Much has been made of the rather lukewarm reception here in India to Slumdog Millionaire, America’s most favorite tale of hope (after Obama) currently. A large section of the West seems to think that this might be the result of a relatively more upbeat Indian population (given the current financial scenario, upbeat can only be a relative term) that does not want to acknowledge the harsh truths behind its own success story.
While this may be true for a section of the Indian Diaspora well and truly disconnected with the reality of life down here, it is certainly very far away from the reason why most Indians (and Mumbaikars in particular) can’t seem to understand what the fuss is all about.
Well, there’s nothing to it really. Very simply, it hasn’t touched Indian audiences to that degree because we’re quite accustomed to watching ‘uplifting’ and inarguably illogical tales (a slumboy from Mumbai who speaks in chaste English with a Brit accent?) that ’Bollywood’ keeps churning out as it endeavors towards its mindless target of producing 200-300 mindless movies every year. While Slumdog may have enough in it to instill ‘hope’ in Americans, for a people that has to tackle corruption, abysmal governance, politics of hatred, and unbridled competition with a billion of its own kind on a daily basis - not to mention a terrorist attack thrown into this cesspool every month or so - Slumdog can’t make the grade for ‘uplifting’ entertainment.
The West often accuses middle class Indians of ignoring/brushing under the carpet the sordid stories of every large and overstuffed metropolitan city in India, with Mumbai being their favorite bashing ground.Well, they’re right.
We do ignore, because we don’t have the luxury to be tourists in our own country, and earning one’s daily bread and butter in such a fiercely competitive arena makes us oblivious to any other living thing that walks the earth, except for our near and dear ones. And can you blame us? Does Joshua Bell performing in a Washington subway ring a bell? It’s not so different here, just magnified ten times over…
One interesting point to note is that while Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated for as many as 10 Oscars, Taare Zameen Par, a sensitive ‘Bollywood’ film dealing with a middle-class, dyslexic child’s struggle to cope with this competition, and widely toasted as the best mainstream offering from the Hindi film Industry in a long while, didn’t even receive a nomination in the Best Foreign Language Category at the Academy Awards this year.
Is it just me here, or is there a certain prejudice towards only one particular ‘reality’ of India, and ignorance towards other equally harsh realities, simply because the protagonists in them have a brick and mortar house to live in, instead of a shack?
Let me clarify here that while it may seem so, I’ve nothing against the film – I found it to be entertaining and quite worth a watch. Neither do I have anything against the subject or the depiction of life in Mumbai – in fact, I would have found it more memorable had it given some more screen time to the dark undercurrents of the Mumbai underbelly, which were easily the most believable and fascinating parts of the film, greatly assisted by a rousing score from A. R. Rehman. My only grouse is with the perception that the Indians have some kind of a sinister agenda to not allow this film to succeed, because we don’t – as the film highlights rather well at the end of the day, it’s just a way of life out here, so why the hype?