Slumdog Millionaire - My Selective Blindness

No, I haven’t watched Slumdog Millionaire yet. And no, this is no review on the movie. In fact, my knowledge about this movie is purely hearsay. Now, hearsay might or might not be accepted in a court of justice, but in this blog of mine, I definitely am going to accept it and key in my thoughts based on it. I have received positive comments on the movie as well as negative ones, so I hope this entry of mine doesn’t end up being absolute balderdash.

I remember reading about it first in Indianwatchdogs.com. Very soon, views and reviews on the movie started appearing everywhere. People were all raving about it. It was almost as if anyone was willing to say anything against it. Then, Big B commented against it, and suddenly the naysayers found their voice. Now, the print and visual media had two differing views respectively supported by SRK and Big B. Arindham Chaudhary too joined the bandwagon and probably found more viewers for that blog entry than for all his movies put together. As if to sustain the interest levels, the movie started winning awards in almost all of the major functions, including the Golden Globes and BAFTA (and tipped to repeat it in Oscars). Each time the movie won a clutch of awards, the debate started all over again.

The first review I personally received, not surprisingly, was from my brother. He had seen it while still at sea and talked to me about it in one of our chat sessions. While he wasn’t exactly scathing, he made it very clear that he didn’t enjoy the movie one bit. It wasn’t just showing India in unflattering terms, according to him, but also just a mediocre film. So, while I had been pretty enthusiastic about watching the movie in a multiplex near me, now I was skeptical. The last thing I want is to go for a movie, pay a bomb, sit amongst people who pay more attention in biting on the crunchiest portion of popcorn or downing their sodas with the loudest slurp, having heard I’d be disappointed, and then to actually find out that I have indeed been disappointed. I do make an exception, of course, to those people who prefer to examine their companion’s anatomical structure inside the relative coziness of a cinema hall. I’ve been saved from a few movie disasters thanks to these enterprising people.

The second review was from a colleague. He told that he didn’t like the movie that much and that he was pretty disturbed by it and that it was revolting. Now, that got me thinking. Didn’t some of the Indians not like it because it was disturbing? For an average middle-class Indian, let us take myself for example, poverty and slums and such is an embarrassment. It is a part of the country that I wouldn’t want to discuss. In fact, I would rather close my eyes while passing near a slum and feel it isn’t there than open my eyes and look at the real India. I would read about a Reliance or Infosys, IIT or IIM, but I would not want anything to do with Dharavi. I would read and talk over and over about a rare beggar who died with a small fortune hidden in their rags, but I wouldn’t glance twice at one lying helpless on the sidewalk. That me is now having to sit in a darkened hall, having to view all that I’d been closing my eyes to, forced to face facts which I know are true deep down but isn’t willing to accept, and it isn’t any surprise that I come out of the hall feeling revolted. I feel whether all this hype around the movie was only for me to see a person rising from a pile of shit or seeing a kid’s eyes being gouged to be made a beggar, etc. These are actually scenes I either see around me or I glance through in the newspapers but don’t bother to think twice about. Now, someone’s saying that I can’t act blind anymore and have to watch it, and I am not liking it one bit. All this might be happening in my country, but why does anyone have to show it? Even if someone had to show it, why did it have to be a foreigner? Why don’t they make a movie on one of India’s success stories rather than its slums? The movie might be about triumph against all odds, but I just don’t want to see those odds.

While I haven’t watched Slumdog Millionaire, I have read Shantaram. There is quite a description of a Mumbai slum in that book, but the author paints such a romanticized picture of it. They were planning to make a movie out of it with Johnny Depp playing the lead and Big B too playing an important part. While words can paint a romantic picture, the movie camera is much harsher and might have shown up a different picture, and I might have come off the hall cursing the director for not having understood the essence of the book. A Bollywood movie, on the other hand, would mostly show the lead actors in a foreign country or in the upmarket sections of the country’s main metros. I can sit through movies on mafia or terrorism, but I don’t want to sit through a movie on poverty. It is as if seeing it would be an impediment in my journey to the other end of the spectrum. Regardless of the advertisement campaigns by various governments, it is a fact that more than half the population lives below the poverty line in our country. It is also a fact that despite India’s success in IT/ITES sector, we have farmers committing suicides across the country, famine/floods happen each year, epidemics frequently break out in various parts, etc. We are still unable to provide uninterrupted power supply throughout the country, and drinking water is still a luxury for many. Many of my countrymen still earn less than a dollar a day. Of course, don’t ask me to open my eyes and see that!