Movie Preview: Slumdog Millionaire

This one is racing towards the Oscars headlong. It is a pity they haven’t had a worldwide release yet. It is based on Vikas Swarup’s novel Q&A. Now, this is about the streets and slums of Mumbai. (And the ironical thing is that is exactly where I saw its first copy – pirated, of course, lying yesterday! It was on a rickety table, placed on a pavement near a prominent railway station. I confess, I did stop to skim through a few pages, but was quite appalled at the way the novel seemed written. I have heard the director has really taken pains to clean up the mess and present a more complete story.)

In fact, there seems to be a tendency amongst our writers, of late, to explore the squalor hidden beneath the Indian underbelly, be it Arvind Adiga’s White Tiger or now Vikas Swarup’s Q&A. Shantaram, Maximum City and Black Friday have specifically been set in Mumbai. And all these books have won many awards. (Why do we have to always play to the galleries, and act so third-world, to get an award?!)

Mumbai, you see, is a cosmopolitan city. It has life – the urban who live in high towers and gated bunglows surrounded by guards; and there is life on the roads, pavements, bridges and even road dividers. If you do not believe me then next time move out of South Mumbai once, and as your airplane lands look out the window – you will see Asia’s largest slum area, Dharavi…

The protagonist of Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal, belongs to a slum; he is a young teenager who is orphaned, uneducated and depressingly poor. Yet he participates in, ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ (Indian version – Kaun Banega Crorepati). And he is winning! The host (played by Anil Kapoor) is in total disbelief. This uneducated fool is cheating, he alleges. The teenager, Jamal, is arrested by the police. A lawyer, Irrfan Khan, appears and interrogates his client – how do you know all the answers? And, then the real story unfolds of Jamal's experiences while growing up in constant penury. Experiences that have hurt him, humoured him, caused anguish, sickened him at times, but in the end educated him….

With 20 awards to its name, it seems like a winner.