A chance encounter with a promotional poster in my college library was my introduction to Mira Nair and Sooni Taraporevala’s Mississippi Masala. The image of Sarita Choudhury (Mina) and Denzel Washington (Demetrius) in a partial embrace, gazing off into the distance, induced a sort of revelation. Until then, I had never seen South Asian and Black people on screen together, let alone in an interracial love story. This is unsurprising given the preponderance of anti-blackness in South Asian communities — to dislodge this view requires unlearning, effort, and work.
Mississippi Masala does not simply show representation of the South Asian community and its quirks. 30 years following its US release, this celebrated film highlights the gradients of being a person of color in the US. Nair took care to conduct research in both Uganda and the US, give equal weight to both South Asian and Black experiences and mix them. Nevertheless, further analysis and critique of the film’s rich dialogue and imagery — particularly through highlighting recurring themes of love, duty, gathering, and community — can shed light on the South Asian diaspora’s internal diversity and inspire new ways of depicting its internal communities.
After a forced departure from Uganda during the expulsion of Asians in 1972, parents Jay and Kinnu (Roshan Seth and Sharmila Tagore), with their daughter Mina, eventually reach Greenwood, Mississippi. There, Jay, a former solicitor, and Kinnu run a liquor store while Mina works at a motel (where they also live) owned and managed by family friends, (i.e. “uncles”) Anil and Jammubhai (Ranjit Chowdhry and Aanjjan Srivastav). The family ostensibly socializes mostly with other South Asians, largely interacting with Black and white folks only for business purposes. Jay spends most of his time trying to reclaim his stately Kampala villa and yearning for the only home he knows. The more grounded Kinnu keeps the family running, and Mina pitches in while trying to start her own life and search for happiness. After a car crash where they exchange insurance information, Mina meets the responsible, self-employed Demetrius again at a nightclub. He initially uses her to make an old flame jealous, but sparks fly soon thereafter. Their whirlwind romance meets scandal after Mina’s Indian “uncles” discover they had spent a night together in a Biloxi hotel room. Demetrius soon loses his business, and both lose the well wishes of their respective communities from breaking social mores. Eventually, the couple escapes the gossip and schadenfreude towards a future together. Perhaps a bit deux ex machina, given that both of them leave their families and risk legal charges by crossing state lines with Demetrius’ van — but Choudhary and Washington’s well-defined chemistry make it believable.
On Love and Duty
At the start of the film, both Mina and Demetrius are sacrificing personal fulfillment for duty and treat love as if intertwined with duty. After his mother’s death, Demetrius forgoes attending university in lieu of staying in Greenwood, starting his own business, supplementing his father’s income, and disciplining his younger brother in his spare time. Meanwhile, Mina receives doting love from her parents: while her mother is stereotypically obsessed with finding her a match, her father encourages her to pursue higher education. For her part, Mina is quite obliging despite her unhappiness about being stuck in Mississippi — she indulges Kinnu’s worries about her marriage prospects and insists to Jay on deferring university and cleaning bathrooms until he realizes his own dream of returning to Uganda. Doting comes with expectations, though, as shown in the aftermath of the weekend in Biloxi. Despite Mina declaring her love for Demetrius, her mother utters that he is not from a suitable family, and if “we [Kinnu and Jay] don’t care, who will?” This dynamic between families of color and immigrant families in the US is common, adding subtle relatability to the film while centering the love story.
At its crux a love story, Mississippi Masala shows that romantic love can only remain second to familial duty and opinion until a certain point. When Demetrius and Mina both realize their communities’ acceptance of them as individuals is conditional upon maintaining existing social fabrics (i.e. endogamy), they must each make the self-serving decision to be together — risking their families’ reputations and livelihoods. By the film’s end, the couple flees Mississippi on a rainy evening to start anew. By this, they both courageously spurn the values that at one level protect them, but on another hinder larger self-fulfillment. Demetrius has the well wishes of his father Willie Ben (Joe Seneca), but Mina only her mother. Jay instead projects his own insecurities and racism rooted in his banishment from Uganda, saying that “people stick to their own kind” (again, endogamy). This sentiment comes from feeling betrayed by his childhood friend Okelo (Konga Mbandu), who despite selflessly bailing out Jay after the latter publicly criticized Idi Amin, scolded Jay for his dangerous behavior and said “Africa is for Africans, Black Africans.” Mina’s final dialogue with her father is her lambasting his spurning a lifelong friendship. Jay eventually realizes that “there is so little love in the world, and yet so much. Mina was right…” after returning to Uganda and learning about Okelo’s presumed death. However, the audience does not see him reconcile with his daughter in person, nor does Jay really reckon with his economic privilege and positionality as an Indian Ugandan in his friendship. Conversely, Mina’s brazen fight for her relationship despite differences is an oft-cited hallmark of the film. Her conviction and bravery are seemingly innate traits, and while she respects her parents, she does not feel bound by their expectations. The film misses teasing out an intergenerational conflict wherein after Mina clashes with her parents, she may recognize that love even from those who love you most is not unconditional and constant. While one could argue that the absence of this does not detract from the movie, the South Asian audience loses a touch of relatability insofar as viewing Mina as a prism into our own lives and how we question our backgrounds. Using the lenses of gathering and community, too, Mississippi Masala may leave more to be desired 30 years later. .
Gathering and Community
Throughout the film, familial and cultural gatherings serve as flashpoints for Nair and Taraporevala to showcase the inner workings, similarities, and differences of Black and South Asian communities in America. Despite groundbreaking work showing the relative privilege of South Asian migrants — even of the less conspicuous South Asian hospitality industry families — some moments have not aged as well or require further contemplation. For instance, Anil’s wedding festivities depict a spectacle of tradition, replete with an aarti prayer and sentimental speeches about the motherland. Ironically, Mina’s family has never been to India. (In fact, in the film, the family of three seems more connected to South Asian music through Kinnu’s records and singing, as opposed to religious aspects of South Asian culture that they only participate in when Anil and co. are there.) The “Indian wedding” has gained popularity over the years among non-South Asians as a plot device or simply a grand extravaganza — notably purveyed through Bollywood and programs like Indian Matchmaking. However, many South Asian marriages (and depictions of them) also perpetuate and normalize the birth-based discrimination system of caste. A woefully undermentioned topic critical to understanding South Asia, caste pervades every single social determinant. Its infrequent mention is due in part to upper caste, resource-rich South Asian migrants’ (often via H1-B visas) dominating the narrative by erasing caste from discourse. As Mira Nair herself says, playing a nameless gossipy character: “Arre, you can be dark and have money, or you can be fair and have no money, but you cannot be dark and have no money and expect to have Harry Patel!” This cameo underscores and inconspicuously infers caste and its intersection with class. Mississippi Masala misses an opportunity to debunk intra-group solidarity and tell an off-the-beaten-path immigration story — one of postcolonial migrants coming from a caste-diverse Uganda and how that intersects with class and race. Rather, brown is just viewed as brown. Similarly, many of us in the diaspora unfairly ignore caste and other intersections in our lives.
Furthermore, Mississippi Masala is typically lauded for distinguishing between the Black and South Asian experiences as people of color in the US. Taraporevala’s screenplay, however, does contain parts that merit scrutiny. At lunch with Demetrius’ family, Mina says she has never been to India. Demetrius’ brother then remarks, “You’re just like us then; we’ve never been to Africa.” When further enquired about whether Indians brought to East Africa were like slaves, Mina replies with a mousy, “I guess.” While this is seemingly nitpicky, Mina and Demetrius’ positionalities are not the same, even in Mississippi, and while this is acknowledged when Demetrius confronts Jay later about knowing the definition of struggle, this incongruence earlier in the film puts one at unease. Furthermore, while South Asian migration to East Africa is complex, it is certainly not akin to chattel slavery in the Americas. Such mixed messaging also appears as Demetrius and Mina walk on the beach, sharing their respective histories. Mina rightly asserts the discrimination she faces in Mississippi when she talks about how she’s “another goddamn Indian” in Greenwood. To that Demetrius replies, “Racism, or as they say nowadays ‘tradition,’ is passed down like recipes. You got to know what to eat and what to leave on your plate.” Such pithy allusions also make one ponder whether delving into a power dynamic is foregone for a core romantic storyline. The film lacks dialogue between Mina and Demetrius delving into the complexities surrounding their biracial relationship — for example, how Mina not following social norms places shame upon her family, whereas how repercussions for Demetrius are more direct, economic as well as social, and against what Willie Ben refers to as “the rules” for remaining safe as a Black person in Mississippi.
Takeaways
While the film does leave something to be desired, its cinematography complements the dialogue. The use of jump cuts in scenes where community members gossip, for instance, moves the story along like a theater production. The matter-of-fact, yet glib lines throughout, moreover, allow the audience to enjoy unique camera angles during intimate moments (e.g. Demetrius and Mina’s riverside stroll). It gives Mississippi Masala a theater production-esque quality that facilitates understanding its subtext. For example, after Mina crashes Anil’s car at the film’s beginning, helping the rest of the story unfold, Jay tells everyone that he is glad that no one is hurt. Anil responds, “Does money grow on trees over here? Jay-bhai, maybe in your fertile Uganda it used to grow on trees, but not here.” Such an on the nose statement (one of such throughout the film) that directly sets up the conflicts between relatable characters makes it suitable for analysis.
The ending scene has Jay witnessing a dance spectacle in a Kampala city square: people joyously frolicking to upbeat rhythms, imagery of colorful fruit abound, and his holding a baby — another example of gathering — to symbolize hope all to suggest that the next generation may be better (whatever that means). How do we locate South Asians in this grand vision, though? Let us reconsider Anil — his character represents the epicenter of the quintessential Desi community connection who personifies the soft ties that propel and support international migration: a fair-weather connection, demanding of respect, and quick to judge. His best line in the film is arguably after he kicks Mina’s family out of the motel after Demetrius serves him a lawsuit. Jammubhai admonishes him, “You’ve become American,” to which Anil responds, “So what? I live here in America. If you don’t like it, go back to India.” The precarity of and in immigrant communities is shown here, and we witness it being equally difficult for Mina, Kinnu, and Jay to process through Nair and Taraporevala’s brilliantly constructed flashbacks to 1970s Uganda.
Ultimately, this film does justice to deconstructing Jammubhai’s lofty and duplicitous statement that “people of color must stick together.” Diaspora South Asians are ourselves divided by race, caste, class, and religious lines accompanied by varying privilege. We do, despite Mina’s protests against her parents saying otherwise, see color, and our communities themselves are so fraught with intersectionality that we cannot consider ourselves monolithic. Now, as work like Never Have I Ever and Master of None continue releasing, how can South Asians advance the groundbreaking efforts of Mississippi Masala in art and otherwise? First, we can expand our definitions of the diaspora to include those like Mina’s family, as well as Sri Lankan, Maldivian, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani folks. We can also highlight matters of caste and class across religions — especially when there is such a rich tradition of South Asian parallel cinema to guide us. (In fact, even Sharmila Tagore, who portrays Kinnu, stars in many Satyajit Ray films herself.) In 2022, Pakistan and India both celebrated 75 years of independence — but as this movie demonstrates, South Asians became diasporic before this time and continue to migrate. Hopefully, with films like Mississippi Masala as a starting point, those of us with privilege can decenter what is purportedly our culture towards forging newer, more inclusive shared identities.
