Mira Nair loves telling a story, or two, or three. That is what the filmmaker has been doing for the better part of four decades. The face of India in Hollywood and a true flagbearer of independent cinema, Mira has been making films that are rooted in the here and now and yet remain universal across time and space.

Brought up in Bhubaneswar and spending many a summer in Calcutta, a young Mira’s tryst with jatra saw her dabble in acting for a few years, but it was as a writer and filmmaker that she truly found her calling. Studying and embodying ‘Cinema Verite’ or the ‘Cinema of Truth’, she started out making documentaries, with her debut feature film Salaam Bombay! for which she sought out real street children to more authentically portray the lives of the lesser privileged who survived in the streets and were deprived of a true childhood, thrusting her into the spotlight. Salaam Bombay! — that featured the late Irrfan in a bit role before he became the big name that he was — won close to 25 international awards, including the Camera d’or and Prix du Public at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988. Salaam Bombay! was nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 1989.

The shoot of her second film Mississippi Masala, starring Denzel Washington in what is a rare romantic role for the actor and a young Sarita Choudhury, took Mira to Uganda, where she fell in love and made her home. But the filmmaker — with a finger constantly on the pulse of stories both relatable and relevant and that which exposed the chasms of social and economic prejudices — continued to blaze her way through.

Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love was afforded a screening at Cannes and inspired conversations across the world but was initially banned in India. Monsoon Wedding, an incisive look at the fault lines within a family getting together for a big, fat wedding in Delhi, won the prestigious The Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, and continues to be one of Mira’s seminal works. That was followed by The Namesake, based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s eponymous book about love, family and displacement. Mira, collaborating with longtime friend and colleague Sooni Taraporevala since Salaam Bombay!, has shown her versatility with story and craft, making everything from Amelia and Vanity Fair to The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Queen of Katwe. Her last project was a series adaptation of the Vikram Seth bestseller A Suitable Boy.

Dividing her time between New Delhi, New York and The Ugandan capital of Kampala, the 66-year-old irrepressible filmmaker whose energy and sunshine-y demeanour make her instantly endearing, is now in India to prepare for her latest project on avant-garde artist Amrita Shergill.

Last week, Mira was in Calcutta to speak at a session about women in cinema at the inaugural edition of Kolkata Baarish, a three-day ode to the monsoon through poetry, music and conversations, presented by 100 Pipers The Legacy Project in association with t2. Two days later, on a sunny Sunday morning, t2oS sat down with the veteran filmmaker at Taj Bengal for a freewheeling, exclusive chat on movies and more.

It is lovely having you in Calcutta. You are, of course, in India to start a new film...

Yes. I am all ready to plunge into my film on Amrita Shergill, the great painter. I am shooting quite a bit of it in Budapest... she was born in Hungary and educated in Paris. About 80 per cent of the film is set in India, around Shimla and Punjab. We will also be shooting in Ajanta-Ellora, in Cape Comorin, Kerala. Amrita’s mind was blown on the trip she took to Ajanta-Ellora, it affected her art forever.

Are you the kind of filmmaker who thrives in chaos?

I am not chaotic. I am super prepared. I have to prepare so I can be open to chaos (smiles). I love to get inspired by the life around me. You can be only receptive to that, and I am speaking for myself, once your foundation is strong. But you need to be Tabula Rasa, aka a blank slate, at that time to receive the actors, the set life, whatever happens.... I am always open to the world.

Has this always been your approach?

I come from the Cinema Verite (French film movement of the 1960s that showed people in everyday situations with authentic dialogue and naturalness of action), from a documentary-style of filmmaking mostly done on the streets. That is your material, that is your world.

At the end of Salaam Bombay! there is a title card that says: ‘52 days, 52 locations’. We would literally run from one place to another not knowing where we would get to. That was a different kind of guerrilla filmmaking. But in order to pull off guerrilla style on a high level, as I think we did, you have to be prepared too, foundationally.

I have deep pragmatism, but the thing is that pragmatism doesn’t always make a good movie. The key is to have something to say, and a vision of the style with which to put it across to the world. Not to imitate, or to wallow in what you already know, to take risks.

So yes, the preparation is immense, prior, so that you can be open to instinct. To preserve my instinct is critical, as is rigour.

So how was it like getting into the Hollywood studio system off and on and making all those big films?

Filmmaking is a team sport and, in the studio system, it becomes even more of one. In my independent films, the team is the people I put together — the cast, the crew — they are all artistes in their own right.

People are treasures for me. I am very happy to cast a non-actor, as they call them. I believe in pitching the non-actor against the professional actor because it creates a sort of tapestry of truth that I look for... because there are no tricks in this game. I guess this is my way of achieving truth

One thing I always say is that the bigger the budget, the less the freedom. I am used to that. I am happiest in freedom but I do like to collaborate. In the studio system, the struggle is to retain your spirit. I have had a couple of very pleasant experiences like Queen of Katwe, which was a full-blown Disney studio film but they allowed me to do what I wanted without whitewashing my actors and without sugar coating. It was a wonderful experience and I would go as far as to say that it made the film better.

Tendo Nagenda was the Disney chief there at that time and he knew I would deliver something deeply authentic. ‘Disneyfied’ is almost an adjective now, but it was not so with Queen of Katwe, which was shot with real street kids in real locations... the dust, the struggle, the brutality and the tenderness all showed. Other experiences have not always been that wonderful but they teach me things.

I am happiest and flourish best when I create my own world. I joke and say I am very open to suggestions and people so long as I have the last word! (Laughs)

How does living in Uganda enrich you as a filmmaker and as a person?

I went to Uganda to make my second film Mississippi Masala (with Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury). It was a story of the Asian expulsion from Uganda in 1972 but I didn’t expect to fall slam-bang in love and change my life! My husband (Mahmood Mamdani) is a professor and activist in Uganda and we have lived there since ’89 and had our son there. We planted a coconut seed on the day he was born and now, I am planning a wedding for my son under the same tree!

I started a film school for budding African filmmakers there called Maisha. I have always divided my time between Uganda, New York and Delhi. My key funda is to be of some use to the world! At Maisha, our students made 50 short films in the course of 16 years. Many of our students served as professionals on the crew of Queen of Katwe.

So, it was a bit of coming full circle. It is a film that speaks to the fact that we don’t need white saviours. Mississippi Masala began my love affair with Uganda and Queen of Katwe sort of celebrates that. It celebrates the beauty, dignity and indomitability of our people there.

Los Angeles is the hub of Hollywood and Mumbai is where all the Hindi cinema action is. You live in Uganda, New York and Delhi. Have you consciously steered away from living right in the middle of all the movie-making action?

I never wanted to keep away. I have just come from Bombay and I love the talent there. So many of my creative friendships are in Bombay. I have worked in Bombay for years after Salaam Bombay! but now I am a Delhi chick (laughs) I was raised in Odisha but my family hails from Punjab and now they are all in Delhi.

New York is very much the centre of independent filmmaking. LA is where the big studios are. I have been a New Yorker since ’79... it allows me a sense of creative freedom and of community because everyone who works in New York has a certain edge and a certain pursuit of excellence which is more independent than the corporate sensibility of LA.

I was very clear from the beginning that I wasn’t going to make rom-coms about white people. I didn’t want to be on the A-list for any sort of LA roster. I deeply believe that if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will. The idea for me was always not to pander to their ignorance of us but to make films that are about the world I live in, but make them in a way that is not homework, that is not a lecture... but one which is universal even while being specifically local. What moves me is when my work has spoken to people across borders. For example, The Namesake is a deeply Bengali film but the acceptance of it is simply not academic, it is an emotional acceptance.

That allows me to segue into asking what are your most abiding memories of shooting part of The Namesake in Calcutta?

We were shooting that big scene where the family (comprising Irrfan, Tabu, Kal Penn and Sahira Nair) is at Howrah Station and is catching a train to go on holiday to Agra. Trains are, of course, a big part of The Namesake. For the scene in Howrah, we got all the permissions. But everyone knows how passionate the city is about cinema and on the morning of the shoot, I woke up to the papers announcing that Mira Nair would be shooting at Howrah Station that day with Irrfan and Tabu! When we reached, there was a huge crowd.

While making Salaam Bombay! I used to shoot with a big rope tied around my waist and a megaphone at the end of it. While shooting at Howrah, I did the same so that we could keep people behind me. I greeted them all with folded hands and said: ‘Welcome to our work. You are welcome to observe but please don’t interrupt us.’ The crowd was fantastic and didn’t bother us at all. Their love for cinema and the way they treated us was really beautiful.

We shot in the sweltering heat of May and, at that time, I would wear gamchha shirts to keep myself cool during the shoot. I was inside the train compartment with my actors when I was told that the state railway minister was there to see me. I quickly changed into a dry gamchha shirt and went to meet him and found a row of bureaucrats and officials waiting. The minister took one look at me and exclaimed: ‘Madam, but you are wearing a gamchha?!’ (Laughs) I don’t know what he thought directors should look like, but certainly not in gamchhas!

But shooting in Calcutta was pure joy. We had 11 days in May, which had crazy, crippling heat.

Salaam Bombay! was a very hard film, a life-or-death kind of movie, to make as a first film. Before it, forget Cannes, I had never been to a feature film festival! I went to Cannes with Salaam Bombay! It was like a fairy tale after such a long struggle. It showed on the closing night of the festival and that evening was life-changing. I never used to think of myself as the one who wins things. But we got all the prizes at Cannes! The best part was that the Camera d’Or, just that year, came with a cash prize of $50,000. It was serendipitous that I had a debt of exactly $49,000! I could pay off the whole thing

Tabu would emerge in 16 kilos of jewellery for the wedding scene but there was not a single drop of sweat on her! How they do it, God knows. We wanted it to be a day wedding and I wanted only red and white. My costume designer Arjun Bhasin brought in the dhakai and cotton saris and there was such exquisite beauty all around.

I populated the film with Jhumpa’s (Lahiri, on whose book The Namesake the film is based) family. As a homage, I wanted to cast my great guru Badal Sircar as the music teacher in the film. But he had just fallen and hurt his hand and he couldn’t hold the musical instrument. He ended up not being in it but I spent so many days with him. That was a huge joy. These kind of times don’t come again.

Calcutta is where I partly grew up. I spent 12 summers here. I grew up in Bhubaneswar and, like other kids, we would be shipped out to the big city during the school vacations. That is how I got to know this city. But in a different way, in the Punjabi way. We were in south Calcutta, in Alipore. In the mornings, I would go to north Calcutta and work with Badalda and then with Habib saab (Habib Tanvir). I played one of the witches in Macbeth. I had a whole other life, and at night, I would return to the highrises. I had this wonderful double life that started very early in Calcutta. That has informed my sensibility, I think, quite deeply.

As a child, when did you first discover the power of cinema?

It wasn’t film that first impacted me... it was jatra. In fact, the first one was Prahallada Nataka. It was a troupe that came to Bhubaneshwar when I was 13 or 14. I would follow them and see what they did. The worlds that were conjured up just with the spoken word and with performance, were magical.

That was the first hook into me wanting to be an actor. I became an actor for four-five years. While I was growing up, Bhubaneshwar had no movie theatres. I passed by Metro cinema (in Calcutta) last night and I remembered the first movie I ever watched was in Metro... it was Hatari, starring John Wayne. We were the country kids brought to the big city... so ek movie toh dekhna hi hain (laughs).

But it was not like it changed my life. Theatre was my focus. Odisha is full of temples and I remember going with my mother, who was a friend of the great Odissi dancer Sanjukta Panigrahi, to watch her do her riyaaz at the Rajarani Temple.

I was very clear from the beginning that I wasn’t going to make rom-coms about white people. I deeply believe that if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will. The idea for me was always not to pander to their ignorance of us but to make films that are about the world I live in, but make them in a way that is not homework, that is not a lecture... but one which is universal even while being specifically local. What moves me is when when my work has spoken to people across borders. For example, The Namesake is a deeply Bengali film but the acceptance of it is simply not academic, it is an emotional acceptance

These things were a normal part of my childhood and my memories of that life.

But it was acting that sort of possessed me. I started learning how to play the sitar from a Bengali teacher, Mr Chakraborty, who would come in a dhoti on a bicycle every week. I was 15 and, one day, he looked at my books on theatre. I told him I was interested in theatre too and he said: ‘You cannot have two Gods’. That was an ‘aha’ moment for me. The realisation that I needed to focus on one thing. I chose theatre and that led me on a journey which eventually took me to America when I was 18 or 19.

But I soon got tired of being an actor. I was tired of the lack of control actors have... you are always at the mercy of other people’s visions.

On top of that, you were a woman, a woman of colour and an immigrant in the America of the ’70s. The odds were pretty much stacked against you...

That was definitely there. But I have always been bullheaded and refused to believe in those intimidations. I wanted to have my own vision. It was the study of documentary film, of ‘Cinema Verite’ at Harvard with amazing teachers like Richard Leacock and Pennebaker, that I finally discovered my calling. At 20, I felt I had found my place in the world. I felt that this was an art form that could reach beyond myself.

I made seven years of documentaries on Cinema Verite, which were great lessons. But the lack of an audience for documentaries of that nature in the ’80s was what prepared me to make Salaam Bombay! as a feature film, as a fiction film but one which was very strongly rooted in the streets, in the real thing. It was a real marriage of my journey of working with the power of life and the unpredictability of it and also of working with children.

Salaam Bombay! was a very hard film, a life-or-death kind of movie, to make as a first film. Before it, forget Cannes, I had never been to a feature film festival! I went to Cannes with Salaam Bombay! It was like a fairy tale after such a long struggle. It showed on the closing night of the festival and that evening was life-changing.

I never used to think of myself as the one who wins things. But we got all the prizes at Cannes! The best part was that the Camera d’Or, just that year, came with a cash prize of $50,000. It was serendipitous that I had a debt of exactly $49,000! I could pay off the whole thing.

A lot of filmmakers say that the naivete and honesty of making the first film can never be replicated. Do you think you can make a Salaam Bombay! today as the same Mira of almost four decades ago?

You can never step in the same river twice, as Denzel says to Sarita in Mississippi Masala. It is not a question of making the same thing. What I have been keen to not do, to not lose sight of, is that seesaw of brutality and tenderness. It is a very abject seesaw that I want to preserve in my films.

I don’t watch my own films that often again. But I had to watch Salaam Bombay! for a tribute in its 21st year. And I was baffled by the lessons it was teaching me again. The lesson of silence as an oasis between sound and music and the power of silence, for instance. I felt humbled that I was the vessel through which this pretty extraordinary piece of story had been taken to the world.

The humour and the silence, the style, the fashion and the stoicism despite having nothing but just how you make your life work was very common between the children of Salaam and the children of Katwe.

I try never to do the same thing again. That is why I didn’t go to LA because after Salaam Bombay! they were trying to sign me up for films with children of every hue. I had the good sense to say: ‘No, I am not going to do that’.

Is that why you have never made a sequel?

I have nothing against sequels but I disagree with remakes. It is not my thing. But I have entertained the thought of a sequel at some point in life. Monsoon Wedding became a portrait of a rapidly globalising India in the year 2000 and I have been intrigued by the idea of making a sequel to the characters of that film. What would they be doing now? PK Dubey (Vijay Raaz) and Alice (Tillotama Shome)... where would they be now?

For the last few years, I have been occupied with making a stage musical of Monsoon Wedding. We opened last year in New York... Monsoon Wedding on stage in a completely new form with 22 songs. We will open in West End and then India and Broadway at the end of 2025.

Is there a different kind of high in directing non-actors like you did in Salaam Bombay!, Queen of Katwe and even in The Namesake?

People are treasures for me. I am very happy to cast a non-actor, as they call them. I believe in pitching the non-actor against the professional actor because it creates a sort of tapestry of truth that I look for... because there are no tricks in this game. I guess this is my way of achieving truth. It also helps because actors are sometimes imprisoned by their own tricks. In all my films, and particularly in Monsoon Wedding, there were so many first-time actors. Tillotama Shome was a young girl doing her Masters in Lady Shri Ram College. But to me, she looked like a dewdrop. It was an instant liking. There are so many others... Irrfan to Sarita Choudhury to Indira Verma, who I pulled out of drama school for Kamasutra. Vijay Raaz, Randeep Hooda... all first-timers.

I had cast my childhood friend as Shashi Aunty in Monsoon Wedding. But three days before shoot, she dropped out. It was an important role and I didn’t know what to do. I was in Delhi and I decided to take a short walk around my house to clear my head. I suddenly saw a large woman walking in front of me in a floral salwar kameez and sneakers. I started following her because she seemed perfect for the role! (Laughs)

While we were on our fifth round of walking, I asked her if she would hop into my home and test for the part. She did and we got our Shashi aunty in Kamini Khanna! She was on set two days later.

This is how I spot people. I saw Sarita Choudhury on a bicycle with her flaming hair. She represented a lack of vanity and stood so much for intelligence and beauty. I am constantly observing, I am constantly casting, I am constantly looking for faces. Observation is half the beauty of our game.

Vanity Fair to The Namesake, The Reluctant Fundamentalist to A Suitable Boy, you have done a lot of adaptations of the written word. And yet you bring your own voice to it... like making The Namesake more about the parents, Ashoke and Ashima, than about the son Gogol, which was a departure from Jhumpa Lahiri’s approach in the book. Why is it important for you to do that even when you adapt?

You have to have a point of view because adaptation is not about paying homage to every page. It is more about having a point of view to the text... it is about ellipsis and what your intention truly is.

With The Namesake, my intention was to depict old-school love. You look at ‘old’ marriages... these couples never say ‘I love you’ and don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day and yet there is an unspoken, true love.

I lived with my in-laws for 25 years and the desire to make The Namesake was inspired by the loss of my mother-in-law who suddenly passed away because of medical negligence in New York. My father-in-law was beside her and it was the 59th year of their marriage. Her passing made me realise how life, as you know it, changes and something can come out of nowhere and completely blindside you. It was the first experience of the loss of a parent for me and she passed away so far from her home, so far from the red earth of East Africa. She passed away in the middle of a Siberian snowstorm in New York and when I read The Namesake, Ashoke’s (played by Irrfan) death felt the same way to me. In Jhumpa, I felt I had got a sister who understood what it felt like, who somehow offered me solace through her words.

She is very close to me now and I am fortunate that the writers whose works I have adapted — be it Mohsin Hamid with The Reluctant Fundamentalist or Vikram Seth with A Suitable Boy — are like family to me.

To answer your question, a book and a film are different art forms. As a filmmaker, you have to find a way to distil the spirit of the novel into the film and make it cinematic.

I do know that you keep yourself updated with the content, be it films or series, that comes out of India. What do you think about the cinema that is being produced by India now?

The documentaries coming out of India have been enormously inspiring. Delhi is almost looked at as the hub of documentary filmmakers by the world now. Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes is a masterpiece... I am so inspired by it. Writing With Fire, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s film on Dalit women writers, has been an energising experience for me.

The TV series I really loved were Kohrra and Paatal Lok. In independent cinema, Laapataa Ladies has been a standout. I am waiting to see All We Imagine As Light (the Cannes winner by Payal Kapadia) and Anand Patwardhan’s The World Is Family.

No Jawans or Pathaans for you?

Well, I watched Pathaan and it was full of very well-hung testosterone (smiles). It is as good as anything else in that genre. I did like the bravery of it in terms of the politics. I liked the way he (Shah Rukh Khan) found his way into people’s hearts. But it is not my kind of thing because I am very sensitive to sound and I was plugging my ears half the time while watching it! But I did watch 12th Fail and I loved it.

What is your life in Uganda like when you aren’t making films? I saw some pictures of a lovely garden on your Instagram handle...

I am a gardener (smiles). In my film school there, I made every teacher and every student plant a tree and now it is an eco reserve of African cinema. I am basically a guerrilla tree planter! I have a tree nursery of my own. We just load up trees and go to highways and plant them.

The line of the Equator runs through Uganda and so it is very fertile. It is 3,000ft above sea level and has lovely weather. Uganda is like a little oasis of nature that replenishes and fuels me for the hectic life I have every time I cross its borders.