Being Mira Nair: East meets West

DEFINING PERFECTION: Fimmaker Mira Nair says life is short and making films is obsessive.

        

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Mira Nair is driven. This 50-year old has been a prolific ever since she found her calling at 21. This week The Namesake opened in India and she is on the verge of what will be her biggest film to date—the Warner Bros production—Shantaram. A film that will give the world a chance to say ‘salaam Mira’.

Anuradha SenGupta: When you released Monsoon Wedding, we saw a lot of international and universal acclaim for the film. That was a Punjabi milieu with a lot of balle balle, warmth, energy and all of that. But in The Namesake you have a very restrained, quiet sort of community and story. Do you think it will make the same connect?

Mira Nair: I believe that one has to be specifically local and as truthful as possible in order to be as universal as possible. The Namesake is really about a Bengali family that leaves Calcutta in the mid 70’s and comes to New York City. It’s the 30-years-long saga of their children growing up in a totally different country than from where their parents came. Basically it’s a universal story of many a millions of us who have left home for another and are coping living between the two worlds.

In Monsoon Wedding they danced in the isles whether it was in Hungary, Iceland, Canada or India. In Namesake when the lights came up people were still sitting in their seats. They didn’t move, they wipe their tears and begin to talk to each other. That’s what I’m seeing at the theatres and it’s an amazing thing to see.

Anuradha SenGupta: I saw the film and while I had went thinking its Tabu’s film, it turned more of Irfan Khan and Kal Penn’s film. Irfan Khan has worked with you in Salaam Bombay where he was the professional letter writer. What made you go back to him?

Mira Nair: I have loved Irfan ever since I discovered him when he was just 18. I couldn’t give him a huge role in Salaam Bombay because he was too tall to play a street kid. He just did not look like a street kid. There was only a little role that I could give him in that film. Since then, we have been very close. I have always looked for a film that would do his brilliance justice. And this was the film. There was no other person that was on my mind.