Mira Nair - Early Life

Early Life

Mira Nair was born in Rourkela, Orissa, where her father was employed. She was the youngest of three children from a middle-class family. Her father was a civil servant and her mother a social worker. She is of Punjabi origin and her family hails from Amritsar.

Nair did her early schooling at a boarding school, Loreto Convent Tara Hall in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. She studied sociology at Miranda House, Delhi University, where she became involved in political street theater and performed for three years in an amateur drama company. In 1976, at age 19, she left for the US with a scholarship at Harvard University, where she continued her studies in sociology. While at Harvard she met her first husband, photographer Mitch Epstein, as well as her screenwriter, Sooni Taraporevala, and gradually moved into making documentary films.