April 01, 2007	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1428

PARIS: Mira Nair’s just-released epic movie “The Namesake,” tracing 30 years in the life of an Indian couple who move to the United States, “gave me in one rhythm the opportunity to link the two cities in which I grew up, Calcutta and New York,” she said in an interview.

“The big key for me is the unique and stunning similarities of the two,” said the acclaimed 49-year-old filmmaker who has a taste for exploring the intersection of cultures.

“The state of living between worlds is such that you can look out of your window in New York city, and instead of seeing the Hudson you see the Ganges.” Nair’s debut 1988 feature about a boy selling tea in the street, “Salaam Bombay”, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and won the Cannes filmfest’s prize for best first feature, the Camera d’Or.

Her 1991 feature “Mississippi Masala,” which picked up several awards, is an inter-racial love story set in the US and Uganda, home of her husband.

“Also, the emotion of the story is something I have lived,” said Nair, born in India and educated in Delhi before leaving for Harvard at 19.

“I still don’t wear socks in the winter in America,” she said. “And to see Ashima (the wife in the movie) in her cotton sari, with her husband’s coat, oversized gloves, not knowing what to put on her feet, and carrying her laundry through the snow in New York, is an image I have seen for 30 years in America but have never seen on screen.” “The Namesake,” screened at film festivals but released to the public this week, follows the life of an Indian couple in an arranged marriage who move to New York, where they raise two children. The death of the father sees the son go back to his roots.

“This story gave me the chance of filming the old world but also the very new contemporary Asian cool that is now in New York City. In “The Namesake” the parents’ arranged marriage works out while the son’s romantic passion for a US girl flounders.

“That is the unpredictability of life,” she told in an interview. “That’s what I love about life, it’s often much stranger than fiction. It is a gamble, but the whole principle of arranged marriages is that parents believe that marriage is a terrible adjustment at the best of times.—AFP