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 Andrea reacts strongly to Amitabh Bachchan's blog piece about Slumdog Millionaire.
In the aftermath of the phenomenal success of Slumdog Millionaire, the criticism that emerged of the film’s portrayal of Mumbai was incredibly surprising. Amitabh Bachchan went so far as to say that the movie had not portrayed the ‘real’ Mumbai, to suggest that it was unfair to target the city in this way since an underbelly of poverty existed even in the west.
What exactly is the problem for Mr Bachchan and other critics? Is it that the movie does not portray the reality of Mumbai or that it portrays it all too accurately, embarrassing those who would like to present a picture of India as a developed country, moving ahead with the rest of the world, a future leader in the international arena.
India is surely developing at a phenomenal rate, by leaps and bounds. Mumbai in particular has more than its fair share of riches, you have only to visit the South Mumbai enclaves of Breach Candy or Malabar Hill to see this, or even the suburbs of Bandra and Juhu. But in turn, is this the ‘real’ Mumbai?
Can Mumbai ever be thought of as a single entity, the rich and the poor two parts of one whole, or are they competing truths, each battling for supremacy?
I have seen both sides of this city, from the very rich to those struggling just to survive and in a war I find Mr Bachchan’s comment about there also being poverty in the west as being insulting to the poor of India. Yes, there is poverty in Western countries but the suffering of the poor there is nothing compared to the suffering of the poor in India. In the West the poor at least have access to social security, sanitation and usually a decent roof over their heads. In Mumbai one has only to visit the slums or see the pavement dwellers to realise how much a part of Mumbai’s reality the poor really are.
But when have the rich or the famous of our city ever seen this reality with their own eyes? When do they ever interact with the poor except at traffic signals or charity events? It is terribly easy to pretend that poverty does not exist when you do not have to deal with it on a daily basis and it is also terribly dangerous. By denying the poor their right to be portrayed on screen, seeing it as an embarrassment or an insult, you are the denying the rights of those poor people to have an existence of their own, an existence that is worthy of any notice.
Do we really wish to sweep our poor under the carpet and portray the image that everything in India is hunky dory; we are all living as we do in the movies with big houses, fancy cars and designer wardrobes? Even if that was the only image of India to be portrayed within cinema, would anybody really believe it?
Gone are the days of the 1950s and 1960s when Bollywood films would portray the plight of the common man, his efforts to rise above and make something of himself in life, living in a chawl or basti. In a way I miss those days, I miss those films. While a movie portraying the lives of the poor or slum dwellers may no longer be saleable in India, or able to make a profit, those from outside who have the vision to do so should not be criticised simply because what appears onscreen is distasteful or embarrassing.
The sooner that we accept the reality of the poverty around us instead of trying to deny its existence, the sooner we stand a chance of changing that reality.
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