Slumdog Millionaire, America in Bombay

"Slumdog Millionaire" is the American dream in the streets of Bombay. "I want the best of both worlds." The phrase is one of the Indians winning Academy Awards, AR Rahman, who also won two awards: Best Original Score and Best Song. The two worlds are India and the West, and their relationship has been fastened with "Slumdog Millionaire" director, screenwriter and producer are British. Most of the actors and the stage are purely Indian. The eight Oscars that won the film have given way to criticism of all signs and, in India, to the fever of the middle class, which considers the protagonists heroes because he understands his success as though money was English. Reflection of the Indian desire for recognition abroad.

"National pride has taken a different pose: 'India has finally done something on the world stage'. One wonders why the world stage we care so much. Each portrait of India is regarded with suspicion paranoid eyes. Anything with Indian flavor you get an award is immediately taken as a matter of national pride, "writes today one of many press commentators.

In India, "Slumdog Millionaire", for his argument that looks fantastic, easily passed the actual discourse and everyday life. It is a country full of children as Latika and Jamal, kids who work hard to survive and do not always succeed. The reality of the slums has been widely documented and obvious in any tourist trip, but paradoxically the Indian cinema, much more interested in portraying the growing luxury as a way of escapism, has excluded from the screens to their dirty players. In fact, the main criticism he has received the film in the country accused the film of "making pornography of poverty."

This criticism follows a nationalist reaction against foreign interference. It has been a constant in history, starting with the very Mahatma Gandhi, when he called a "report of inspector of sewers" a 1927 book published by the American Katherine Mayo and considered offensive against Indian culture. Most of the national scribes applauded and still is the reaction of Gandhi and want to justify that India is more than misery and that the West has to look to the country with poor or partial eyes.

On the one hand, the Indian elite had better take seriously the criticisms: 80 years have passed, and there are witnesses the slumdogs. But there is some truth to the Indians who accuse Westerners of focusing on poverty and ignore the many signs of change that India is experiencing in recent years. Traditionally, the visions of the West on this continent have been marked by four prejudice, according to Harold Isaac: first, an India of maharajas and exotic wizards, two, a mystical contemplative religious sadhus, thirdly, devotion and worship of gods of many heads, and, finally, India pathetic: children with swollen bellies who die abandoned in the streets.

All of them are still alive in the Western subconscious. India also add one fifth that has been incorporated successfully in "Slumdog Millionaire": the globalized country, with its customer care centers Western, beautiful class of Bombay, its luxury competition ranks first dreams and squander their wealth posh neighborhoods. India is the fifth and his confrontation with the traditional call it "India (urban middle class is easily stated in English) from Bharat (country name in Hindi: the lower classes and rural life of ancient customs and miserable).

In the slums, religious instability, latrines and garbage collectors, police torture, child trafficking and poverty of Bharat, the film comes to expensive cars, the mansions of the rich (not always in the hands of the Mafia) , designer clothes and elegant costumes of TV, ready to copy Western models. The rise of Jamal and Latika picaresque is a journey from Bharat to India, two blocks of different real-force-perhaps with a more fluid transitions and relationships in large cities than in rural areas.

But the real issue is that "Slumdog Millionaire" is cinema. No one would ever fly a serious analysis of America only with the vision that transmits Hollywood films. Why do it then with India, a country that is almost a continent?

To make possible the story of Jamal and Latika, the writer draws on classical topics in the West, a history marked by the American dream through hard work and a little luck the sky is the limit. "Here's a little of the real America, small. Money. " A dream that India has few exponents, because society is still far less permeable and is marked by almost unbridgeable gaps of caste, religion, language, social class or region. Very bizarre has to be the true story of Jamal, a poor Muslim from Bombay, to start working as a tour guide in Agra, serve tea in a call center or to speak with fluency in English for a game show. No problem for that is Hollywood.

"I want the best of both worlds." And "Slumdog Millionaire" is placed over the gap between India and Bharat, a crucial crossroads to bring a story understandable to Western viewers. Any movie has some artifact: unlike Bollywood, attempts to concentrate the Western canon over a story about two hours under a veneer of plausibility. The question is not so much that its protagonists are real, but to show that they could be: one that manages to connect Jamal from the slums of India with the contests.

Before the rain of Oscars, "Slumdog Millionaire" got a good collection in India, but without reaching the levels of the highest grossing U.S. film "Spiderman 3". After the ceremony, most politicians have been quick to send his congratulations to the team India and some regions have even allowed the tax-free distribution of the film "to create history in Indian cinema." The accusations of "pornography of poverty" has been diluted as a sugar and heroes of Slumdog have gone to the official with an ease impossible for any "sewer inspector's report."

That is, the film has been accepted because although it shows the misery of his message is benign suburbs and the hero manages to rise above all despite the difficulties. The American Dream underpins a bridge between India and Bharat is still in embryo in much of the country.

"An Indian of 45 years knows he is not rich. But if you know your child might be, it already acts as a motivation. I think we should judge ourselves by how much social mobility are able to provide. It really is an old Indian dream, but perhaps we're seeing now, "he says in an interview the head of the powerful Planning Commission of India, Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

In the real India proliferate television contests as a gateway to a better life, but the language barriers of caste or community or prevent the dream is as American Indian. Also, always has been repeated here that the Indians are very permeable to the rules and they are much to the example, as shown in the figure itself of Gandhi. The state, despite its gigantic bureaucracy (perhaps because of it) is unable to dispose of everyday problems and serious citizens, let alone to give welfare to its population. So in many places, people assume the role of the state and build parks, roads and cities.

Proof of this is the story of Dasrath Manjhi, the "symbol of resistance." The village of Manjhi was isolated in the mountains of impoverished Bihar (north), so we had to travel long distances to obtain food or water. One day the wife of Manjhi slipped while crossing a mountain. And then Manjhi decided enough was enough. He took a hammer and chisel and alone, with his own hands, started digging a road in the mountains.

He built a hut with the work to spend less time and did not stop even though people considered him crazy. For 22 years, Manjhi excavated solo and unaided to the people of his town could use the road through the mountains, 100 meters long and 10 wide.

Manjhi died of cancer in 2007 without state recognition, but with a broad appreciation of the local people and much of society: children of his people can finally study and careers that were once 50 miles now ten. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Manjhi has been the force of his example. This week it was learned that a group of villagers in Kaimur district in the same region, is building another road six miles from the mountains to find his young "bride".

This is just one example of how things work in the lives of most Indians. But for once, the two children, slum dwellers of the movie actors (characters Latika and Salim children's) have been lucky: the American dream advocated by "Slumdog Millionaire" really going to be met for them, because the Government has Mahararashtra promised to give to their families two apartments that will allow them to leave the slums where they live.

"Here it is so hot and so many mosquitoes. It takes me hours to fall asleep. "He said Azhar, the boy who plays the role of Selim, on his return from Hollywood to his shack. His father, ill with tuberculosis and unable to work, slapped him for refusing to grant an interview. And Rubina Ali (little Latika), now claims his mother, who had left home five years ago. Rubina and Azhar will have new home, but their lives now belong to the cinema and will be sleeping. Other slumdogs not so lucky.

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