Slumdogs, Indians welcome

It is ironic that it took a firang to make a desi film that the world would take seriously

I am happy about the Golden Globe. I am patriotic. I am happy A R Rahman won and that he has a shot at the Oscars. But I have a problem. Would I be a good Indian if I didn’t have a problem?The other morning I overheard (eavesdropped, actually) two firangs talk about Slumdog Millionaire. They loved the movie. I was chomping on medu wadas at Vaishali and they were eating onion uttapas without green chillies quietly, when I heard how the film was set in ‘real’ India. They could not believe that Indian slums were so big and how the range of emotions even in a ‘junk township’ was volatile and ‘wide-spectrum like’. That’s when it struck me: next time first-worlders talk about India, they are going to talk about Slumdog Millionaire. And the first syllable they mouth while talking about our country will be ‘slum’. Sorry to say, but our greatest 21st century victory will have ‘slum’ written all over it. And the ‘dog’ is not helping either. ‘Oh slum, yeah that’s India. Oh Dog! ...I mean God, remember Slumdog Millionaire? What a great comment on India.... and the colour... yada yada’ — that’s going to be the standard conversation between white trash bartenders in Goa who come looking for cheap holidays. And yes, they are not going to watch Slumdog as an isolated event. It will be their Discovery of India.Before Slumdog, Aravind Adiga spoiled the show by winning the Booker and making us proud to be Indians (again... soon Booker wins will become routine). I stopped reading desi Booker books after Rushdie and Naipaul. I could manage only 70 per cent of Arundhati Roy’s book. I leafed through The White Tiger to appear in tune with the times. Adiga has hit where it hurts by showing us what’s happening in the ‘darkness’ — the India that contains no-hope towns. In The White Tiger, there is a murder by a quintessential third world guy with a loser name (Halwai). In the India I hang out in, there is nobody called ‘Halwai’. I would like to believe I am from the ‘Light’ India because I can get my chest hair waxed at a salon in a five star hotel. If you really think about it, Adiga is not right. It is all darkness in India. Just that some people can get their chest hair waxed in five star hotels.My roots are in one of India’s darkest corners — the Northeast. The people I knew there named their kids smartly. My dad gave my bro a great name: Prakritish. I have never met another Prakritish till date. We were middle class and the people who worked in our house were impoverished to their epidermis: the kind who seriously need Alladin’s lamp.Even a murder wouldn’t help. They would, in fact, prefer life in prison as it would be hunger-free. Anyway, the poorest girl I knew was from a refugee family with 18 kids. When these kids sat together, it looked like a conference of the rib-cages. She was called Meena, and that’s not bad. The worst names I heard as a kid were ‘Bhudai’ and ‘Genai’. Bhudai was from a rich landlord’s family, while Genai was my mother’s creation. It is funny that poor characters in ‘serious’ novels / films have names that matrimonial websites might refuse to entertain. I would have loved it if a movie on India had a title like ‘Quantum of Solace’ or something spiritual sounding like that. That would help our image. I would like to close the topic with a pat on the back for Danny Boyle. It is ironic that it took a firang to make a desi film the world would take seriously.Marry within my casteI was gossiping with a friend about another pal on Gtalk. Our subject was returning to India to meet his parents, who are devout Brahmins. He had fallen in love with an Anglo-Indian girl. Apparently, his dad had come to know about the blasphemous alliance and was scheming to have him engaged to a homely Brahmin girl. I asked my pal if not marrying a Brahmin was such a big deal in circa 2000. She told me she was a ‘Tam Bram’ and that only she knew what a cross-caste marriage meant, though they did not live in the ‘Darkness’, but in neon Singapore.This is how she put it:If I marry a:Non-Indian/Christian/ Muslim: there will be attempts by parents to commit suicideNon-Brahmin Hindu/ Sikh/ Jain: banished from homeBrahmin from other regional backgrounds: lose contact with family for two years (can extend to three)Iyer, Tamil: big fight but can come to terms with it, finallyIyengar: I’m the best daughter they ever had! (It does not matter if such a guy is a complete moron or a bastard or a psychotic homo)

PS: THIS COLUMN WAS WRITTEN BEFORE RAHMAN WON THE OSCARS.