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Slumming The Millionaire Tale
Gur Varinder Singh

Slumdog Millionaire may be a feel-good film but many can feel bad because films with a story of the Indian down-and-under are often reviled as trying to sell Indian poverty to western audiences. Even Satyajit Ray faced that sort of gripe.

But is Slumdog Millionaire  just some more of the Indian exotica? Or will the Indian audiences find in it the multi-layered reality, the story of a slumdog? As Jamal Malik reveals layer by layer his narrative with Anil Kapoor in the chair made so famous by Amitabh Bachhan, is India ready to see its own underbelly's narrative? 

India is not just a tale of 10 per cent growth rates coming down to 6 per cent, or IT dreams being shattered by wolves who cook books at Satyam headquarters. This tale also has the brahamanical achievements of keeping a society, its teeming millions hungry, underfed, malnourished, margimalised, forced to live in slums and surviving merely to mend shoes, wash clothes, sweep floors and carry shit on their heads. 

The grim reality of life in slums, child beggary and prostitution racket, mafia, crime and communal tension in Mumbai may not look so good if and when it wins an Oscar for India, and India may sweep it all under the glare of a thousand screens or the din of the peppy A.R. Rahman, but will the caste based, birth based, lack of opportunity based reality be hidden under the pretext that it was all a fairy tale?

True, the core of the film is all about hitting the jackpot overnight.

Afterall, the measure of success in India is not judged by programmes like Mastermind of the BBC or Weakest Link but by the crores that Amitabh Bachan and his many clones  in Bollywood offer. Also, it is true that the basic premise of Slumdog Millionaire remains a love story.  

But the real world that Slumdog does underline and allude to is less glossy, more gloomy. Slum-life is romanticised, yes, and the feeling is not of Salaam Bombay, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro or Dharavi but then Boyle may be taking a break from the realistic and unsettling Trainspotting or The Beach. Can we afford to take a break and celebrate the Oscar? If and when, of course.

14 January 2009
 

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