Ameena Meer: My theory is that we’re all exiles in a sense, part of this diaspora.

Mira Nair: It’s natural and easier to absorb things but much more difficult to shake them off. I’m absorbing things, but the essence, in a way, will not change. I’m grateful for knowing one way of being until I was 19, until I left India.

Ameena Meer: People are always asking me where I feel most comfortable and I always say, wherever I am.

Mira Nair: I used to say, “Between my ears.” Masala doesn’t just mean from India and here now. People from Indiana who come to New York are as un-New York, and then they become as un-Indiana. It’s the new situation, people unsettling and settling other places.