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on 2007/3/24 5:55:31
Nair had read the book on her way to India to shoot a few scenes for Vanity Fair, and immediately decided to turn the book into a film.
"I also felt that Mira represents something between the two generations that I write about in the book, the generation of Gogol and Ashoke-Ashima, which is immediately related to my own experience," Lahiri said.
The writer came with her family from London when she was little, and has lived in America for over three decades since then.
As much as Nair also wanted to portray -- as the book did -- America-raised Gogol's alienation from his parents and then the painful reconciliation, she also "really wanted to make a love song to the generation of Ashoke and Ashima," Mira confessed.
"It is so rare that their generation, like our parents, I have not yet seen this kind of ideal people who don't perfectly fit into the image of public proclamation of love.
"It isn't about Valentine's Day," she continued. "It isn't about roses and diamonds, but it's about how I used to see my own mother-in-law and father-in-law sitting at the dining table, and having a cup of tea and living in that moment with each other completely. I really wanted to try and achieve that in contrast to Gogol."
A reader in the audience wanted to know how much of an input Lahiri had in the screenplay that Sooni Taraporevala and Nair wrote.
"I asked permission from Jhumpa for the book only once and did not ask again," Nair asserted. When the completed script was shown to the writer, she only suggested two minor changes, the director recalled.
"I cast Jhumpa and her baby in a small role; and also 20 members of her family both here and in Kolkata," Nair revealed.
"Her grandfather's paintings in the book were actually hanging in her parent's home in Rhode Island. I loved those paintings and asked specially if I could use them in the movie. I really wanted The Namesake to be about Jhumpa's family," she added.
"People have asked me how the movie made from my book will change the way I write," Lahiri mused. "Will I write with an eye towards my book being made into a film? The answer to that is that my work as a writer is strictly to write fiction. That is all I am concerned about and I have my hands more than full. It's all about storytelling, regardless of the medium."
Among the many challenges she faced was giving the film the kind of ending that would be life-affirming, Nair said.
"The challenge we had was how to create a scene that is appealing to the audience. That life is ahead of us, that Gogol has to move on as opposed to, 'Oh my God, what are the trials and travails of our life!' As Jhumpa writes, 'What are books but for travelling the world without moving an inch.'
"I wanted that feeling in the movie," Nair added. "And that's an important lesson for Gogol: See the world. I think America needs that lesson badly!"
