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Media Industries and the State in an Era of Reform >> 35

In Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (K3G), a surprised and overjoyed Anjali (Kajol) embraces
her son after he leads his classmates in a rendition of the Indian national anthem.

inextricable from the nation, it is also an explicit acknowledgment, both to
viewers in India and the diaspora, of the diaspora’s abiding desire to stay in
touch with India. In a subsequent scene, we witness Rohan speaking with
his parents (in India) on the phone. Sporting a tricolor T-shirt, he assures
his parents that he is happy to have found accommodation with an Indian
family instead of staying in a hotel: “They’re very nice people papa. When
I met them, I felt like I have known them for years, a laughing, happy, con-
tented family, like we used to be.”
This piece of dialogue could be read not just as a reference to the rift
within the Raichand family, but also as an allusion to commonly held views
of NRI families struggling to define a sense of cultural identity and as a com-
ment that India, imagined as a transnational family, is unimaginable without
the diaspora. While one could point to several other instances that hint at an
impending rapprochement between India and the diaspora, it is Anjali and
Rahul’s son Krish’s performance of the Indian national anthem at a school
function that serves as the pivotal event which legitimizes and mitigates the
“othered” status of the diaspora’s version of Indianness, and reconstitutes the
NRI as the ideal citizen-to-be of a “global Indian family.”
Having learned about Krish Raichand’s participation in a school func-
tion, and Anjali’s disappointment at her son not being able to sing the same
songs she sang when growing up in India, Rohan decides to intervene. As
Anjali, Rahul, Pooja, and the rest of the audience wait to hear Krish and his