Tabu at The Namesake screening in London

Rani Mukherjee and Konkona Sen Sharma clearly made bad career choices when they felt unable to accept the role of Ashima Ganguli, the female lead, in Mira Nair’s adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake.

The role went to Tabu, who, by common consent, has turned in a superb performance as the shy Bengali bride who leaves Calcutta to begin a new life in New York. Twenty-five years and two children later, she returns home to the banks of the Ganga to scatter the ashes of her husband who has passed away from a massive heart attack in America.

This, in brief, is the story of many an expatriate Bengali family. It’s the story of thousands of Indian families, perhaps a story of all immigrants.

The Namesake was shown last night in a packed Odeon West End 2 in Leicester Square, one of the prime venues in London, and acclaimed by the audience as a masterpiece.

Although Nair first caught international attention with Salaam Bombay! in 1988 and achieved global success with Monsoon Wedding in 2001, The Namesake may well come to be considered her best work. She lost her way with Kama Sutra in 1996 and did not quite hit the mark with Vanity Fair in 2004.

A typical comment came from a Bengali woman who works in cinema production herself and is a member of the team that has been filming Brick Lane, based on Monica Ali’s book, in the villages of Bengal: “Usually, the book is better than the film. This time it is the other way round.”

She added: “When Mira Nair makes a film from the heart, she is very good indeed.”

Before the screening, Nair came on stage to say her film was set between Calcutta, a city she knew well since she had lived there from the 1970s for 12 years, and New York, now her home — in fact, she flew back tonight.

She said she had come across Lahiri’s novel almost by accident at a time when she had lost her own mother-in-law who had come to the US from Africa. “She had never seen snow but we had to bury her in the snow.”

As a filmmaker, she had been greatly influenced by two acknowledged masters, Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray — she put their names in that order.

Nair was joined on stage by Nitin Sawhney, the British musician who has written the score.

After the screening, Nair returned to the stage to acknowledge genuine applause from the audience, which was by no means all Bengali or even Indian and to take a few questions.

Although among recent Indian films, Parineeta has also been shot in Calcutta and includes shots of Howrah Bridge, Nair has been much more effective in capturing the hustle and bustle of the Bengal capital. The way in which Howrah Bridge dissolves into the similar-looking George Washington Bridge in New York is little short of masterly.

“I have shot Calcutta and New York as one city,” Nair pointed out.

In a world where migration is today very much a part of human existence, Nair tells the tale of a typical middle class Bengali, Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), who had been much influenced as a young man by the novels of the Russians Nikolai Gogol. After a bad train crash, he is rescued from among the dead and dying when the open pages of his book are picked up by a torchlight in the dark. Given a new lease of life, he decides to leave for America.

After two years in New York, when he comes home to marry, his bride is persuaded by her parents to recite Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud”.

In time, Ashoke names his American first-born Gogol, though when the boy grows up and has American friends and a white American girlfriend, he styles himself “Nick”. It is only after his father’s death does the boy understand why he had been named Gogol.

Although Nair has brilliantly captured the nuances — and softness — of middle class Bengali life — the journey made by the Ganguli family and young Gogol, in particular, encapsulates the experience of many an immigrant: born into a familiar culture and then experiencing the excitement, the pain, the sense of loss and gain from having to adjust to another.

“The film will be released worldwide in March next year,” Nair told The Telegraph.