'Slumdog' will make you squirm

Indians are a notoriously touchy lot. They bristle at any slight, real or perceived at the Indian way or life. Anything that shows Indians in a negative light or lampoons Indians gets proscribed. Anyone who casts too sharp a light on India’s problems is dismissed
either as a neo-colonial racist or as a purveyor of misery, never mind if those assertions are based on facts.

From Gandhi’s famous statement calling Katherine Mayo’s book Mother India as a “gutter inspector’s report” to banning Louis Malle’s film on Calcutta to the recent episode of a silly Hollywood production The Guru which apparently incensed Hindus in America, there is no dearth of examples. In the 1970s, The Party, in which Peter Sellers played a heavily accented Hrundi P Bakshi got the Jan Sangh (the precursor of the Bharatiya Janata Party) so worked up that it launched an agitation, forcing the government to temporarily ban the movie.

And yet, here we are celebrating the success of Slumdog Millionaire, a film that unashamedly focuses on the seamier side of Indian life. Every ugly cliché of our urban existence — slums, makeshift toilets, gangs which run beggars, the cages of Falkland Road, communal riots — is packed into this movie.

It is a rapid tour of the dark underbelly of Shining India, without the redeeming feature of a sociological comment. Many of the scenes are plainly gratuitous and put there to lend further ‘colour’ to the film; cut them out and the film would still work. It’s just the kind of film that is destined to get Indians — and not merely the ultra-nationalists — angry.

Instead, there is great happiness at the four Golden Globes it got. Is it because the film is based on a book by an Indian? Or that some of the actors and the music director is Indian? Or that it is set in India?

One possible explanation that emerges from this uncharacteristic response is that Indians have matured as a nation. We have moved on from those days and can take criticism on the chin. The rationale is: There is poverty in India, let’s admit it; but we are also a growing economy well on the way to becoming a super power, so we shouldn’t care if someone points out our warts.

The world may in fact be jealous of our success so it is trying to pull us down. One Slumdog cannot and should not affect us.Somehow though I doubt this is the case. For all our global pretensions, that adolescent streak of taking quick offence has not gone from our psyche.

When Shekhar Kapoor’s Elizabeth did not win at the Oscars, a newspaper called it Apartheid. We forever yearn for international recognition and then smart when it is denied to us.

Contrariwise, therefore, we are thrilled when we get a bit prize. And therein lies the key to understanding why we are delighted at Slumdog’s awards and AR Rahman’s in particular. What we are celebrating are the Golden Globes, especially since they hold out the promise of an Oscar. The big one, which has eluded the largest film industry in
the world, is within reach.

Our own Rahman may or may not get it, but  Slumdog Millionaire, a film set in India (in the slums, yes, but so what) based on a book by an Indian (though not scripted by him) is in the running for the Oscar! How exciting is that.

But we have not yet necessarily given our thumbs up to the film itself. True, pirated DVDs are already doing the rounds (an ironical nod to the very spirit of slum enterprise the film talks about), but how many have access to those? It is only after it hits the screens next week will we know how Indians at large react to it.

What they will see is a film that shows, in an unrelenting and no-holds-barred way, the wretched existence of the majority of urban Indians. A no-hope existence where the only exit doors lead to a life of crime, prostitution or worse. If a rare winner does emerge out of that muck, he is viewed with suspicion, as the protagonist young Jamal is when he wins big money on a quiz show. Everyone mocks him, disbelieves him, because how could he, a boy from the streets, know so much.

This is a film that the poor will find familiar because it shows, in great detail, their own lives. Will they like that? ‘Art’ films in India that show stark poverty are rarely a hit among mass audiences. But what about the middle-classes, who want to disassociate themselves from the poverty around them? How will they react?

The film will make them uncomfortable, reminding them that the world still sees India the same way as it did in the 1960s or ’70s — a country where a vast majority lives in Dickensian conditions, never mind the malls and high-rises going up all over. This is not Incredible India — this is shitty, horrible India that we want to turn away from.

Ultimately Slumdog is a love story and must be assessed as a film, not a social document. It can be faulted on many grounds—stilted dialogue and a faux-MTV style that can leave the viewer breathless. Its buffet of miseries can get repetitive and tedious. Yet it is compelling, even for Indians for whom the milieu is familiar. And most of all, it can be disturbing, as many viewers will find out in the next few days.