Meena and Demetrius come together even as people in both their communities try to pull them apart. ![]() Jay sleepwalks through life in Mississippi, single-mindedly bent on winning his land back from the new Ugandan regime. It is the only movie I can think of that fully occupies the liminal spaces of small-town life in the deep South and third-world-culture experience. It moves quickly, from the origins of Meena’s family in Uganda to their exiling under Idi Amin in the 1970s to the Monte Cristo motel that is the center of Meena and Jay’s collectivist Gujarati community in the flatlands of Greenwood, Mississippi. ![]() The story is about two all-consuming loves: the romance between Meena and Demetrius and the dedication Meena’s father, Jay (Roshan Seth), has for their home in Uganda. She keeps appearing in her explosive sun-bright colors-burning a hole in the center of the grainy film. It loops forever in my mind when I think of Mira Nair’s 1992 film, like it does in a million GIFs strewn across the Tumblrs of South Asian girls. People stare at her and her strange purchases. ![]() In an early scene in Mississippi Masala, the heroine Meena sweeps the great mane of her hair out of her face while she pushes a cart full of milk gallons through a beige Southern grocery store. This is Sepia Tone, a column by Nadya Agrawal on growing up with films from the South Asian diaspora.
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