Why I won’t celebrate if Slumdog Millionaire wins an Oscar?

I finally saw the movie that world is going ga ga over - Slumdog Millionaire. And there are two people associated with the movie who deserve compliments – Frieda Pinto coz she looked ravishing and Vikas Swarup because I liked the way he presented the basic idea of the story that life at times teaches you much more than what years spent in universities could.

But unfortunately that’s where I will stop with my compliments about the movie. What about AR Rahman’s music? Well, it didn’t help that just a day back I had seen Delhi-6 with some excellent music by Rahman and if you ask me - Masak-kali or Jai ho? Well, masak kali for me, i don’t think any Indian walked out of hall humming jai ho.

As for the movie’s portrayal of India – well, I don’t remember another movie that was such a comprehensive collection of everything ugly about India. Everybody in department of tourism spending millions on ‘Incredible India’ campaign must be running for cover after watching this movie whose commercial success could undo all the branding they may have created over years. But yeah I won’t hang Danny Boyle for showing what he did because as few of my friends have strongly insisted – what he showed is what exist in India – it’s real, it’s the other india which lot of us see very little of these days but we can definitely not deny its existence. And they are right, what Danny Boyle showed is the other India. But I can’t help holding a grudge against him for dividing Indians into the ones who have never jumped into a shit-pool and the ones that did. I also hold a grudge against him for being so selective about his depiction of our country.

What if I promise to show you a rainbow and then show you a blue streak in the sky. But that’s not rainbow – it has 7 colours but see am just showing you a part of Rainbow, the blue part. So technically, you can’t deny am right – blue is part of the VIBGYOR that constitutes rainbow but guess you would still feel cheated and that’s what I felt after seeing slumdog. I saw just one shade of a multi-colour country and I know I can’t fight those who insist that the shade shown is actually one of the many that form India but I still feel cheated. Just think of those who never saw a rainbow before and when I showed them blue they just accepted that rainbow is nothing but a streak of blue – for many who have never been to India, this movie may just be what India is all about. The commercial success of this movie could well be the worst advertisement of our country probably after Mumbai terror attacks.

But may be my fears are misplaced, after all it’s just a movie. Should Indians take pride in this movie –I don’t know about others but I can’t take any pride in this movie by an Englishman that seems to be celebrating the poverty, crime and filth in India. I can’t join that celebration. But then in India – we really take international recognition a shade too seriously and a lot of people have embraced this movie as their own given all the golden globe and academy nominations but I fail to see what recognition are they seeking and recognition of what.

I want to make it clear that am not trying to wish away the poverty in India – it exists and we all hope one day people in our country will not be living in such sub-human conditions as many do today. Maybe, all am saying is that I saw this movie -I tried hard to like it and I couldn’t. So, may the best film win the Oscar tomorrow but I wont be rooting for the Slumdog Millionaire and if it indeed wins the award, despite all its Indian connections, its not going to make me feel any good.

Few of you may have wondered sometimes why in your class 6th or 9th examination papers – one word answers only had one mark while the essay type answer always carried 5 or 8 marks. After all, one word answers were always the more difficult ones and more accurate test of your knowledge – you either know the answer or you don’t. With essay type questions, even if you beat around the bush in not too distant vicinity you always had a chance of scoring 2-1/2.

But I guess it was probably because most important questions in life could never be answered in one word. Is it right or is it wrong, is it true or is it false – these are valid questions only in study of sciences and nowhere else. Least of all in life, which is a work of art spanning generations. Sometimes we see things in our lifetime which seems wrong and there comes the temptation to paint things black and white but we forget that in the grey of life – a touch of black or white is merely a part of continuum and not an absolute event.

It’s like mixing colours in a palette. You want to make grey – you put some white, then some black you realize the grey is not dark enough and you put some more black and may be some more white later. Now, our lifetimes are just long enough to witness a touch of white or black and based on our limited exposure we mistake things to be right & wrong or black and white but its only when we look at things in their historical perspective that we realize that what’s in the palette is neither black nor white - its grey and that’s how it will remain.

Lot of us point to various things which seems unfair and say look that’s a wrong but then life is never fair or just at any given point in time. It’s always skewed one way or the other but what it does is that it shifts weight as years pass by and so when you average things out over years life still seems fair.

Say for example the reservation for backward or draconian dowry laws for women, they may not be just but probably they are justified. Because the wrongs today are meant to set right the wrongs of yesterday. A generation pays for the wrongs of previous generation or the other way round a generation gets compensated for sufferings of the previous generation. At no point in time, what prevailed was absolutely fair and just but if we aggregate all the points in time may be all that happened was justified.

All of us must have heard the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each blind man touched a different part of elephant and made their opinion about what an elephant is like but none of them got their description right because all of them focused on parts but none of them remembered to aggregate those parts. And that’s why I sometimes hesitate to answer in absolutes on how I view certain events because they may just represent a dot on the bigger canvas of life. May be it’s worthwhile to step back and hear what others have to say and look beyond what’s obvious to your eyes before you step forward and put forth your view.