Mira Nair: The Lessons of Our Parents

Filmmaker Mira Nair's latest movie, 'The Namesake,' portrays cross-cultural family relationships--a story from her own life.

BY: Interview by Aseem Chhabra

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Director Mira Nair and Tabu on the set of "The Namesake"

Watch a clip from Mira Nair's "The Namesake"

When filmmaker Mira Nair came from India to the U.S. three decades ago, she burst onto the scene with her first feature, "Salaam Bombay," a harrowing story about lives of street children in India’s commercial capital, which received an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The director has gone on to make hits like "Mississippi Masala," an interracial love story, "Vanity Fair" starring Reese Witherspoon, and the huge art-house hit, "Monsoon Wedding."

Her latest Hollywood offering is "The Namesake," based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s book. It’s a tale of dislocated first-generation Indians and their U.S.-born children who discover themselves and learn to live between two cultures. Nair spoke with Beliefnet about realizing the wisdom of our parents, the alienation that Christmastime can bring, and how yoga centers her life.

Why did you make "The Namesake" at this stage in your career?

In Hindu philosophy we have four stages of life, and I think I am definitely in the cusp of my second and third stage, [which is] the householder and karma yogi. And I think that at least many films I make mirror are directly in response to my stage in life. This is only in hindsight--it is not like I was planning [it this way]. I think these last few films have been so strongly about family, because that is my complete immersion--as a wife, as a mother, but also as a daughter-in-law and as a daughter.

I was not looking to make a film about immigration, and I don’t even think of myself as an immigrant. I hold an Indian passport. And I actively live in the global space.

How did you discover Jhumpa Lahiri’s book, which is the inspiration for the film? What made you decide that it should be a movie?

In December of 2003 I lost my mother-in-law as a result of complication from surgery for ovarian cancer. It was a botched surgery held a couple of days before the long Thanksgiving weekend. We had called her here from Uganda. I had hired an ayurvedic cook. We were not expecting this death.

With Ammy’s death it was the first time I entered in that zone of really, palpably feeling that we are not immortal, that everyone must go. It was the first time for me to directly experience the finality of loss. A few weeks later on a plane journey to India I decided to read "The Namesake." It just grabbed me. It was as if I had been understood. I had found a person, Jhumpa, who had put into words everything that I had experienced and was experiencing. It was like a something you come back to for comfort, because it was amazing not to feel alone in that suffering.

So first I was propelled to make this film after we buried my mother-in-law in this country, and she had no relationship to this country. And re-reading the book gave me the kind of banquet that I love in my movies. But there are other connections too. The story starts in Calcutta and ends in New York, and I have lived in the two cities.