The Slum Dog Debate - Ruminations

Mushrooming issues on the Slum Dog Millionaire, blown, as usual, out of proportion by the media have let loose a barrage of blogs and forwards. I don’t mind the former but the latter - -can’t ignore them since they jam my inbox.

I spoke to a couple of people -both in the US – who saw the film-one in the theatre, the other at home. Both were raving about it. One admitted she couldn’t watch a few scenes – kept her eyes closed. The other, a little younger, had no complaints. I asked them about the Bachchan’s ‘underbelly’ comment. They echoed Irfan Khan’s views that if there is an underbelly, shoving it under the carpet doesn’t make it non-existent. One cannot wish away nor will away certain things.

Now about the originator of the ‘underbelly’ comment. It is surprising that such a politically correct person like MR. Bachchan should have used the idiom ‘‘underbelly”. Even idioms have to be used with discretion. When the issue is sensitive, and the referent is the underprivileged and the deprived who are struggling not just to survive, but also to celebrate life despite the rough deal life doled out to them, one should refrain using a word which, viewed outside its status as an idiom, refers to an offensive image - revolting part of the animal anatomy here. Bachchan may not have thought too much about the word underbelly as he, like a person at home with the language, would have thought only about total lexical output of the term. But he ought to have learnt a lesson from VS Achuthanandan’s recent “dog” episode (Dogs seem to dog India of late). The man was using a Malayalam idiom to mean an emphatic ‘no one’– an idiom used very commonly in Malayalam. But the referent being a person who died a hero’s death, and to whom the whole the whole nation was passionately grateful, the “dog’ ceased to be viewed in the context of the idiom. To make matters worse, in translation it was all the more offensive, in the absence of a similar idiomatic expression in thee English language.

Now, the social activist Nicholas Almeida has taken up the grouse of the Dharavi residents who are bristling at being referred to as Dogs. Legitimate anger and protest.

Let’s not forget that it is not their fault that they were born to live in a slum. Nor can we appropriate the credit for being born in a privileged class. Some unseen hand decided it that way. The least we can do is to refrain from using derogatory terms to refer to the less fortunate. What is underbelly to Bachchan is life to them. This terrible disparity in wealth ownership should make us hang our heads in shame, for we enjoy at their cost. There is no law of economics or philosophy that can counter this truth.

But one word in defence of Bachchan. he made this comment in his blog. Blogsphere is private sphere.

Now regarding the allegation that the movie is trying to project a saleable image of India, I can’t comment on it till I see it. But this I know. Any one who makes an India based English movie or an Indian who writes in English will be accused of catering to the western stereotyped expectations about India. In some cases this is true. In some, it is not. But the fact remains that when we write a novel in English, or make a movie in English, we become subliminally conscious of the takers – the English speaking audience and the English movie viewers. There is a possibility that the writer/movie maker will become, not quite realising it perhaps, vulnerable to the market trends. I suppose economics has a large part to play in this. The investment in the project might go down the drain if she/he ignores the market.

So what am I saying? That all Indian writers in English and the filmmakers in English who make India based movies never present empirical truth? Well. I don’t mean that. I am only saying that one can expect to find an element of stereotyping in such films. That is inevitable. But the question is, is it deliberate distortion to please a western audience? The answer is linked to the purpose of the project. Is it success at the box office, or an honest effort at a truthful represention of the writer's/movie maker’s perception of the truth about India? In the case of the former, both the movie and the book will not hold attention. In the case of the latter, honesty will pay, despite the fact that her/his perception of India is his/her own, and not necessarily the empirical truth.

Now the question arises as to what is the truth about India or any issue for that matter? Where does truth lie? Well, no one has patented truth. No one has a proprietary right over truth. Like Gandhi said, it is like a many faceted diamond and a seeker of truth can handle only a few at a time.

My experience of India is different from that of a resident of Dharavi or a farmer who struggles with the weather gods in Tamilnadu, or a Toda tribal of the Nilgiris or the middle class urban dweller of the metros or the reeking rich living all over the country or a British film maker whose knowledge of India began with textbooks. All these experiences of India are true. Our perception of truth is shaped by our experience of it. We should therefore be large enough to give as much space as possible to an artist who tries to represent India the way he/she perceives it. Artistic truth is reality as perceived by the artist and representation of it in a truthful fashion. About the market place, if an artist decides to present truth in a manner that provides aesthetic pleasure but refrain from distorting the truth as he has internalized it, no one should complain. The sum total of all these representation will take us a little near the truth.

Remember Keats’ words. “Truth is beauty, beauty truth”. Reality as perceived by an artist, if represented honestly, is truth. This truth cannot but be beautiful. It cannot but give aesthetic pleasure. That’s the purpose of art.

Just one more thing. Bachchan today gave voice to a sentiment I have always felt strongly about. “Oscar is not the ultimate recognition”, he said. Yes. I have always wondered why our film makers spend such huge amounts at screening and other Oscar winning extra theatre activities to get this recognition.To win an Oscar, I guess we will have to approximate the grammar of our movies to that of the western movies. Why on earth should we compromise so much to win an Oscar. I can mention any number of Oscar winning movies which I wouldn’t like to see a second time. Is there a greater recognition than a movie running house full in Indian for months?

Finally, the media behaviour with the crew of The Slum Dog Millionaire. One particular channel really took the cake with the anchor person repeatedly asking Danny Boyle about his feelings about India, about experience of movie making of India and, and, oh,she went on and on and on. The way she was trying hard for something good about India to fall from the lips of this rather reserved film maker, she reminded me of a starving cat waiting for a bottle of milk to fall so that she can lap up the spilt milk,. And the Indian members of the crew were drooling over him till his ears turned red.

We Indians! Ugh! How many eons must pass before we get over this colonial hangover?