It's a lot of fun. Mira and I know each other for over 30 years now. We went to college in America together, and obviously share a great kind of rapport. And as a writer, I'd say the best kind of experience is writing for a director like Mira, because we've reached a level now where we have become vision-compatible.

We know what we both want, which is fabulous.

How different is adapting a novel for the screen? For The Namesake, you had Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, Mira's distinct vision, and your own way to connect the dots. So how much of each did you follow?

I think what really helped this film was that I loved the book. I know Mira loves the book and I'm such a reader, and I don't think I'd adapt a book I don't feel strongly about. And because I like and respect the source material, I feel the need to be loyal to the book, to its spirit.

It's obviously necessary to change the book around quite a bit for the screen. Did Jhumpa come aboard at any point, as a consultant perhaps?

No, I think she was just done with it after finishing the novel. She left it in our hands. Now, the thing about adapting a novel is firstly that of length. It's a big novel, spanning a lot of time -- and pages. Here, a lot has to be telescoped. Severely. We cut it down to a script of about 120 pages. And it isn't an editorial decision, it's dictated to us by the format we work in. You cannot film a book as it is.

And yes, there are some departures from the novel. (Tabu's character) Ashima's a singer in the movie, which she isn't in the book. And we've moved the location from Cambridge, Massachusetts to New York City, because Mira wanted to contrast New York of the 1970s with Calcutta of the same period.

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