arrive at 7am,’ she said. ‘It’s now 7pm!’”

Despite his disastrous start, Jan charmed Arati’s family and, on New Year’s Eve, the couple got engaged. A year later, they married in the British High Commission Gardens, Lagos.

Now they’re in talks with a Bollywood director interested in making a film of their dramatic sea rescue.

Jan has already graced the silver screen. “My children have done a few commercials over here and I took them to a Bollywood movie audition,” he says. “I was approached by the director, who wanted English people as extras.”

The movie, released last month, was Khelien Hum Jee Jaan Sey, based on the Chittigong Uprising of 1930. Shot in Mumbai and Goa, it stars Bollywood icons Abhishek Bachchan and Deepika Padukone.

“I thought I was going to be killed off in the first scene, but I ended up as the villain!” says Jan, whose only previous acting experience was in a play at Nab Wood School.

Now he’s hoping his own East-meets-West story will become a film.

“We’ve got romance, action and comedy – what more could you want at the movies?” says Jan.