Apologia Christi

The slumdog and the Millionaire

That should have been the real title for the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Various sites around the world reported that the boy who played the brother of the main character in the movie that won 8 Oscars gained little to nothing from his movie adventure. Even worse, what happened to the movie’s Jamal Malik in his early youth when an angry mob decimates his muslim neighbourhood killing his mother, actually more or less happened to the little actor in real life. Azharuddin Ismail was rudely woken up by a police officer wielding a bamboo stick. Ten minutes later his house was bulldozed to pieces together with all the dwellings in the same shanty town.

Azharuddin and the girl that plays the young Latika, are the only two actors in the movie who actually do live in a slum. And they will probably continue to do so. Not this slum, because this one is gone. It is not that the makers of the movie completely left the two kids to themselves. There is a fund waiting for them when they grow up. Some other financial arrangements have been made as well, but apparently not enough to leave the slums behind and live in a proper apartment.

Slumdogs will remain slumdogs and millionaires get richer. It is written in the stars. Your fate has been determined – especially so when you live in India. Slumdogs become millionaires in movies; not in real-life. When you are a slumdog your house will be flattened once a year after which you will start anew. A morbid illustration of reincarnation and its support act karma.

But when you are a millionaire you live a slightly more ‘linear’ life. Everything gets bigger, more and better. Money begets money – you put your money to work while you don’t feel like to slug. We conveniently forget that this money has to come from somewhere. Almost every palace in this world is built on the foundations of blood, sweat and tears of those that have had to give their lives for it but never dwelt there.

But it is not entirey fair to only frown upon the movie makers’ lack of commitment, who themselves enjoy more lasting fruits of the movie’s success (Freida Pinto is the new face of L’Oreal). Aren’t we in the West enjoying the luxury of our lifestyle? A lifestyle we take for granted? Let’s face it, that lifestyle is our palace in part built on a dirty history of colonial exploitation, protectionism and unfair trade treaties.

The bottom-line though is that we are all imprisoned behind bars of structures that we cannot bend with any amount of benevolent charity or any self-conscious guilt complex. We are all in the same boat – a boat that is actually sinking. The poor are closer to the hole and they get wet first, the rich gather at the stern trying to hold on to what they have. Sure enough the stern seems to be lifting up out of the water only to go down eventually and disappear with a deep sigh into the abyss of selfishness.

Whatever is going to bring change will have to be more substantial and more thorough-going than 10 minutes of fame at a stage in Hollywood, more than a benevolent act of a movie maker and definitely more than feelings of pity after we, the consumers of entertainment, have watched an illegal copy of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Until that change comes it will remain: THE SLUMDOG AND THE MILLIONAIRE.