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The 2006 romantic Hindi movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna/Never Say Goodbye (Johar) is set in New York, with the city acting as the classic urban space in cinema that provides anonymity and permits characters to depart from expected norms. Since the movie's transgressive romance could have been set in any sprawling Indian metropolis, however, this article explores the choice of this American city as the setting. The movie 'produces' a New York where the Indian characters start to question their marital choices but without referring to the Indian nationalist rhetoric that is common in stories of the diaspora. New York provides not just the necessary urban space but a safe distance from which one can explore the institution of marriage as it currently exists in the home country – both arranged marriage as well as the 'love marriage' that has traditionally been the teleology of romance movies in India.