The Slumdog Millionaire Route to Luxury

Radha Chadha — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:33:00 GMT

I cringed in my chair. I had come to watch a movie which marked a moment of glory for India – it had swept the Golden Globes the night before – and here was an unadulterated tour of India’s shame. It didn’t help either to be sitting in a theatre in Aspen, Colorado – where real dollar millionaires are a dime a dozen – with a small intimate audience of a hundred odd mostly Americans.

But here’s the surprise. The audience burst into spontaneous applause at the end of the movie – people clapped spellbound as the lights came on. The bunch in the elevator going out discussed the movie in extremely positive terms, and one of them claimed it was the best movie she had seen ever. And as we headed home in the crisp winter night we heard the gushing praise of two strapping young men walking ahead of us – Frida was their new hot babe, they commented on her beauty, her age, and how she had grown up in Mumbai. They had done their research.

So what is it about Slumdog Millionaire that has the world in raptures? If all movies are placed broadly on a spectrum of artsy to masala, this one’s unabashedly on the masala end. It is very well made, the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner - it grabs you with the opening shot and you only resurface when it ends. But if you have been raised on a constant dose of Bollywood films, you have to wonder if this is serious Golden Globe and Oscar material? Why then, so is Om Shanti Om and umpteen other tautly strung pot boilers.

And that’s exactly the point. What is ordinary for us is extraordinary for the world. This audience is more familiar with the pock-marked lunar landscape than they are with the ins and outs of the slum maze of Dharavi, and it holds far more fascination than the moon (so last century). The mesmerizing soft power of Bollywood which has kept a billion Indians enthralled for decades is touching the rest of the world (in a forceful manner) for the first time with Slumdog – the movie is in English, made by an Englishman, but its cinematic logic is pure Bollywood. While Monsoon Wedding and Bend it Like Beckham and The Namesake did their bit to stir global audiences, unlike them Slumdog is the first full frontal masala assault with not even a wink to artsy-dom.

Which brings me back to my cringing at the no-escape poverty tourism and the twisted fate of two orphans preyed upon by every clichéd evil in the book – maimed for begging, forced underage prostitution, Hindu-Muslim riots, to name just a few. I have asked myself a dozen times: does the movie really show India in a bad light? Why cringe at what is essentially the truth for the vast majority of India? And the more I think about it, the more I realize that what makes me cringe is not so much the spotlight on India’s misery, but Danny Boyle shattering my unconscious Teflon coat to India’s misery, and putting it on display in an unlikely smorgasbord for all the world to see.

But simultaneously what he puts out there for all to see is how the indomitable spirit of India is built, chiseled by poverty and subjugation. If Jamal can go from slumdog to millionaire – and do it with grace and integrity in the midst of every conceivable human depravity – then this is the spirit of a nation to admire.

And in case you are wondering where on earth is the connection to luxury in all this, let me explain. In my book, I argue that poverty and subjugation, and the indomitable spirit that comes with it, are the essential first steps in the spread of the cult of luxury – they build a dream, a desire for the good things for life, a voracious hunger to make good that has to be fed at the first flush of money.

Just ask any newly moneyed Russian, Chinese or Indian.

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Luxury Cult : Bollywood

The Slumdog Millionaire Route to Luxury