This is Supposed to be About Mira Nair
Mira Nair is considerably underrated in conversations about World Cinema. Even more so, she’s overlooked in conversations about American cinema. Too often, her name is spoken with a kind of respectful distance—acclaimed, sure, but not canonized. Not threaded into the usual roll call of great directors. That’s a mistake.
While films like Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay! are unmistakably rooted outside the U.S.—and rightfully praised as such—Nair’s Mississippi Masala and The Namesake stand as two of the most quietly radical American films of the last thirty-five years (and yes, 1991 is farther away than we like to admit). They hum with a deeply felt truth about what it means to be American in the liminal sense: to belong and not belong, to love and still ache for home, to carry generations within you while trying to survive in a culture that often claims to celebrate difference, but just as often flattens it into something legible, consumable, or profitable.
Nair captures the beauty and contradictions of immigrant life in the U.S. with a specificity that could only come from someone who has lived it. Her aesthetic is a singular blend: part traditional Hollywood storytelling, part the intimate realism of '90s American indie cinema, and part the emotional excess and visual richness often associated with Indian filmmaking. Her perspective isn’t borrowed—it’s an original, cross-cultural synthesis that she helped pioneer.
Nair was born and raised in India, but her work has always been defined by a global sensibility—curious, transnational, emotionally rooted. Her connection to Uganda came later in life, through her marriage to political theorist Mahmood Mamdani and her deep engagement with the Asian-Ugandan diaspora during the making of Mississippi Masala. That film, one of her earliest and most enduring, is shaped by the aftershocks of displacement: a family of Indian origin, exiled from Idi Amin’s Uganda, tries to rebuild their lives in Mississippi, only to encounter a new and complex racial landscape. Nair makes the film sing—with beauty, warmth, and erotic charge. It’s lush and full of life, anchored by the smoldering chemistry between Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington. Long overlooked, Mississippi Masala has finally begun receiving the attention it deserves, thanks in part to its two extraordinary leads—but even more because of Nair’s ability to thread history and desire into the same frame. It helps that it’s one of the first films in American history that makes the parts of Mississippi where people live look attractive. You have to be a pretty talented filmmaker to achieve that.
If Mississippi Masala crackles with immediacy and sensual tension, The Namesake is its quieter, more meditative counterpoint. It’s a more complex film—attempting something larger in scale and more intricate in emotional ambition than Nair’s previous work. Adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri’s acclaimed novel, the film traces the journey of a Bengali-American family across decades and continents, capturing the slow, almost imperceptible ways identity is shaped by place, grief, and generational distance. Where Mississippi Masala is all heat and movement, The Namesake is memory and silence.
Kal Penn, in a performance that still feels like a career peak, plays Gogol, a young man suspended between his American upbringing and his Bengali heritage. His journey is internal, existential—a quiet rebellion against a name, a history, and a version of himself that, as a young man, he doesn’t quite understand. Sahira Nair plays his sister, a minor role in the narrative, but a name that sent me down a rabbit hole: after combing the internet, I still can’t confirm if she’s related to Mira Nair or if it’s just a coincidence. Either way, she now works in content development at Amazon Prime, and honestly? Pretty good career.
What grounds the film—and gives it its emotional backbone—is the marriage at its center: Ashoke and Ashima, played with aching grace by Irrfan Khan and the always-wonderful Tabu. Their relationship is arranged, yes, but it’s also rich with the kind of quiet understanding that deepens over time. It’s a rare portrait of love that challenges Western assumptions about arranged marriage. In The Namesake, it’s not portrayed as a constraint or a restriction, but as a foundation—something steady and sustaining. Gogol is the product of that love: born into a world of sacrifice and hope, shaped by a legacy he spends most of the film trying to understand. The beauty of The Namesake is that it allows him—and us—to take our time getting there.
The Namesake is also a New York movie. Not in the flashy, skyline-as-character way, but in the everyday, lived-in sense. It’s about the neighborhoods where generations of immigrants have quietly carved out space for themselves. Mira Nair sets the film in her adopted home, New York—a city she knows intimately, having become a professor at Columbia—and she captures its quieter beauty: the winter light, the cramped apartments, the in-between spaces.
There are many films where New York becomes a co-equal character. The Namesake isn’t one of them. Here, the city fades into the background of the characters’ lives, but it never disappears. This story might feel universal, but it’s also unmistakably rooted in New York and its suburbs. It could only happen here.
This article is actually a Trojan horse. Yes, I believe you should go watch The Namesake—not just because it’s beautifully made, not just because it will linger with you, but because I think it’s one of the great films about what it means to grow up in the shadow of sacrifice, in the quiet tug-of-war between inheritance and autonomy. And yes, because I think it’s great.
But this piece isn’t just about the film. It’s also about Mira Nair’s son—Zohran Mamdani, a New York State Assemblyman from Queens. When I started writing, I was curious whether I could draw a line between Nair’s cinematic world and her real life. Was there some echo between Gogol Ganguli—the child of immigrants, torn between cultures—and Zohran, a New York-born politician shaped by global roots and local commitments? I wondered if The Namesake had a kind of hidden resonance, a trace of something personal behind the fiction.
But between you and me—if there are any real similarities between Gogol and Zohran, that’s between Mira Nair, Zohran Mamdani, and God. That’s not for me to assume. What I can say is this: Zohran is doing something bold, something rooted in many of the same values that pulse through his mother’s films. Justice, dignity, identity, imagination—these can be the building blocks of both good cinema and good politics. And right now, New York needs more of both.
Zohran Mamdani is, quite frankly, the most compelling option we have for the next mayor of New York. Year after year, the mayoral race feels like a bleak carousel of the city’s most shameless self-promoters—people more interested in optics than outcomes, power than public service. It’s as if being a sociopath has become an unspoken prerequisite for the job (Rudy Giuliani anyone?). So when someone like Zohran comes along—someone who is principled, grounded, and unapologetically people-first—it feels like a breath of fresh air in a city choking to death on cynicism.
He’s the son of an artist and a professor, raised not in an insulated political dynasty but in the thick of cultural conversation and intellectual rigor. And trust me, it shows. As a State Assembly member, Zohran has already proven himself to be a fierce advocate for tenants’ rights, public transit, and working-class New Yorkers. He speaks with clarity, not condescension. He listens. He organizes. He’s showing up. And, most importantly, he doesn’t seem like a sociopath. In this political landscape, that alone feels revolutionary.
If The Namesake is a story about inheriting a name and making it your own, then Zohran Mamdani is living that ethos. He’s taken the legacy of his family—not just their name, but their values, their artistry, their global perspective—and is transforming it into action, into policy, into a vision for the city.
One of the moments that most impressed me—especially now, given the current political climate—was when Zohran Mamdani stood up and forcefully challenged Tom Homan, Trump’s immigration enforcer, during a visit to the New York State Capitol. Homan, who has long been the face of Trump’s most brutal immigration policies, had come to town praising Mayor Eric Adams—who has aligned himself disturbingly close to the Trump administration on immigration enforcement. That praise alone should be disqualifying. Adams has governed like a man desperate for approval from the worst people in American politics, and New York is suffering for it. We can’t wipe the stench of his administration from City Hall soon enough.
What Mamdani showed in that moment wasn’t just courage—it was clarity. He didn’t hedge, he didn’t posture, and he didn’t back down. He spoke with moral urgency and confronted power directly, which is exactly what this moment requires. I’m not interested in Democrats who fold in the name of civility or try to triangulate with extremists. I’m tired of watching the party lose ground not because its ideas are unpopular, but because its leaders too often lack backbone.
Zohran Mamdani has backbone. He’s shown it over and over again. And in the fight for the future of New York, that matters more than ever.
You might be saying, “But Andrew Cuomo has backbone too!” To which I say: ENOUGH. Enough of Andrew Cuomo. By God, enough. We have to stop treating ego like it’s a substitute for strength. Cuomo had his moment. He governed, he made his choices, and we’ve all lived through them. But I’m not interested in the tired politicians of the past. If we don’t start bringing in new leaders—and soon—we’re going to keep losing. Not just elections, but the bigger fight over what kind of city, what kind of country, what kind of future we’re even allowed to imagine.
I’m not interested in sequels. I don’t want reboots, rebrands, or redemption arcs. I want original stories. And trust me—Zohran Mamdani has one. His story is bold, grounded, forward-looking, and actually equipped to carry New York into the rest of the 21st century.
Can Mamdani accomplish everything he’s campaigning on? Maybe not. But that’s not the point. First, we won’t know unless we try. And second, the real point is the message his campaign sends: that generational change is not only possible—it’s urgent. We can’t keep playing defense while Republicans steamroll every issue from immigration to housing to climate. And yes, it’s going to be hard. If Mamdani wins, his opponents—and even some who claim to be on his side—will throw everything they have at him. They’ll try to block his agenda, twist his words, paint him as extreme, and isolate him. That’s the cost of doing real politics right now.
At this point, you probably expect me to say which of Zohran Mamdani’s policies speaks to me personally. The truth is, his entire platform is almost outrageously “woke” by economic standards—which is exactly why I support it. Republicans have spent the last decade shocking the system by voting for people with bad plans and worse ideas. I’m more than okay voting for someone who wants to freeze rent, make buses free, build more housing, open city-run grocery stores (right now my favorite idea of his), and raise the minimum wage in New York City.
I believe all of these are good things. And they become even better when you consider the alternative—especially as Republicans continue to gut the government’s ability to do anything useful or remotely people-centered. So why not vote for someone who’s actually trying to make things better? Want proof he’s on the right track? The New York Post hates him. Honestly? That might be the strongest endorsement he could have.
In a 2013 interview, Mira Nair said her son had no interest in making movies—but a deep interest in politics. “I don’t see it in him to make movies,” she told the Hindustan Times. “He is very involved with current affairs, politics, and political issues. I think he can be engaged in the world in some way to make a difference. He is very, very interested in that.”
Great news. One less nepotism baby in film, and one more fighter for the future of New York.
I endorse ranking Zohran Mamdani #1 on your ballot for NYC mayor on June 24th, 2025 (or vote early or by Mail!)