Slumdog Millionaire... and what should a movie be ?

A question that will never be quite settled is related to the extent of realism in cinema: should cinema expose harsh truth or should it portray a carefully sanitized picture of society. This question has again come to the fore front with release of Slum dog Millionaire , which on one hand has been nominated for the Oscars and on the other is dogged by controversy with actors like Amitabh Bachchan having panned it – ( though reportedly, he has retracted those comments).

Partly this is because of the different expectations that people have from cinema and the role that cinema has in society – and this question too will never be satisfactorily answered. Actors like Amitabh, who have been principally entertainers, see the medium as principally a vehicle of entertainment – some thing affordable and accessible to the common manta the end of a day’s work.
Other film makers have thought and acted differently, Satyajit Ray being the one most well known of them. He used films to portray the stark realities of Indian society – the poverty, the corruption and the decadence of a country in transition. of Ray was a lot more than a chronicler of penury and hardship ; his films made money, won praise and gave Indian films their first ever visibility on the world stage.

The films that Amitabh made and makes are of course quite different – escapist, mainstream masala fare is what we call them, where the money and fame is and parallel cinema is the homely cousin which wins awards and acclaim but don’t necessarily entertain the common man who sees on screen the reality that he has been part of all day long.

Parallel cinema of course decidedly doesn’t entertain; what it does is make a statement on aspects of society which ought to be noticed and attended to but sadly no one does or did till the movie came along. While Satyajit Ray did make pure entertainers, especially his children’s’ films in particular, his contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak, the noted Bengali film maker made movies inspired by the partition of Bengal in 1947 and its aftermath among people uprooted from places where they had lived for centuries.

Of course Amitabh is not incorrect when he says that “If Slumdog Millionaire’ projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations,” It is just that there is and always be a difference of opinion about just which aspect of reality should the creative artiste; be it a movie maker or a journalist or a novelist focus on ….. The subjects of celebration and veneration or the objects of ridicule and revulsion.

Using depictions of poverty solely as a means of publicity or getting recognition is definitely pandering. But we cannot get away from the fact that a very large fraction of the billion-strong population of India does not have access to the basic amenities of life, and this is the most obvious thing that will strike an observer from a Western country where these amenities are taken for granted and where these films are getting mileage and Oscar nominations. Meanwhile both kinds of movies deserve a place in the sun. it is the typical Bollywood movie, of the kind in which Amitabh acts that have made Hindi films the force that they are today…. when they are watched more by people outside India than within. And it is the kind of film that Satyajit Ray and others like him make that initially gave Indian films a foothold in places like Cannes. Slumdog Millionaire is incidentally a bridge. It is not the kind of film that Shyam Benegal or Adoor Gopalakrishnan would make; it also obviously is not the kind of film that Amitabh Bachchan would have acted in. a perfect balance, one must say.

India's Lonely Honeymooners

It kind of sounds crazy that a Bollywood film should inspire thoughts on alternate sexuality. But it happens. While watching the film, Honeymoon Travels late at night on a DVD, some thing resonated. Watching Vikram Chatwal, the suave NRI and Karan Khanna come to terms with their sexuality on their honey moon as they tell their aghast wives that they are gay; I could not help but remember the normal notions and stereotypes that we have created around them and how distanced they are from the real thing.

Vikram and Karan are fundamentally decent people and not some ogres; they in the movie sound genuinely bewildered, confused and perplexed by the deal that life(first) and society(subsequently) have dealt them and genuinely want to do the right thing by their wives, by their family and by the established norms of society, which is why they got into this jam of getting married to a woman when they are gay in their orientation. The pain and agony of Karan, the small town simpleton who does not even understand the concept of being gay but tries hard to understand and rationalize his attraction towards another man is heart wrenching.

And of course being gay and lesbian is a relatively straight forward thing ; sexuality after all is a many splendoured thing and the typical man and woman will live and die without knowing and seeing even the tip of the archetypal iceberg of this thing called alternate sexuality- so many are its manifestations and so complex its expression.

If there is an are where the media in the Western media in particular have muddied the waters for us in India real bad, it is in attempting to script only the titillating bits of the story – of chronicling celebrities who are gay – be it Alexander the Great or Oscar Wilde or many other contemporary figures. By trivializing alternate expressions of sexuality into the realm of speculation and spice, it has glossed over many other angles.

If the spot light is not on celebrities , it is on only particular kinds of behavior; the constant discussion on gay marriages and whether they should be permitted or not – which countries have permitted them and which have not have obfuscated the fact that marriage is in any case not only about sex and that their sex life is not the only thing on the mind of any one – be it straight or gay. The rampant stigmatization of any one even thought or perceived to be “different” in main stream society can lead to a situation where such men and women find companionship only among their own – a fact that is hardly discussed or talked about.

Those who are gay have some breathing space – at least in the cities , if you move in the right circles, you know the gay bars and that sort of thing, but for the others, the tunnel is darker. A cross dresser, a bi sexual – as most gays in India are, a eunuch or transgendered ( not necessarily the same), live on the edge of a more slippery and darker abyss. A picture of ridicule, abhorrence and disdain, they live not even on the fringes of society, but outside it – obscured by their own initiation rites, customs, hierarchy , festivals – a deeply rooted counter culture if there was one.

I wonder what the prescription is for a country of India’s complexity but I suppose it has to begin with a more cogent understanding that sex and sexuality are different things altogether and whereas sex will always be an explosive issue in a supposedly conservative society, expressions and articulations of alternate sexuality and its destigmtization are the sine qua non of a humane society. Funny is it not , that we are so busy ferreting out the minorities and the marginalized in our midst that we have ignored the most despised, the most stigmatized, the most marginalized of them all ? They may not be hankering for reservations and quotas but they unfailingly need and deserve our acceptance !

Guru Bhai's Sorry Ethics

There was a time when people avoided any film that enjoyed exemption from entertainment tax, the rule of thumb being that if the government deigned to overlook entertainment tax from a film, then for certain, that film was not worth spending money on as it going to be boring and preachy. But this much was certain, that though usually the films so exempted from tax were often dry and pedantic in their presentation, at its core they had a message and an ideal that they tried to convey.

They consciously avoided the song and dance and running around trees kind of scenes because they detracted from the gravitas that the director often wanted conveyed. At the end of the day, the films exempted from entertainment tax, even if they did not go on to win the national awards were fine films. Of hand, I can recall two, Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika and Manthan. I do no remember the story of Bhumika much except that it was based of the life of a Gujarati stage actress but Manthan was based on the origins of the milk cooperative movement and though not a pot boiler in any sense of the term, it was a good film with a lot of its lessons still relevant today.

But when films Mani Ratnam’s Guru get exemption (as happened in Uttar Pradesh), one has to probe hard to seek a reason. Of course one knows about the political angle between the lead actor’s family and the then government as well as the connection to the industrial patriarch whose biopic, the film is without saying so. But although the film has the flourish that one would expect from Mani Ratnam and an equally enchanting music from. A.R. Rehman, the ethics the film promotes could do with out the additional prop in the form of cheaper tickets. For it is tantamount to the state endorsing a kind of life that is any way flourishing in Uttar Pradesh, with or without state patronage.

Women have typically served to bring nothing more than a touch of glamour to a Bollywood film. In this film the protagonist, Guru Bhai crowns the commoditization of women by marrying his wife solely because her father was rich and he could use the dowry that he would get as a start up capital for his first business. In a day and age when dowry is illegal in the eyes of the law and there is a movement that is gathering momentum to challenge its social and cultural roots, the tax exempted film goes ahead and tells one and all, the practical uses to which dowry money could be put, the last thing a feudal state like Uttar Pradesh needs.

The principles of entrepreneurship that are brought out in the film are that the road to riches , success and power are paved with generous doses of bribes, muscle power and black mail marinated in a brew of deadly ruthlessness. Laws can be broken with impunity by invoking Gandhi and by buttressing the fact that Guru Bhai’s wealth is shared not just by him and his wife who are the promoters but by lakhs of two bit share holders who have hit pay dirt. Mean while to enhance shareholder value, fraud, manipulation, coercion, insider trading are all taking place without as much as a by your leave.

Typically Hindi movies end with a good versus evil sort of climax with good winning, so that people can go home happy. But in Guru, the definition of good itself has got distorted. The victory of good in the movie is that of Guru Bhai, felled by a stroke and now recovered addressing a stadium full of people about heady things like being big and bigger and daring and about how life has no means that matter, only ends that count. And the vulture like glitter that Guru bhai accumulates over the years tells only one tale – that money and the greed and grit to make more of it by fair means or foul, is the one thing that matters. Now , is this the ethic that we so value , that we want to nurture it by removing entertainment tax and making available cheap tickets, so that more people gravitate towards lucre and wealth….. in the manner that Guru Bhai amasses it? if that is consistent with our national ethos of Satyam Eva Jayate, then it is very disturbing indeed.

Organized Crime: The Looming Shadow in our lives

For several years, my mother and I had a joint bank account with her as the first account holder but with me doing the actual operating of the account. A few months ago, we shifted our rented accommodation and I went across to the bank to inform them of the changes. It was then that I discovered how the world is changing and how complicated even every day transactions are becoming.

The bank told me that as required by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, it was now was required to abide by Know Your Customer norms and have us a sheaf of forms and paper work to fill that would help the bank “know” us, though we had been its customers for years. While going through the forms, I discovered the knots and tangles. The bank required proof of identity and proof of address and my 77 old mothers had none. She wasn’t a tax payer, so no PAN Card. She didn’t drive so no drivers’ license. She doesn’t go abroad, so no passport. She doesn’t draw food grains from the Public Distribution System, so, no ration card.

Because she did vote, she had a Voter’s ID which was a proof of identity but then since we had just moved house, the address had changed. There was no hope of changing the address ever, as the other options offered by the bank as proof of address such as a phone bill or an electricity bill or a lease deed didn’t work for my mother. In spite of the bank staff knowing all this, they could not do much as they were limited by Reserve Bank of India mandated regulations and till date the address remains unchanged. It is then that as a common citizen that I sat down and cursed the Harshad Mehtas and Ketan Parekhs of the world whose actions have brought such misery into our lives.

Then the other day, my wife’s pre paid mobile connection blinked out. She could not make any calls but only receive them. A call to the customer care centre revealed that the telecom company had introduced KYC norms under a directive from the Home Ministry and once again the familiar bunch of papers had to be dug out and presented. Once again there was nothing to do but clench our teeth and curse the terrorists who use SIM cards to detonate bombs and use disposable mobiles to communicate among themselves and in the process make life so difficult for every one else. And you run into KYC in all kinds of unexpected situations. The other day I purchased a lap top and paid for it by credit card. Before processing it, the shop wanted to see proof of identity and address. The back ground – rising numbers of credit card frauds.

There was a time when all you needed to do to open a bank account was to walk into the bank and ask. The bank would typically ask for an introduction from an existing account holder and some times not even that. These days, you need to produce all these papers as proof and in a bewildering maze; they are all connected to each other. A telephone bill serves as a proof of address but to apply for a phone, you need some other proof of address, possibly a lease deed for the house you live in. Now it used to be that if you wanted to rent a house in Delhi, you contacted the neighborhood property dealer or scanned the newspaper classifieds. You met the house owner and both of you liked each other and the rent was acceptable, you moved in. But now the police recommend prior verification of tenants and their antecedents. Since often if some thing untoward happens and the tenants scoot, the police go after the house owners go after them, many do not wish to take chances.

Most of us grew up thinking and still think that the world of dons and Bhais and organized crime is some kind of a distant phenomena and the closest encounter we have with them is on the Bollywood screen and the television screen. That is unfortunately not the case! Every time we enter into some kind of a transaction – buy a car or a house or some other high value item or even some thing as simple as a gas or phone connection, we need to produce proof of who we are and where we live , making the simplest things of life cumbersome and complicated. And that is where we the common man has been felled by the dons of organized crime whom we never see but whose tentacles have pervaded the smallest details of our every day life.

A Hymn to Ageing

Lago raho Munnabhai has by now become a Bollywood icon, well known for its bubbly, peppy and digestible presentation of Gandhian philosophy to a generation that knows little of and about him. For this, it has been applauded with good reason. But the attention to the Gandhigiri spawned by the movie has eclipsed the attention and spotlight that the film provides to another much needed focus – our senior citizens.

The attention and dignity accorded to the elderly through out the movie is truly laudable and there is even a lively, foot tapping song in the celebration of ageing. In fact the entire sequence around which Sanjay Dutt resorts to Gandhigiri is to restore to a group of senior citizens their house which has been unscrupulously seized by a builder. The bunch of happy go lucky senior citizens presented in the film have their travails all right but through the film , they are presented , not as objects of pity or charity but as people with their own rights to the pursuit of happiness.

Never does Vidya Balan as the vivacious and chirpy radio jockey cum part time care taker of the house ever reflect that her responsibility is a chore or the residents a burden in even the slightest of ways. The song Bara Aaane says it all .. That age , properly understood and supported is never a burden to be borne but a contagious joy to be shared.

This idea needs to be shared with increasing frequency. More and more people are living to longer lives but not all are living joy filled and purposeful lives. In fact a very large number are living out, empty, directionless lives without any other purpose other than simple sustenance from day to day. Often their families and our society itself is increasingly learning to weigh people by the thickness of their wallets and the length of their bank statements.

We have not yet found engaging roles for the wealth of experience, insight and life skills that they carry and that they can transmit to us and our children. After all, though their bodies may be frail, the minds are still sharp. Although globally, bodies like UNESCO, identify and celebrate "intangible human heritage", in front of our very eyes, men and women bearing the scars as well as memories of such epochal events of our history like the Freedom Struggle and the Quit India Movement of 1942, the Second World War, the monumental exodus of the partition, the witnesses of the wars of 1962, 1965 and 1971 walk before us day in and day out as repositories o our heritage, neglected, unwanted and uncared for.

There is much talk and justifiably so of the fact that we who live in the present are but custodians of the earth , its resources and all that God has entrusted to us so that future generations may inherit and use it. We are called to be responsible stewards to ensure that all of this happens. Munnabhai reminds us that we have some way to go.

Women and Bollywood Masala

I enjoy watching Bollywood Masala movies now and then, not always the arty types which have overt and covert social and political messages embedded within them. But recently I did watch a typical Bollywood masala movie with songs, dances, action and all the works and found myself what picture of society it was painting – for after all, all media does after all say some thing. The story was of typical with a hero, a heroine – the hero, the son of a humble taxi driver and the heroine, the only daughter of an under world don. Then there is the brother of the heroine, a colorless man whose only identity is that of being the friend of another baddie and whose girl friend, the heroine initially is as the movie starts.

As usually happens, once when the heroine alone, some goons come and try and molesting her at which point of course, the hero steps in and rescues and the girl changes her affiliation in the only independent decision I observed he making in the entire movie. After that through out the whole two to three hour long movie, the girl was no more than a chess piece pawn between the father, father in law to be the husband to be and the brother, all of who are connected through underworld business ties and want to cement it through a marriage of convenience.

Although the whole of society is not criminal as the characters in this movie are, large segment of agrarian, and rural India are feudal and mainstream Bollywood movies of the pre multiplex era reflect that ethos and spirit. In fact, though I have not studied the phenomena seriously, I think that it is possible to distinguish between movies made in the multiplex era (the multiplex audience is more urbane, more accepting, if not also more forgiving) and those made before.

In the Masala movies, I just watched, made at least a decade and a half ago, the heroine is less than a play thing. The older men around her decide whom she will marry , when she will marry , what clothes she will wear , the kid of society he should come from , what kind of language he should speak her views on any thing are of little concern , they are of no concern at all. The few times, she tries to express any opinion, regarding her preferences in so far as marriage goes, she is bluntly told to shut up.

The setting of the movie is in a college and the heroine and he heroine are in college, in fact class mates. But it is not clear why they are in college at all, unless it is to give credibility to the fact that they are young. While the hero as the taxi driver’s son displays middle class ambitions of upward mobility, and it is talked about that he will eventually get a job in a tea estate after graduation, it is not clear at all as to why the girl should be in college at all, unless it is to train her up as some kind of a hostess for underworld parties. If Tagore’s “Where the Mind is without Fear……” is the ideal, there is a long way to go for the heroine of this movie and her mind. At another level, the Producer, the Director and the voluptuous heroine ensure that there are lots to” see” in terms of the actress being a pleasing eye candy.

But these images may be on their way out. As the revenue streams of he multiplexes dictate what Bollywood produces, the days of the cat calling front benchers may be waning. Not because men (or women) have changed but perhaps today’s generation may prefer the bold and the unconventional women of Salaam Namastee or KANK than simply dumb candy floss.