Slumdog Millionaire

Everyone knows about this Oscar winner. 8. Eight. Ocho. Aath. That's the number of Oscars this movie won. And, even though I'm an Indian, I haven't seen this movie yet. The mundane life kept me busy. I was supposed to go this past weekend but the show times were inconvenient at all the theaters nearby. However, my parents went to see it. They're not avid movie-goers and usually just netflix movies or see them on cable. But, I convinced them that Slumdog was a huge 'Indian' win and that they absolutely had to go see it.

Dad called me after the evening show. He said, "This movie should have never been made. Don't you go see it." My dad is not one who judges people or things or circumstances. And rarely when he does, he will never really express any negative opinions. His statement stuck with me. All I could say was, " Uh are you sure? Dad, everyone loves it." Dad said, "I don't." We decided we'll talk about it when I get home and ended the call there. I was with a couple of friends and couldn't really change the way my dad was thinking and feeling at the time. And, I hadn't seen the movie so couldn't argue anyway. Dad's opinion, for me, is over and above anyone else's opinion in this whole wide world. Even the Academy's.

Later that night, dad wrote an explanatory email to me:

"Every Indian will hang his head in shame after watching Slum Dog Millionaire. It is a movie which mocks India, (nay, the entire third world), their slums & slum dwellers, poor and poverty and portrays India‘s worst face ever. Except for making money and garnering Oscars by selling worst face of India, no Indian director, actor, writer, or music director could say with pride that they rendered any service to India (or to its poor sections of people) by such a brutal portrayal of poverty and assumed absence of ethics, civics, sensibilities or sensitivities among any person, section of population, rich or poor, in a poor country.

"The movie assumes there is no government agency or charitable organization or other individuals in India that take care of any orphaned and other poor children; there is no governance or police force. Even the parents of the poor are so oblivious, the movie assumes, about the fate of their children which they reproduce and throw them into slums to live on their own, to become beggars, thieves, pick-pockets, killers & goons. Children are maimed to turn them into more pitiable beggars to get more money. The slum children don’t go to school don’t work or help their parents; there are no schools for them, except some small room catering to a big crowd. All this is called in the movie, as the real India.

"The movie would do every harm to India and Indians: potential tourists would be turned away; potential business people would not visit India, for the movie shows that India is poor, dirty, unethical, over-populated; its children hungry, naked and unlettered. The portrayal is so bad that no charitable organization would even think of helping such children or adopting them. This loss is for Indian poor as well as the world at large, for the world would remain mis-informed and would not benefit from anything that India could offer, be it the brain-power for IT related work or handicrafts, spiritualism or preventive health care systems based on Yoga or herbs."


Dad's email ended there.He said many, many more things when I talked to him about it. But, I won't write all of that here. I'll write more when I go against his wishes and see the movie - when it's out on DVD. Come back in a month or so!

Hmmm