10th January 2009, I was in an A/C chair car of a train that is heading towards my home town.
I settled in the seat, the one which I reserved. There is something peculiar about travelling in trains. It instantly gives you the sneak peek into the much talked about the rising affluence of Indian middle class. Now there is a catch with this, by rising affluence I mean there is richness in everything, I mean what is once accessible only to rich and powerful is now available to masses. So rising affluence means there are more people everywhere.
The A/C compartment in which I was travelling is no exception. There are people everywhere; I mean there are more people without reservation in the compartment than there are people with reservation. Chaos was the word!
A few minutes into the journey, things settled down. Now is the time for please-look-at-me-I have-a-mobile clad people to show off their pseudo affluence to others, so there are a few dudes who pulled out a mobile and the whole atmosphere was filled out with a tweeting sound everywhere. There was one such person beside me.
Now, this guy is a real dude. He pulled out a laptop and much to his expectations the girl opposite dropped her jaw and bit the back of her palm. His eyes twinkled as the lappie made the standard windows login sound. After all the hush-hush about the machine settled, the media player beamed out a few noises, it’s a movie; a new one too.
I was in no mood to watch a movie. Primarily there were questions about personal choices; I was not too happy to watch a movie and secondarily there were question of conscience- the movie seemed pirated. But I peeked into the screen and believe me my friends, I engulfed by the movie for next hundred twenty minutes.
When I started watching, I saw a few kids playing cricket on the edge of a runway and police chasing them; an awesome score of music from behind. It went on O saya…. The song was great to say the least; it instilled in you the spirit of freedom.
A few minutes into the movie, I realized that a teenage guy was being interrogated by policemen. Apparently, he was suspected of a fraud in a show and earned around 10 million rupees. As the police interrogate Jamal Malik looking at the video of the show so far, we see the movie through the eyes of Jamal. How he answered each of the question from his life experiences to become a millionaire.
I laughed my heart out looking at how Jamal, as a kid, gets the autograph of Amitabh; the experience which helped him answers the very first question. The gripping screenplay completely engrossed me here as I enjoyed the childhood of Jamal and his elder brother Salim. The movie then changed the gear from subtle humor to thought provoking and sensitive mood as Jamal explained how communal riots took his mother’s life to teach him that lord Rama carries a bow and arrow in his right arm, the answer to the next question. Also, at this juncture Jamal sowed the seeds for his future love, he introduced Latika here.
The train stopped, I looked out of the window for a moment only to see scores of beggars, most of them children, flocking the windows of the train. They were begging alms showing much younger people in their arms. I could instantly relate to Jamal’s narration of how he knew the answer to the question about the author of a song "darshan do ghanshaym". The movie gave intricate details about how a begging racket works.
The sympathies and disgust that the communal riots instilled in me slowly metamorphosed to anger as Jamal told the inspector how he had to lose Latika and almost his eyes to know the answer for the next question.
Just as I thought the movie got serious, Jamal and Salim grew up and Jamal took me through how he tasted the dollars as he and his brother Salim cheated foreigners as fake guides at the Taj Mahal. And Jamal answers the question on American Dollar to become a millionaire.
I looked around, there was a young couple talking to each other with just eyes. I looked around only to see humans paired up with their loved ones; they are talking, smiling, conversing, worrying but all of them had one thing in common- love. Its love; love in its purest form devoid of all materialistic desire.
This is what you feel when teenage Jamal, along with his elder brother Salim, returns to Mumbai just in search of Latika. Here Jamal is exposed to another evil of the Indian society-flesh trade. Jamal comes to know that young Latika was forced into prostitution. Your blood boils.
My anger amplified when someone from the corner of the seat made an angry gesture to reduce the volume, he had a logic in his demand. But it was not the time for logic, the movie engrosses you so much that instigates revenge in you.
Your anger subsides when Salim pulls out a colt 45 revolver and kills the racketeer. Salim would later be befriended by a local don and becomes a small don himself. Jamal loses Latika again, this time to his own brother. He then leads the life of an assistant at a call center.
The remaining movie thrives upon how Jamal gets on to the show just to make sure that Latika sees and comes to him. To know how this happens, you will have to see the movie.
Dev Patil, Tanay Chheda, Ayush Khedkar- the three characters who played Jamal at various stages were simply great. The director got the best out of them, I liked the kid Jamal (Ayush) the most; innocent, sweet and very expressive. The screen play was so gripping that your mood changes along with the movie for each scene, you feel what Jamal feels as he narrates his story. The music, though I could not figure out much, sounded great during a few songs like O saya and Ringa…Ringa.
Overall, Slumdog millionaire is the first great thing to happen to me this new year, I am really happy that I watched this movie and it is beyond any doubt that it is one of the best movies I’d ever seen. It is a must watch for everyone.
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