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Sat 03 Mar 2007Staying cool in two continentsAs her new film shows, Mira Nair loves the 'quizzical things' resulting from cultural misunderstanding. She talks to Donald Clarke.Thirty years ago, Mira Nair, the director of Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding and, now, The Namesake, left her home in India to take up a scholarship in Harvard. At this stage, immigrants from the sub- continent were thin on the ground and she found herself being handled as an exotic novelty. After only a few minutes exposure to Nair - gregarious, forthright, articulate - it becomes clear that she is not the sort of person to let such treatment get her down.