No Place Like Home in Srinivas Krishna’s Masala

Masala launched the filmmaking career of Srinivas Krishna. His debut feature film uses aspects of ancient Indian mythology to explore issues of diasporic identity from the perspective of an Indian community living in Toronto during the early 1990s. This issue, of how South Asian communities have experienced marginalization in Canada is explored in this article within the context of Canadian multiculturalism. This article begins with an analysis of the film and in particular examines where myth is located in the film and explains why this is important. Focusing on the types of spaces inhabited by the Indian god in Masala, I draw on Marc Augé's concept of "empirical non-places", by which he means "spaces of circulation, consumption and communication" (viii). Examples of these spaces include airports, service areas, televisions and computers. Specifically, I will argue that the film uses the "non-place" as "the" place inhabited by a displaced Lord Krishna in order to comment on issues affecting the diasporic Indian community in Canada.