Slumdog Millionaire

When people ask me about Mumbai, one question that comes up a lot is: Is it like in Slumdog Millionaire? Apparently, everyone and their mother has seen the recent Oscar winner which seems to have firmly superseded Mira Nair’s 1984 Salaam Bombay! as the main cultural reference point for Mumbai in the popular imagination of Westerners. Slumdog Millionaire was of course shot in Mumbai and tells the story of a Mumbai slum dweller, based on a novel that was written by someone who wasn’t born in Mumbai but is at least Indian and has hopefully spent some time in Mumbai (he’s now the Indian Deputy High Commissioner to South Africa). But to what extent it actually shows the real Mumbai is a thorny question. My first instinct is to say – not at all. It couldn’t, possibly.

For one, the real Mumbai is not art-designed and cinematically enhanced. The colors are not this vibrant and intense, the light is not this warm and golden, and whatever lense the cinematographer used to cut through the polluted haze – I want one to add to my sunglasses! The real Mumbai, particularly in the slums, is more muted, has more shades of gray and black and grime, and the pollution is such that the sky never really looks as blue as it does in the movie. The screen shot above is one of the few that looks unaltered and gives a true impression. (And as an aside, if I ever hear anyone complain again about bad air in LA, I’m going to punch them on the nose).

Then there’s the smell, the all-encompassing, hovering stench of a city where millions of people don’t have access to proper sanitation and where open sewage runs between slum dwellings – a smell that is characteristic not just of Mumbai but any city with this problem, and something that you’re spared when you watch the movie. Watching the movie is a sanitized, non-visceral, comfortable, consumer-friendly experience – everything that the real Mumbai isn’t.

And then there’s the story itself, which every Mumbaikar will point out to you “could never happen here”. Ah, where to start. I remember seeing the movie for the first time in LA, dragging Ritesh to the theater on opening weekend with a giddy anticipation based on nothing but the promising combination of “Danny Boyle” and “Mumbai”. I was excited, and I was bowled away. I loved it, everything about it. The energy, the verve, the intensity, the way it grips you from the first frame and doesn’t let go, whirling you along an emotional rollercoaster to the final, very satisfying resolution. Of course, the camerawork is superb, the editing is stellar, the children are cute, the tunes are catchy, a likeable underdog overcomes all obstacles fighting for his one true love – what’s not to like? Ritesh, however, who is of a more sober nature and less susceptible to getting carried away over pretty images and a good yarn, left the theater uneasy and a little put off. He didn’t appreciate the poverty-porn depiction of slum life, felt the film was glossing over unfathomable social realities, was too unrealistic and even exploitative of the people it presented.

It’s a fairy tale, obviously, and that’s what a lot of people outside of Mumbai respond to. In the US, it is considered and marketed as a feel-good movie because it makes people living reasonably comfortable lives feel better about all the other people who don’t – if one orphaned slum kid can make it in life thanks to nothing but his own resourcefulness and a good heart, there’s hope for everyone out there and the world really isn’t that bad a place after all, right? Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches story. However, when you’re actually in Mumbai, with the realities of the city all around you, you can’t buy into the movie that easily. Which may be why the movie didn’t do so well in India. The fairy tale is just too painfully untrue.



We saw the movie for the second time when we were in Mumbai , with Ritesh’s cousin and her husband, who were both underwhelmed and a little annoyed with it. They assured us that no slum dweller would be able to win this show, or even be allowed to win – the police would not mess around interrogating him but put him away or have him disappear, period. Also, as a minor point, they felt it was totally incredible that after a win that was supposedly witnessed by millions countrywide, Jamal Malik could sit comfortably and undisturbed in the city’s major train station waiting for Latika and not be mobbed by throngs of people wanting a share of his cash. They agreed that the only way he could live after that win would be by leaving the country. And with regard to the depictions of slum life, they felt, like Ritesh did, that the movie glorified it, and they didn’t quite see the point of watching a movie about something this unpleasant that already intrudes on their life on a daily basis (there is a slum right next to their house). On some level, I think, from the beginning, Ritesh saw the movie as a Mumbaikar and I saw it as an outsider, clueless and oblivious.

I saw the movie again upon leaving Mumbai, on the Virgin Atlantic flight to London. I watched it twice in a row – the minute the closing credits were done, I started over, letting the images wash over me in a numb haze while trying to figure out how the film related to what I had just experienced in this city, and how I felt about it all. And to be honest, I cried. The ridiculousness of it all was now cringe-inducing. Here’s this cute 18 year old British TV actor with his thinly disguised English accent pretending to be an uneducated chai wallah getting everything he wants in a city that really doesn’t do any favors and that, on some days, I was convinced, must have its own circle in hell. A city, though, in which I now have family, a city that I will return to not just to visit but to live. A city that my parents wouldn’t be able to handle and will never visit me in but a city that will be my home and that has already started becoming part of the fabric of my life, for better or for worse. I can’t say how I feel about any of it. But the movie still gets to me. It still pulls at my heartstrings and it still triggers the feelings and images it stirred up first, images of Mumbai as a vibrant, exciting, energetic place where anything is possible. A place that’s as beautiful as it is horrid, as loving as it is cruel, a place that's constantly changing and re-inventing itself and that doesn't turn anyone away, offering some sort of home to millions of refugees from all over the country, and the world.

The Mumbai of Slumdog Millionaire may not be the real Mumbai, but it’s a Mumbai that lodges itself in your imagination and stays there, an alternative reality that is a lot more valid and a lot less escapist than anything Bollywood might churn out. And as such, it adds a layer to the experience of the city that I wouldn't miss for anything - a layer of poetic perception of the kind that helps you live, at least if you're a clueless and oblivious outsider.