One of Hollywood’s most interesting directors, was born in Bhubaneswar and remains an Oriya at heart who to this date covets an ORG number plate. We met her when she was in Mumbai for the post-production of her latest film The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Nair was staying at Shaukat and Kaifi Azmi’s old Juhu home, and claimed to be inspired by its creative energies. Over an hour-long conversation with TOI, she spoke about the role of her radical mother-in-law in her life, her reasons for directing Namesake over Harry Potter 4, and why she will never surrender into the imperial hands of Hollywood.
Let’s talk about your journey from Bhubaneswar to Hollywood…
I was born in Rourkela and lived in Bhubaneswar until I was 18 years old. While both my brothers went to Mayo College, I attended a convent in Bhubaneswar but secretly yearned to go elsewhere. From there I went to Loreto, Shimla and then to Miranda House in Delhi. There, I got seriously involved with theatre where Barry John became a big influence. In all the plays I always got to play the boy’s mother while my friend Lillete Dubey got to play the sexy girl. I must mention here that I used to eat onions before my love scenes with Shashi Tharoor because he was so pompous. I also remember playing Cleopatra where I had six slaves in langotis. Today, all those slaves are famous boys including Amitav Ghosh. From Miranda, I went to Harvard. It was the first time I was going abroad. I wanted to find out if art could change the world in any way. At Harvard, since there was hardly any theatre, I stumbled into documentary film-making. That’s how my journey into films started.
How did The Namesake happen?
I was deep into directing Vanity Fair when I lost my mother- in-law all of a sudden due to medical malpractice in New York. That was the first time I faced the finality of loss and buried a parent in a country that was not her home. My husband is a Kathiawadi Gujarati and an Ugandan Asian. He is a third generation East African-Asian. It was in that extreme state of melancholy that I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Namesake which was also about the loss of a parent. I felt as if I had a sister in the world who understood my loss. Not surprisingly, Jhumpa and I are like sisters today. I became consumed with the idea of making this but even as I was toying with it, I got a call from Warner asking me to direct Harry Potter 4. Now, my son was obsessed with Harry Potter and I thought I should do this for him. I returned home that day and told my son that I had been offered Harry Potter 4, but I was just a one month away from shooting The Namesake. He looked at me and said, ‘Mama any good director can make Harry Potter but only you can make Namesake’. With that simple sentence he liberated me from making a film that I thought I had to make for him.
You are an independent woman and there are not those many these days who speak so highly of their mothers-in- law. What was so special about yours? She was an extraordinary, radical and non-judgmental woman. Let me give you an example of how she was. Now my husband Mahmood and I are agnostics but my in-laws were proper namazis. So I had directed Kamasutra. And one day, a religious leader ran into my mother-in-law in Kampala and said to her, ‘Maine toh TV mein dekha tha aap ki… And she completed the sentence for him and said, ‘haan haan meri daughter-in-law ka hi hai Kamastutra’.” She was a great cook. She would labour for three hours over a meal and I would just make the salad… and when everyone would be drooling over her meal, she would say, ‘Mira ka salad khane ke laik hai…’ She was not a flatterer but she made me feel so special. I was able to raise my son while doing films only because I had this caravan of my in-laws and my mother who would come with me wherever I was shooting and look after my son with me even as my husband would come and go.
Given your lives, is it difficult to make a marriage work?
Ours was a slap bang love marriage. He is a legendary political science teacher, thinker and an incredibly attractive man. After Salaam Bombay, while I was researching my second film, a dear friend found a book written by Mahmood on the subject of Asian expulsion from Uganda. I read the book and wanted to interview him for it. It was a coincidence that when he was visiting his sister in London, his sister recommended that he see Salaam Bombay. So, when I wrote to him asking for time to meet him for my book, he promptly wrote back. My friend Sooni Taraporevala and I went to meet him. For both Mahmood and I, it was love at first sight. Even after 22 years of marriage we remain each other’s best friend.
How did The Reluctant
Fundamentalist come about?
The film is based on Mohsin Hamid’s book of the same name. Even though my dad grew up in Lahore, spoke only in Urdu and I grew up on ghazals and Begum Akhtar, it was only a few years ago that I visited Pakistan for the first time.
