Slums are us

Gurgles about the 10 Oscar nominations that Slumdog Millionaire has earned may momentarily drown the harrumphs which suggest that the film is innocent Indian filth packaged as sociological porn. The harrumphers concede that our great country is indeed blighted by scabs of poverty and hunger. But they ask in despair if nobody has ever taken Danny Boyle to one of many liver-paralysing Elysiums in Mumbai where single malts flow like, well, dirty Musi. Folks on the other side of the fuss argue that Boyle has shown no more than the truth: in India, they say, shit on the streets and bone china toilet pots are equally valid emblems.

I would argue that both parties have missed the point. The real truth is that slums are us. To prove my case I will quote a friend who, after some serious imbibing, turned into a pop sociologist. He said to me, “You know what the essential difference between the slum mentality and the civilised mentality? The poor slum wallahs have no compassion in their mini-economy.” He went on to say that for the ‘poor slum wallahs’, 1 paisa debt is reason enough to kill. “But we folks have credit cards and easy EMIs,” he said. “That’s why we thrive and grow, and slum wallahs continue to die.” The reason why there are no slums in the US, he slurred, is because
Americans have insurance, and insurance was based on compassion because many companies use it to pay for employees’ healthcare. I will take up the credit card argument later; first let us deal with the extraordinary claim made for American compassion, and therefore for their arguable ‘non-slumminess’. In a New Yorker essay, Atul Gawande, an American doctor of Maharashtrian origin, offers healthcare-reform prescription to Barack Obama.

He begins his article with a sober observation: “In every industrialised nation, movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty.”

Then he talks about a pregnant Ohio woman whose company lays her off and says that her health insurance would be terminated after her notice period. In order to beat the deadline the woman “prevailed on her midwife to induce labour while she still had insurance coverage. During labor, she began bleeding profusely, and needed a Cesarean section. Mother and baby pulled through. But the insurer denied the mother’s claim for coverage.”

Wow! I will say what Gawande could not: the American company and the insurer were behaving like my friend’s ‘poor slum wallahs’. As for credit card EMIs, I have lost count of number people who have been pushed to suicide by banks’ recovery agents.

Let us admit it: slums are us. If you want more proof, let us move away from Boyle to Gregory David
Roberts. In one startling moment in Shantaram, a group of poor slum wallahs thrash a man for continually abusing his wife. Unless you can solemnly affirm that no woman is ever harmed in our gentrified neighbourhoods, you will have to scream with me: Slums are us.

In one voyeuristic flourish, Suketu Mehta describes in Maximum City how a slum goon thrusts a hand through an open window to grope a sleeping woman. Unless you can testify with conviction that no sick predator has ever sexually tormented anybody in offices, restaurants, homes, or trains — you will have
to sing this dirge with me: Slums are us.