Why is it that the Brits are always at our throats, slitting it every time they feel like it? 300 years of ruling over us didn't quench their thirst, I reckon. Or so it seems by the reception, critical as well as otherwise of the recent Slumdog Millionaire. The movie is portrayed on Jamal Khan from the Dharavi slums in Mumbai (largest slum in Asia) and how the experiences of his mishap ridden and hectic life ultimately help him in winning the most coveted Game Show of the season, acquiring a celebrity status and a whooping sum of Rs. 2 Cr. to boot. The movie is an emotional and utterly brutal portrayal of the everyday trials and tribulations that a poverty ridden individual (man, woman, child) in India has to undergo just to earn a square meal and a square meter of cloth. Based on the novel 'Q and A' by Vikas Swarup, the movie has already won 4 Golden Globe awards.
The movie was publicly denounced by Big B; he argued that the India portrayed in the movie was not the current situation of this great sub-continent and the drastic effect rendered on the minds of the foreign viewers will be devastating to the already precarious image of this Third-World nation (ironically, a phrase invented by Britain just before partition).
The critics have not been generous although in retrospect, they are merely trying to promote the movie in the foreign film industry. One of them calls the film "a modern fairy tale," a "sensory blowout," and "one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable." The economic conditions in India are not like Kenya or other third-world countries, where everyone is poor. We have middle class people, working hard to earn their bread and that is what makes us different. But it is always the 'poor' India that is shoved under the spotlight.
For Radhakrishnan, "the most glaring was the language. Despite the plausible explanation that Jamal and Salim picked up English, posing as tour guides at the Taj Mahal, it is highly implausible that they would come out of that experience speaking perfect British English, but somehow, in the context of the movie, we buy it. Thing is that if he really was as smart and articulate as Jamal was in the film, he definitely would have been making calls at the call center, not just serving chai." Will someone please go and put up some sense in that guy; you need a minimum qualification of Intermediate to work in a call centre, or is he so biased against this industry taking it's firm roots in India that he doesn't even think before uttering such nonsensical babble.
All in all, even though this movie does not do justice to the other side of the coin, it still is a glaring reminder of the facets of our country totally ignored and taken for granted. Things like poverty, population, corruption are so commonplace that the 'well-to-do' don't spare a second glance towards it. The ideals for which The Mahatma stood have truly fallen away, it's place taken by the RatRace of the Globe.
