Last night Nancy and I watched an epic length Bollywood movie ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’ in which all the actors cried for the last 60 to 90 minutes.  Some were happy tears, but most were tears due to separation within the family, tears of separation and longing. While the cause of the problem, the banishment of a son for marrying outside his class, is uniquely Indian, most people could well relate to the depiction of the pain of separation and of longing for loved ones. Western reviews of this movie characterize it as ‘over the top melodramatic’. This is perhaps accurate in the context of the kinds of movies we tend to watch, but also misleading. We all endure separation and longing, sometimes for very…