THIS exuberant family drama from Mira Nair crosses national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature.

The film follows the extended Verma family of Delhi as their daughter, Aditi (the blue-eyed beauty Vasundhara Das), agrees to a last-minute arranged marriage to Hemant (Parvin Dabas), a computer programmer from the States.

He has returned to meet the bride selected for him by his parents in the old-fashioned way.

But these are modern young people and Aditi has agreed to the marriage mainly as revenge for her lover's reluctance to get a divorce. She sees him again the day before the wedding and throws her whole future in doubt.

We are thrown headlong into the colourful and joyous whirl of celebrations leading up to the big day and are introduced to a large cast.

The characters slip effortlessly from English to Hindi to Punjabi but the viewer is never left wanting in understanding. The dialogue reflects today's middle-class India, where the ancient sits easily with dot com modernity.

The comedy comes from the affections and tensions between the family members but there are also darker forces at work.

The movie traces five interweaving love stories, the most poignant being that between the marigold-chomping yuppie wedding planner PK Dube (Vijay Raaz) and the family's maid, Alice (Tilotama Shome).

In Monsoon Wedding, which won the Golden Lion as the best film at Venice 2001, you meet exotic characters and feel like you've known them forever.

PGW