Its been a while since I blogged.I have been busy in final year decadence with trips and treats and general fooling around. I have in the meanwhile been on a trip to Coorg , co founded a company called TLS,thought a fair bit about pot girls and hot girls, given identity and standing to sheikhu(he now tells me he is much better off than he was and when I last saw him was playing around in roller skates) and spent a day or two mourning the ingnonimous exit of Djokovic from the Australian Open.
There has been much lashing against Slumdog Millionaire in India. It started of course with Mr.Bacchan Sr himself .Many Indians have termed the movie an outrage on Indian sensibility,derogatory and even gone to the extent of advocating a boycott.The latter was done in quite a fashion by Mr.Arindham Choudhary in the Hindu occupying a quarter of his full page length add on ‘Dare to think beyond the IIMs!’
On a more serios note I think we are blowing a mountain out of a mole hill for no good reason.Status messages,blogs ad much more have derided the movie forbeing anti-indian. When I watched the movie I simply loved it.So vibrantly shot that it leaves you in awe for a while.I let out a gasp when Jamaal was asked the third Musketeer and did not forward the Jai Ho song.In short i thought here was an honesty about the film, a genuine attempt to portray the triumph of an under dog.
People have accused the film of portraying an India of slums, riots, poverty, crime and insincierity.The truth is the majority of the country falls into that category.In fact i think what is more denigrading to the sense is the highly sanitised super rich families shown in Karan Johar’s movies. That slumdog in a sense refers not only to Jamaal but to India itself is true but the fact remains that the movie asks a genuinely puzzling question-’ how does India survive and thrive despite the problems?’ its indeed a matter of wonder that how a nation burdened with illiteracy,corruption,sectraian politics,terrorism has managed to survive an economic onslaught that has withered super powers like America.The answer the movie tries to give is that India survives not despite these problems but along with these short comings. The indomitable Indian spirit draws strength from the hardships faced.In a large sense its true and that is our strength and our weakness.
What puzzles me is the intolerance shown.There is a stereo typing of India to cater to the western audiences but this movie is not alone in that crime.Curious Case of Benjamin Button ,Outsourced and a host of others are partner to it.Its similar to the portrayal of Westerners as promiscous and untrustworthy in Indian movies.That the story is based in the slums necessitates the struggle for survival shown. I do not see any degrading aspect of portrayal in slumdog as compared to the one in Salaam Bombay of the same Mumbai slums. Slumdog Millionaire is an unabashed drama with its heart in the right place.It narrates a telling tale of survival in an indomitable city.If its crime is that it exaggerates Indian poverty then a greater crime in that regard is committed by our English media .If the problem is that it glorifies poverty then our Hindi movies have long committed that sin. We do not complain against derision of gay couples in Dostana, we swallow an assault on our sensibility by a string of Bollywood films but have suddenly woken up to claim that Indian pride rests on boycotting this movie.
The movie is brilliantly shot and enacted and to all of Mr.Bacchan’s claims of equally good Bollywood films i beg to differ.You can count those in your finger tips and regional cinema is often far more superior to the films churned out in Bombay.Its indeed a moment of pride that Rehman has been nominated to the Oscars for these awards do far better justice to excellence in movies than our very own national and film fare awards.
