From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. Is it only 1998 that Salam Bombay came out? Is it only that long ago, Mira?

1988.

We celebrated its 25th year of this year. Oh, my gosh.

And we re-released it all across India last month in new digitally mastered prints, and it was a fantastic occasion.

Well, my guest was already correcting me. a scant 30 seconds into the interview,

is Mirin Ayr, whose newest film is the adaptation of the reluctant fundamentalist. First of all,

it's good to have here. Thanks so much for doing this. It's a great pleasure to be in front of you.

Seeing this movie reminds me of a really terrific thing you do, and you did it really well in one of

my favorite movies of yours, the Perez family, is that question of assimilation is always,

like, how much of yourself do you get to keep

when you move to another culture?

And that's been a key question for you in all the films,

including this.

I guess, you know, I came to this country

when I was 18 and a half,

leaving India for the first time, but never really thinking of myself as an immigrant, you know, always feeling very much between worlds, not wanting to give up one for the other. And in the beginning, that was confusing as I started to make films. But then I began to use that confusion in my work. And I think that there is a very

splendidly cinematic power in actually looking out of your window in New York and instead of

seeing the Hudson River, seeing your garden in Kampala, you know, and this is the kind of

juxtaposition that I think cinema can bring quite potently, almost more powerfully than literature does.

But as I've grown and as I've dealt with this, I really have less and less use for nostalgia

and more and more use for an engagement with wherever I am. And that propels me, I guess,

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