‘Slumdog Millionaire’… why should India rejoice?

The print and electronic media in India seem to have gone into frenzy about the ‘success’ of everything Slumdog Millionaire at the Oscars. Some of them prefer to take this as a victory for Indian cinema.

How we just love to bask in reflected glory and try to believe that its our own!

But lets not forget, it is a British-American film with a story line set in Mumbai, as a result they could not help but involve Indian actors (including Indian-origin Britishers) and shoot it in India. So, it’s a non-Indian film which happened to have an all-Indian cast.

We shoot entire films abroad nowadays, especially in the US, but they are not called Hollywood films!.

Lets keep the reason for rejoicing in India, very straight – Slumdog Millionaire, a British American film has won awards, including the Oscars and has brought a reason to be happy for the six children who acted in it, they are the real stars of the film and recognition to Reesul and A. R Rehman. Though the music for which Rehman got his two Oscars for is not even of his average quality, forget his sublime and exhilarating stuff..

It’s a different matter that it took a British-American film to recognize A.R Rahman’s genius- maybe a case of white man’s burden…

I don’t think Slumdog Millionaire was ‘oscar stuff’. It is not an extraordinary film. There is no doubt on Slumdog’s quality as a film nor on the ability of its director Danny Boyle. But there were better films in the competition- better storyline, better treatment etc… but as the saying goes….every dog has its day…. this time it was Slumdog……..