Slumdog

Teaching English and the Theory of Knowledge at the Antwerp International School in Antwerp, Belgium a couple of years ago, the movie Slumdog Millionaire came out and became a heated topic at the school for a variety of reasons.

The student body has a near-majority of wealthy Indian students, mostly hailing from Mumbai, and they come and go to Mumbai several times a year, often along with their parents who are all high-level players and owners in the diamond industry of cutting and trading.

When Slumdog came out, it was met with highly mixed reviews from the students. Some of them loved it as a movie about India had broke into the social consciousness of Belgium and the West, while others were extremely defensive about the movie, saying that "Mumbai and/or India is not like that!" To which others would respond in two ways, in agreement, or astonishment.

Apparently, as I will soon find out, you have to drive past kilometers of slums to get from the airport to the center. In other words, there is no way you could not see this part of Mumbai if you fly into it. I was reminded of living in Italy when President Bush came to visit Rome. Being chums with Berlisconi at the time, there was a massive, and I mean massive protest of over one million angry Italians lining the streets of Rome to protest the motorcade. What happened was rather spectacular. The Italian government finagled it so that Bush's motorcade was redirected and did not pass a single protest manifestation! Bush did not see a thing.

Similar to Forester's A Passage to India, Slumdog was made by a "white" guy. Like the more recent movie, Hangover 2, there has been a backlash of negative imaging by an outsider, India in the former, Bangkok/Thailand in the latter.

I personally thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but I will be interested to see what my reaction will be to it as I will soon be making that journey from the airport to Mumbai center.

I will let you know.

In the meantime, this video gives a good montage of the movie.

Slumdog Millionaire's Jai Ho