I wanted to say tonight that the challenge really is in our lives to be original and it takes courage to be original, specially for those of us here who have been told for the past few centuries that the West is the mirror in which they can see their future," said Nair, who went to school in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and college in New Delhi before coming to Harvard. "But I am here to say that there is not just one truth there are many truths. It just depends who is doing the looking and from where. People often ask me is it difficult to be an Indian woman director in Hollywood in America; and first I don't know what to say and then I say it is much easier than back when I was a man."
But the question somehow doesn't stop, added Nair, who has directed some of Hollywood's best talents including Reese Witherspoon (Vanity Fair) and Uma Thurman (Hysterical Blindness). In a few months she will be directing Amitabh Bachchan, Johnny Depp and Irrfan Khan in Shantaram. An adventure drama with spiritual dimensions, it is set in Australia, India, Afghanistan and West Germany.
"I think it's a great relief and pride when I say that I am a woman from India," Nair continued, "and the India where I grew up in Bhubaneswar, Orissa -- a town where even Indians did not know where it was."
But there, she had seen women who had fought along Mahatma Gandhi, women in banks, and women in offices, and of course in government.
"So I knew really that the foolish confidence of doing whatever one wanted to do was possible," she continued. "My first and earliest inspiration was my dynamic mother whom you saw briefly on screen [at the event, paying the daughter a tribute], who was the wife of an IAS [Indian Administrative Service] officer in Orissa. She was supposed to dress in Organza saris and have parties. She did all that but basically she decided to setup when I was very young, a health home for the healthy children of leper parents."
Image: Mira Nair with writer Salman Rushdie, who was presented with India Abroad's Lifetime Achievement Award last year
Also read: Mira Nair is India Abroad Person of the Year 2007
