Slumdog Ahoy!

Ok, so the toast of the Season seems to be the surprise superhit Slumdog Millionaire and I have totally gone ga-ga over the movie, so how could I possibly NOT write anything about it on my blog! 

So it all started a few weeks back when I hadn't seen the flick and a few overseas colleagues of mine had and one of them said that its probably going to be the most widely watched movie about India at present, so it shouldn't have shown certain things the way they were (read grim reality), as he was having to answer quite a few odd questions at work about India and if things really were that way out here. 

Well, being a big fan of the book the movie is based on, I had to jump into the fray defending something I had no busines defending then! The movie was said to have portrayed the real grimy world of India, slums, poverty, shitholes and jumping into them et al, but THAT is India as well I believe, the jhuggis lining the 'posh' complexes, filled with BPLs who help me run my house so I can keep raising my NetWorth..the people who don't let me throw away nethin saying they will either use it or sell it be it food, bottles,  or even mere 'disposable' curd containers! The movie, I had heard, showed their way of life, albeit even darker sometimes but then Darkness sells, Death & loss reaps higher returns at the BO..maybe thats why. But yes, for people abroad facing weird questions, they could come back to India for a change?!

And then I watched the movie. Boy, WHATTA movie and WHATTAN Acting!  With the lead Dev Patel doing full justice to his role, with the rest supporting perfectly in harmony, especially the subtly crafty Anil Kapoor as the Quiz show host, this movie rocks!

Ok, so SM IS a Masala movie but one thats made with its heart in the right place..I don't understand the moviemaking technicalities except maybe a lil bit of cinematography, editing and aptness of background scores, and this movie scored well on those angles, so for me, this is IT! Some people are blasting the movie for exposing India as full of squalor, as 'poverty porn' (Did this guy see somethin we didnt!!), Someone Big said it wrongly depicts "India as a third world dirty underbelly and that such places abound in developed nations too" Of Course! BUT..then this movie is not about a developed nation, or for that matter, about a developing one either...it is a movie about 1 young man, his struggle, his survival, his dreams and his will or sheer desperation to make it come true. Now Jamal just happens to be a slumdweller or at least start as one, so the movie had to show poverty, dejection, loss and the slums the way they are and trust me, as someone who did her summers doing mosquito repellant research in SEC A,B,C, I have seen some of the worst slums in Mumbai, Dharavi et al...and it IS this and worse..so it may be realism, it may be a tad too in-your-face, it may be a lil 'eeyoooh' in places but a fine film it still is...and with Rahman's mindblowing music added on, its magic, in cinemascope :). 

And for this I hope it gets ALL the awards its been nominated for...esp AR, who's the current Ruler of Indian film music.

On the terror attack that shook Mumbai on 26/11/08

It is going to be difficult to forget that fateful evening. Though we are miles away in Gurgaon, some of our closest family members are in Mumbai and were there on the night of 26-Nov-2008. I remember there was an important cricket match that day and we almost switched off our T.V once that got over, only to switch it back on after a phone call from my hubby's brother. "Did you watch the T.V?", he asked, "there's been some firing at VT Station & Taj hotel". We quickly surfed the channels and found to our utter shock the extent of the attack and fearingly so, the audacity. 10 terrorists had crossed the High Seas under the noses of our Coastal security, taken 3 v.significant places hostage and were wreaking havoc with their huge arms & ammunition supply, killing people, killing police, and just creating mindless bloodshed. The Taj, Oberoi & Trident hotels, C.S.T station and a private house cum religious hub of Israeli Jews. There was the Mumbai police, NSG Commandoes and the Navy special teams combating these fanatics and the episode finally ended with over 250 killed and scores injured. All our near and dear ones are safe but the attack has shaken me too much. Mumbai has often fallen victim to such villains in the past, maybe because it the one of the most succesful cities of the country,  most flamboyant, most colorful and most famous. Many a time we have had bomb blasts and several hundred victims but this time somehow it is more spine chilling.

This time its been even bolder, even faster and even more well planned and so fine an execution that you can't help shudder in awe. But enough of 'Bharat ke dil pe Hamla' and enough of testing the 'Mumbai spirit', don't you think? Of course we shall bounce back, of course we shall punish the villains of this particular episode but what of the next time and the next?! High time for the leaders to stop talking and DO something. Heaven knows what I will fling at the TV the next time I see our ex Hon. HM or any other politician come in their impeccable & unruffled attire and mouth empty rhetoric..with due respect to their followers webwide fans in the group, don't most of them remind you of some foolishly regressive & adamantly dumb boss/colleague/prof?! There are far too many like them around to miss the prototype!

People are praying for strength to tide over these times, I think we should pray for guts to combat these times head-on and take it to victory. Enough of vote bank politics, enough of appeasing this class and that community, enough of so-called 'human rights advocates' popping up whenever we have someone solid apprehended - boss, even the ones being massacred is humans, be it innocent victims or the police, how about treating THEM as one? Enough of "tehkikaat jaari hai, hum apni karyawaahi kar rahe hain, aap jald hi parinaam dekhenge"..KAB dekhenge? America had one 9/11 and look at the way they answered back. God knows how many more such 9/11s we need to move our Govt. to absolute, unflinching, indiscriminate action against the terrorists(though I am not known as an advocate of violence as such, this is a matter of OUR Human Rights after all!). 

This time its too close home for me. Just half a km away was where the villains disembarked,across a narrow sea looms the burning Oberoi, the sky behind greyed with the flames of the Taj, the way to work strewn with signs of the violence, the lively station waiting room, our halting place many a time all through my childhood, which must have been filled with so many people with dreams of going home, perhaps to enjoy a vacation, now a bloodbathed, empty hall...all this ....its too close for me to not just be moved but downright scared. God bless us all! Take care...