India , Such a beautiful country !! Winter , summer and spring all come and go leaving all of us amazed at the extremes which exist here ,
then there are times when the nature can not get better , cool breeze , mellow sun , a farmer ploughing his field , birds chirping , country women
involved with their house hold work , kids playing with Grand pas and Grannys , Industriaists working hard for better brand name, professionals wroking hard
to acheive better results , Showing our military strength in 26th January parade , scientists representing India in outer space , Indian men and women making
a significant proportion of intellectual/rich society , Indian writer getting a Booker and a movie about India getting an Oscar .
Can it get any better ?
I was reading Times Of India " deep Focus " a few days back when I stumbled on an article Real Bharat , Reel India. This article was about the evolution of Indian Film Industry and media since independence.
In 1947 , Father Of the Nation Mr. Mohan Das Karam chand Gandhi said that the real India lives in villages. After the success of Slum Dog Millionaire and The White Tiger , most of us have started thinking that real India never went away , it was still there during our journey from a newly independent nation to a developing country.
As the article says thanking Arvind Adiga , Simon Beaufoy and Dany Boyle that with this new book and this amazing movie real India is back in focus , I could not stop myself from disagreeing to the fact that the picturization and description of the India in these two instances of amazing art ,is a presentation of Real India, i would say it is merely a view point rather than the true picture of the Real India at present.
I would like to quote Mr . Narendra Jadhav , vice chancellore of Pune University and author of the Dalit family story "Outcaste : A memoir". He said "I don't think Adiga and Boyle have shown the real India. There is a silent revolution happening in India, with millions of people who have lived on the margins for centuries, now experiencing positive changes in their life. Adiga's The White Tiger and Slumdog Millionaire show the bad side of this change. That's also a reality but it's not the real India."
I agree that the India living in the slums and the India of the driver turned entreprenure of The White Tiger is a bitter truth . But it is not the complete picture.
Lets disuss the movie first.
Indian film industry has seen many trends and its not that these slums are shown for the first time , many a number of times we have seen our Hero , singing , dancing , playing role of an ideal son , a friend or a lover in these slums , where he grows up to fight with the bad of the society. But the picturization was never so real as we have seen in the Slum Dog Mllionaire. Based on the page-turning novel Q & A by diplomat Vikas Swarup , This movie is one of the commendable efforts by any western director , and as I have seen the movie I can say with confidence that Danny Boyle has done a great job.
As Shashi Tharoor said in his artile Vikas Swarup's novel is about an orphan boy called Ram Mohammed Thomas who is about to win a TV quiz show based on Kaun Banega Crorepati and is arrested on suspicion of having got that far by cheating. He's rescued by a female lawyer who gets him to tell his life story and explain how he, an uneducated slum kid, knew the answers to such difficult questions. Ram then tells a number of stories, each of which explains how he knew what he happened to know. Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy has changed pretty much all of Swarup's stories, introduced a romantic element and even re-baptised the hero (who is now Jamal Malik). But he has retained the novel's structure and premise, and Danny Boyle has brought its spirit alive in a way that i believe even Swarup would appreciate.
And It is amazing to know that the movie is filmed in the slums of Dharavi with small hand held cameras, so the on screen life in slums is pretty much same as the real lives there. I an sure Danny and Simon would have touched India to get to know it to some extent , but even though they managed to know it fairly well in this particular field , this is not all of India , and for sure not the complete real India . As said in some article that I read , this part of the society is like a gangreen affected leg of mother India that we have , i am not sure if forgotten , chose to, ignore , would be a bad word to say , rather it got neglected for so many socio - political reasons that an ordinary Indian like me is not aware of , what our policy makers are doing about it , I am not sure though.
Real India at the time of Independence was a new born baby on the globe which was already sucked up by many foreigners, so had a lot of poverty , misery and disorganization . And ofcourse droughts and floods took over it one by one many times . That time almost whole of India lived in villages and with beginning of Industrialization they started moving to urbanisation. Slums might have presented the real India more accurately at that time but I cant be sure about that either .
At present Real India ,I believe, constitutes of people who have grown up to be sucessful in various aspects of life and retained the essence of Indian Culture. Real India now is a mixture of scenes of successful professionals , Industrialists , scientists ,writers , farmers etc etc . and "Slum" is just a photograph in the whole album.
Now coming to the India shown by Arvind Adiga's Booker Prize winner "The white Tiger" . I think this is an even narower represntation of India than that of Danny BOyle's creation. This picture of real India is merely a way as an illiterate driver sees it. I shall not get into the reveiew of the book here that I would be discussing some other time . But if you have read the book you would realize that the driver has not tried to bring out the good of the society rather the whole emphasis is on the bad from his father dying in the government hospital to the bribe to the minister's sidekick and other election related events.
So saying that The White Tiger shows real India , if not absurd , is not the complete truth.
Drawing a conclusion from all this :
I can say that a good work of art of any type a movie or a book does get a reward , and sure they got Oscar and Booker. And somehow their presentation of India is also a realty , but thats not a complete picture. I find it analogous with the situation where when you go to see your probable " to be bride" for the first time and only her hand is shown to you to decide whether you want to get married to her or not. Thats as incomplete and irrational as the depiction of Real India in these two fine creations.
I would close with a few lines from a poem by former president of India Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam
"See there the Earth shining in glory
how come it got its light?"
A sweet and soft reply comes:
"It is not the mere light,
It is the light of knowledge,
It is the light of service,
It is the light of peace."
1 comment:
Yeah i pretty much agree with this. Thougha mark of equality is always considered by western countries, atleast in their press releases, the ambiguity of their approach towards India is still existent. Accolade of a book with no literature content and a movie again with no competition to the high budget better picturised movies with a pize of greatest honour drives one towards the western mentality of "Indians can never grow". This fact is supported by abhorrent novels such as the white tiger and are unfortunately written by Indians. Mr.Adiga in an interview after the booker said that he is doing more and more interviews to gain publicity. and the foolish Indians express their happiness over the fact that an India won the booker. the guy deserves a public assault of brutal orders. I think am being unrealistic but it would be the best way to show the west that we do not care for their recognition when the national flag cannot billow with pride. Its the time when west should acknowledge India or................
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