Spent first fifteen years of her life in Orissa, a delta area in eastern India

Acted for amateur theater company, directed by Barry John (who later worked with her when he directed the children's workshop preceding the shooting of "Salaam Bombay"!") In Delhi for three years

Offered scholarship by Cambridge University; turned it down in favor of Harvard

Moved to USA to study at Harvard

Made first film, "Jama Masjid/Street Journal," as student thesis at Harvard

Directed first feature, "Salaam Bombay!"; nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award

Helmed the romance "Mississippi Masala," starring Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington

Directed "The Perez Family", featuring Anjelica Huston and Alfred Molina

Helmed "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love", a semi-controversial feature due to its sexual content; Sarita Choudhury and Naveen Andrews co-starred

Produced and co-directed (with Adam Bartos) the documentary "The Laughing Club of India"

Premiered feature "Monsoon Wedding" in India; directed film about a family whose secrets are revealed in the days just before a wedding; screened at Venice Film Festival

Directed the HBO movie "Hysterical Blindness," starring Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis; screened at Sundance

Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Nair joined a group of 11 renowned filmmakers, each commissioned to direct a film that was 11 minutes, 9 seconds and one frame long; Nair film was a retelling of real events in the life of the Hamdani family in Queens, whose eldest son was missing after September 11, and was then accused by the media of being a terrorist

Helmed the Thackeray classic, "Vanity Fair," a provocative period tale set in post-colonial England, in which Reese Witherspoon plays the lead, Becky Sharp

Set to direct "Homebody/Kabul," Tony Kushner's play about a woman who goes to Taliban-era Afghanistan seeking her mother, for HBO (lensed 2004)

Helmed the adaptatio of "The Namesake," Jhumpa Lahiri best selling novel about the struggles between two first generation Bengali immigrants to the United States