Mumbai Train

March 13, 2009

Inside the ragged pantry cart on a train to Mumbai, a train cook, Pratik, sprinkles cardamom over an enormous wok of sizzling onions and is thinking of Hollywood film reels. 'The movie is not real, it is not like India is today,’ he say's before wiping his brow with his sleeve. 'No one from the chai wallahs to the First Class AC passengers on the train can really say what the real India is today except that it is not like what Slumdog Millionaire makes it to be’

Gaurav, an Indian-American, sees things differently. He is seated in the Second Class AC cart and recently moved back to Delhi to assume a management position for a development NGO. He believes the movie is an exact representation of modern India that people like Pratik just cannot see yet. 'In India and in other developing countries most people are used to struggling everyday just to get by. They do not have time to reflect and piece together a narrative of their life. What is so great about Slumdog Millionaire is that here you have this nobody, this chai wallah, and the narrative of his life is pieced together to show it to have meaning in the end.’

He argues these narratives are not only instrumental for developing ones individual identity but are also important for shaping a country’s identity as well. ‘The stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy and represent what the future may hold,’ say’s Gaurav. ‘Hollywood has been making movies and music of African-Americans making it out of the inner-city for years and look at America now, they've elected a black community organizer as president.’

What bothers Pratik, the train’s cook about Slumdog Millionaire more than anything is that the movie was made by the West and is marketed around the world as portraying how India is today. "I don't care that the movie is fantasy," say’s Pratik. "I like fairytale. We have Bollywood here which is one big fairytale, but it is our fairytale. What I don't like is to create a fairytale about us and have other people believe its true. What if you call Microsoft for help with your computer and I pick up the telephone in Mumbai and say, 'Hello this is Pratik in Seattle, how may I help you?' If I am living in Mumbai, it's a lie, even if you in America cannot tell the difference."

And this is what Pratik believes Hollywood is saying with Slumdog Millionaire. It sells India as America, and for Pratik the concern is that Hollywood is exporting a fairytale of what America wants India to be, a nation of upward mobility where dreamers and entrepreneurs are rewarded with millions of rupees.

Today in many places all over India there are no shortage of dreamers and entrepreneurs trying to make those millions. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs have been successful in setting up outsourcing factories, generic pharmaceutical industries and software firms that have created great wealth for a few individuals. The reality however, is that most places in India still have no drinking water, electricity, sewage system and public transportation.

The question remians: With Slumdog Millionaire, is Hollywood creating its own caricatures and manufacturing its own fantasy of the new India? Is it leaving behind the majority of Indians like Pratik and making it more difficult for them to formulate an identity of their own India that does not mirror what Hollywood is portraying?

Inside the train, the meals, now ready, are being hurried to the passengers before they turn cold. Gaurav, our Indian-American friend seated in his AC cart, watches the workers dash and jump hurdles trying not to spill the thirty different dishes of which to choose from. Sikhs, Jains and Bengalis sit across from him and remove the foil from their trays as cardamom, coriander and cumin fill the air. Gaurav looks around at the varied faces and their meals and shakes his head. “India is too complicated, there is too much diversity and chaos for it to be transformed by call centers and software firms. India will just be, like its always been, a world of its own, quite happy and content in doing its own maddening dance.”