Its Oscar time in Kerala. AR.Rahman, Gulzar and Rasul Pookutty have become the slum dogs of Oscar academy. Some media celebrated this as the Malayali achievement. Mr. AR Rahman claims himself as a Tamilian but the media in Kerala loves to portrait him as a Malayali. Rasul Pookutty is being celebrated everywhere in Kerala. The government is felicitating him for his achievement. Newspapers and television show him 24 hours a day as if this bearded fellow is a some kind of Hero.I don't know whether Rupert Murdoch is watching all these . How many media persons in India know that the Oscar Academy is sponsored by Twentieth Century Fox, Metro Goldwin Mayer, and Universal studios. The Oscar for the slum dog, the dullest work of AR Rahman, could have been to boost the revenue collections of the film. Its a marketing gimmick of hollywood film mafias.
We foolish Indians and Indian media never ever realise the truth.
Rupert Murdoch and his company has produced this film " Slum Dog Millionaire". Murdoch knows how to woo the viewers and boost the revenue collection. Mr.Murdoch produces the film and awards his film with Oscar through the academy controlled by him.
Being a neighbour of Rahman for the past 10 years, I pity him. He has many great works to his credit but Slum Dog is not a feather in his cap.
Those media people who talk big against Mr. Murdoch seems to join the celebration of Slum Dog... Its just a comedy show.
The slum kid actors would be back in the slums; its middle class elite actors and some of the crew members who managed to extract their pound of the publicity flesh would be back to the regular grind of hooking new directors, producers and financers. And given the way things happen, we’d be bidding them goodbye for a long time till they decide to dump girlfriends/boyfriends or decide to tie the knot. All news clippings and telecast clips related to Slumdog Millionaire shall be neatly tucked away in some closet as part of one’s portfolio. Thank god, it’s over. The Slumdog hype was no less than the `invest in stock markets b’coz that’s the new god’ hype that afflicted humanity till eight months ago.
Now we in India shall restart our search for some sort of Indian connection in everything and everyone who is successful (and manages to get a few square centimetres in print or a few minutes on TV). Some of us are scoffing at the Brits who are calling Slumdog a British film. We claim it as an Indian film becuase it was shot in Mumbai and had used some Indian people, both, off screen & on-screen. But then, isn’t failure an orphan and success more like a `bastard’, with so many fathers claiming the baby. By that yardstick many of our bollywood films shall qualify to be French, Swiss, Canadian or American films since they are shot in these countries and use local artists, technicians and crew! Worry not. None of these countries are going to lay claim to our films as theirs. Not in the near future at least as they do not suffer from the kind of low self esteem or lack of identity the way we Indians do.
You just have to scan the media carefully and you’d regularly come across some sort of Indian linkage being discovered in every nobel, pulitzer, booker prize winner, every scientist, entrepreneur, corporate honcho and nerd who achieves something. Yes, I agree that so far we have not claimed Dick Cheney as having a Chennai connection and thank heavens for that.
I have a list of WHYs for which I would like to have the answers. Just see if you can chip in as a fellow Indian.
>Why are we like this?
> Why do we have to revere only those things that have `western’ approval??
>Why do Indians manage to succeed only when they kick their motherland to embrace Amrika and Ingland???
> Why does a Ravi Shankar or Zakir Hussain have to wait till he wins a Grammy for us to buy their CDs and listen to them?
> Why does an Arundhati Roy or Arvind Adiga has to wait for a western literary award to be read here?
> Why wasn’t Vikas Swarup’s Q&A a sought after piece of literature before Slumdog ariived on the scene?
> Why do the disabled and marginalised Indians have to wait for some foreigner filmmaker (Smile Pinky & Born in Brothels) to document our own reality and make us think?
> Why do we tend to listen to Amartya Sen only after he wins a Nobel and not heed to his thoughts and views earlier?
> Why can’t we raise the standards of our own film, literary, academic, sports & artistic awards and create a benchmark for the rest of the world to follow? Afterall, India happens to have some of the best brains in the world…isn’t it!
> Why must we discourage and break the spirit of every Indian who wants to move forward in his own country and discreetly force him to seek solace outside our national borders? And having done that, why must we shamelessly try & reclaim him/her once (s)he has made it in life??
I can go on & on about it and so can you but have you ever thought what kind of a rising `superpower’ we are which needs stamps of approval and recognition from white skinned western communities all the time. Would we have been equally proud of Slumdog Millionaire had it won all the awards (the same ones that it has won at Oscars) at an award function hosted by Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, South American or even Japanese film bodies. Simply not! Because right from birth we have been conditioned as someone with `inferior’ qualities compared to those inhabiting Europe, North America & Australia. We have been subtly conditioned not to believe in ourselves and always look for third party approvals to know ourselves. Perhaps it is our education system which was designed by the colonial masters to produce clerks and nothing else. And how many clerks you know have original ideas, thought processes and can function without third party approvals? That’s a tough one, I guess. But the worst part is that we’re still continuing with the very same education system. While we may keep fooling ourselves with all this talk of being the next USA (read superpower), the fact remains that we can not and shall never be a superpower with the kind of self respect we have as a nation.
Let me articulate it this way- WE, IN INDIA DO NOT RESPECT & RECOGNISE TALENT, WE RECOGNISE RECOGNITION FROM THOSE WE REGRET NOT BEING!!
Bahut Na-insaafi hai…Time to say Goodbye till we find our next slumdog moment of pride.
Now we in India shall restart our search for some sort of Indian connection in everything and everyone who is successful (and manages to get a few square centimetres in print or a few minutes on TV). Some of us are scoffing at the Brits who are calling Slumdog a British film. We claim it as an Indian film becuase it was shot in Mumbai and had used some Indian people, both, off screen & on-screen. But then, isn’t failure an orphan and success more like a `bastard’, with so many fathers claiming the baby. By that yardstick many of our bollywood films shall qualify to be French, Swiss, Canadian or American films since they are shot in these countries and use local artists, technicians and crew! Worry not. None of these countries are going to lay claim to our films as theirs. Not in the near future at least as they do not suffer from the kind of low self esteem or lack of identity the way we Indians do.
You just have to scan the media carefully and you’d regularly come across some sort of Indian linkage being discovered in every nobel, pulitzer, booker prize winner, every scientist, entrepreneur, corporate honcho and nerd who achieves something. Yes, I agree that so far we have not claimed Dick Cheney as having a Chennai connection and thank heavens for that.
I have a list of WHYs for which I would like to have the answers. Just see if you can chip in as a fellow Indian.
>Why are we like this?
> Why do we have to revere only those things that have `western’ approval??
>Why do Indians manage to succeed only when they kick their motherland to embrace Amrika and Ingland???
> Why does a Ravi Shankar or Zakir Hussain have to wait till he wins a Grammy for us to buy their CDs and listen to them?
> Why does an Arundhati Roy or Arvind Adiga has to wait for a western literary award to be read here?
> Why wasn’t Vikas Swarup’s Q&A a sought after piece of literature before Slumdog ariived on the scene?
> Why do the disabled and marginalised Indians have to wait for some foreigner filmmaker (Smile Pinky & Born in Brothels) to document our own reality and make us think?
> Why do we tend to listen to Amartya Sen only after he wins a Nobel and not heed to his thoughts and views earlier?
> Why can’t we raise the standards of our own film, literary, academic, sports & artistic awards and create a benchmark for the rest of the world to follow? Afterall, India happens to have some of the best brains in the world…isn’t it!
> Why must we discourage and break the spirit of every Indian who wants to move forward in his own country and discreetly force him to seek solace outside our national borders? And having done that, why must we shamelessly try & reclaim him/her once (s)he has made it in life??
I can go on & on about it and so can you but have you ever thought what kind of a rising `superpower’ we are which needs stamps of approval and recognition from white skinned western communities all the time. Would we have been equally proud of Slumdog Millionaire had it won all the awards (the same ones that it has won at Oscars) at an award function hosted by Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, South American or even Japanese film bodies. Simply not! Because right from birth we have been conditioned as someone with `inferior’ qualities compared to those inhabiting Europe, North America & Australia. We have been subtly conditioned not to believe in ourselves and always look for third party approvals to know ourselves. Perhaps it is our education system which was designed by the colonial masters to produce clerks and nothing else. And how many clerks you know have original ideas, thought processes and can function without third party approvals? That’s a tough one, I guess. But the worst part is that we’re still continuing with the very same education system. While we may keep fooling ourselves with all this talk of being the next USA (read superpower), the fact remains that we can not and shall never be a superpower with the kind of self respect we have as a nation.
Let me articulate it this way- WE, IN INDIA DO NOT RESPECT & RECOGNISE TALENT, WE RECOGNISE RECOGNITION FROM THOSE WE REGRET NOT BEING!!
Bahut Na-insaafi hai…Time to say Goodbye till we find our next slumdog moment of pride.
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