Namesake Directed by Mira Nair - Essay Example

Namesake directed by Mira Nair Nikhil and Moushumi plan a Paris vacation. This is a very significant event for both of them in more ways than and is a defining point in their relationship. Nikhil admires Moushumi and in many ways even resents her for having spent years in Paris "reinventing herself". Nikhil does have a few issues with Moushumi’s interesting in the French feminist theory. These issues do bother Nikhil and this would come up later when Moushumi signs her marriage license.

Nikhil of course hoped that she would be conventional when she did that. While Moushumi’s and Nikhil’s wedding plan makes a very compelling effort to show that they are Bengali , this vacation perhaps more than anything shows that while in name they might be Bengali , their cultural and societal roots are fairly far from it. Paris is also significant for Moushumi, and it is more of a home for her. When Moushumi tells Nikhil the story behind her devastating break-up with Graham whom she loved passionately it causes a lot of insecurity to Nikhil.

  She used to live in Paris and admits that if it weren't for Graham she would have never left. So not only is Paris not home to Nikhil, but a place he cannot possibly like. This actually becomes even truer, later when Moushumi has an affair with somebody she met in Paris. When Nikhil later states that “his time with Moushumi seems like a permanent part of him that no longer has any relevance, or currency. As if that time were a name he'd ceased to use" it is something which started here in Paris.

However to blame Paris to what becomes of Nikhil and Moushumi would be like trying to blame the stove for starting a fire. The stove was always there. Nikhil and Moushumi were always the people they were supposed to be. When Nikil’s mom could not understand, though she resigned herself too, later why Moushumi and Nikhil could not try and make this work like any Indian couple, she did not understand that neither of them was Indian, perhaps they were not completely American, but they had their own set of values.

Nikhil is in Paris, the home of the people with liberated thinking, and in many ways, he thinks that he has a very liberated view too. But in many ways, he finds out that he is not “free” as long as he continues to divorce himself from his parents’ existence.  It is interesting because, here Nikhil is finding out, though not yet acknowledging to himself what his mother found out a long time back. For being a foreigner is a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.

It is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect1. And that is what Nikhil is, he is a foreigner and it takes him this vacation and a little bit more to figure out who he really is and where he belongs. This is not to mean that Nikhil is suddenly an Indian or a Bengali. What it is to say that his value system, however affected it might have been with his experiences fundamentally was very close to what his Parent’s was. Though he wanted to be very badly somebody he was not, in the end, he had to acknowledge who he really was.