Speaking to the heart

INDIAN-BORN director Mira Nair missed all the fanfare around the 2003 publication of “The Namesake,” Jhumpa Lahiri’s critically acclaimed second book examining the cultural struggles between first-generation Bengali immigrants and their American-born children. Nair, whose other credits include “Salaam Bombay” and “Monsoon Wedding,” was filming “Vanity Fair” in England during the first part of the year. For the second half, she was dealing with a deep personal loss: the unexpected death of her mother-in-law in a hospital in New York, the director’s adopted city.

“She lived with me,” Nair said. “Three generations live in my home. I was very close to her and suddenly she was gone. We had to bury her in this freaky Siberian snowstorm in New Jersey. She was from East Africa, so this was certainly not her home.”

Six weeks into mourning, Nair had to fly to India to shoot the final scenes of “Vanity Fair.” On the plane she decided to read “The Namesake,” in which one of the characters dies in America, thousands of miles away from his birthplace in Calcutta.

“Jhumpa understood what I had gone through, having lost a parent in a country that was not fully home. I had a complete sense of solace and comfort,” the filmmaker said.

When she landed in India, Nair immediately called her agent and asked if the movie rights were available. A week later, she was back in her New York office talking with Lahiri about her ideas for the film.

“She instantly gave me the rights and, actually, without exaggeration, nine or 10 months later we were filming.” Nair’s adaptation of the novel, which stars Kal Penn and renowned Indian actors Irfan Khan and Tabu, opens Friday.

Penn, best known for his broad comedic turns in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” and “Epic Movie,” had eagerly sought the rights to the novel himself.

“John Cho, who played Harold, recommended ‘The Namesake’ while we were shooting our movie,” Penn recalled. “It quickly became one of my favorite books.” And he knew he had to play Gogol, the Yale-educated son of immigrants.

“I can’t tell you why,” said Penn, also the son of Indian immigrants. “A lot of people assume it’s because of the shared ethnicity or identity, but actually that has very little to do with it.” He admired that, despite numerous family tragedies, “at the end of the story, it is almost a celebration of life. That really spoke to me.”

Gogol also conjured up images of Holden Caulfield from another of his favorite novels, “The Catcher in the Rye.”

“Obviously, I am not a rich white kid who went to boarding school, but something of J.D. Salinger’s writing of that character really speaks to you when you are a teenager growing up in America,” he said.

Upon learning Nair already had the rights, Penn began an aggressive campaign to get an audition. Several calls he made to Nair’s office were not returned. “I finally wrote her a letter expressing how passionate I was about the project.”

But it was Nair’s then 14-year-old son and her agent’s teenage son who opened the door. The boys loved “Harold and Kumar” and kept telling their parents to interview Penn.

“I owe my audition experience to two new best friends,” the actor said.

“It was a two-pronged attack,” Nair said, laughing. “I didn’t know how to spell his name. I didn’t know who he was.”

She checked out enough of the R-rated “Harold and Kumar” to find Penn charming, and she was also impressed with his letter.

“I said, ‘Come and audition.’ He did. He was the real thing. He was Gogol -- someone who had negotiated from birth what it was like to be a brown face in a sea of white faces.”

Though he completed the film more than a year ago, Penn is still besotted with his experience of working with Nair.

“She gives you so much freedom to find the moments within the character,” he explained. “But at the same time, she gives so much attention to detail in each and every frame of the movie, which is a brilliant combination.”

susan.king@latimes.com