Tarun J Tejpal – The Missionary Position

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The Missionary Position
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Tarun J Tejpal - We all love sentimental trash,
especially if it can masquerade as something
artistic and meaningful. Often it needn't even do
that in an act of self-affirmation we invest it
with these virtues. Slumdog Millionaire is one
more representation of India as the white man
sees it, not as we do. It's a five-hundred-year
old tradition. Look carefully, the triumphant
picture in the papers could be the enlightened
missionary with the tribal boys. The tradition
is strong we've always been cosy with the
representations. It's worthwhile to remember we
did not tell an Indian story and force the world
to recognise it. They told us an Indian story and
forced us to applaud it.
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A bit like Thomas Babington Macaulay, who
declared from behind the musketry of the colonial
conqueror that a "single shelf of a good European
library was worth the whole native literature of
India and Arabia". Looking up a long barrel with
gunpowder at its end, we quietly acquiesced.
Quietly turned our backs on hundreds of
classical and medieval texts, including the great
epics, the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads,
the medical, ethical, linguistic, erotic and
political treatises of dozens of pathbreaking
thinkers, the plays of Kalidasa, the deeply
humanist and philosophic poetry of the sufi and
bhakti singers, and the luminous memoirs of
emperors and commoners. And having acquiesced in
our classification by another ill-informed at
that proceeded to spend the next nearly two
hundred years hunting for approval.
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The argument does not proceed from narrowness,
from a bristling us and them. Artistic domain,
and license, is boundless even if the art is
only commerce. Everyone has the right to tell
anyone's story, in whichever way they choose. But
if the story is specious and yet is taken for a
master tale, it's reason to wonder at the state
of cultural discourse. From a distance, through
the refractions of many media lenses, I like
Danny Boyle. He exudes great energy and humility.
Qualities that make astonishing things possible,
qualities that are on display in his
rollercoaster film set in Mumbai, his Concorde
ride to showbiz stardom. Yet, from a distance,
through the rapturous din of critics and viewers,
I wonder at the film. Setting aside AR Rahman's
ever-enchanting music and the visceral brilliance
of the little kids, I try and understand why a
reasonably entertaining, mildly inconsistent,
mildly incoherent, mildly sloppy in its casting,
mildly sloppy on its facts film, with a banal
narrative trajectory, and dodgy politics at its
heart, becomes such a phenomenon.
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One feels awe not for the film, but for its
miraculous journey. Clearly, in an increasingly
low-brow ocean of publicity and hype, the idea of
true excellence is a drowned raft. Not shorn of
the hype, but because of it, to an Indian, the
film ought to disappoint. It tells me nothing
that I don't already know and it tells me things
I know to be not true. Unlike Amitabh Bachchan I
have no problems with the film focusing on
India's abject poverty. That focus is salutary,
and crying out for further exploration. My
problem is the opposite that it trivialises it.
Uses its excreta and chopped limbs to tell a
dubious story that leaves the viewer not
disturbed but cheerfully smug. You leave the seat
exhilarated, not in pain.
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The film tells a very big lie that India's poor
have a happy shot at leaping out of their misery
into affluence and joy. One day you can be in the
crap heap diving into excreta and the next
running down a slum girl who may have failed to
make school but seems to have managed to walk
through Vogue's offices on her way to teenage.
With a stunning lack of plausibility you see the
slum child Jamaal grow into a refined public
schoolboy who must surely be eating cucumber
sandwiches for lunch. India's wannabe wealthy
billionaires among them would slice their
fingers to boast such a sophisticated son. For
that accent alone, they would throw in their toes
too. As many cooing admirers have remarked, the
director is on a lickety-split run, pacing his
film like a Kobe Bryant fast-break in an NBA
finals. Throw, catch, feint, weave, leap, dunk
turn and start running again. Aw! Gee! The camera
is shaking, the story is sprinting there is no
way anyone can tell if a few chapters have fallen
out, several links of logic lost.
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You have to be grateful Jamal only grows up to be
Dev Patel. Given the absence of any need to
explain the miraculous transformation, he could
well have become Brad Pitt or Prince Charles. To
further celebrate the carnival of implausibility,
Master Dev acts with the cool flatness of the
cucumber sandwich (that he surely must be eating)
no neuroses of the slums tarnishing his
soul. For those celebrating the authenticity of
the film, here's a secret the makers clearly had
no interest in verisimilitude. It's been the
rough approach of artists working the India
material for the last hundred years. It arises
from a clear understanding of "audience". The
awgee mobs filling theatres around the world, and
paying in dollars or some such muscular currency,
cannot tell the difference between Hindi and
Hindu or the vast distance between Mumbai and
Agra. Much like the American tourists at the Taj
Mahal, who cannot distinguish between an
unlettered, ignorant urchin and a licensed
guide.
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The awgee mobs which include vast swathes of
awgee India will not be held back by the
remarkable metamorphosis of Hindi-speaking slum
children into English-speaking teenagers
smoothly accomplished whilst riding the roofs of
trains, without the intervention of any forms of
schooling. Nor will they wonder by what divine
principle some of the desperately destitute speak
Hindi and others English. In the happy world of
air-conditioning and popcorn and fountain Pepsi
the poor can be made to do whatever we wish.
Dance, sing, love, win quiz contests, murder with
a Webley Scott, die in a tub full of currency
notes. What is the meaning of being rich if you
cannot make the poor do whatever you wish? What
is the meaning of being Hollywood if you cannot
make India whatever you wish? Aptly then, the
awgee army will not be detained by the
representation of the police either. It knows
Mumbai's police have vanquished murder, rape,
riot, theft and arson.
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All its working on now is nabbing crooked quiz
contestants and torturing them through the night
with electrical shocks to evoke the correct
answer. If the art direction is right squalid
files and furniture and the cop is fat enough,
there is no reason for further doubt. It also
knows behind the fatness and toughness the police
hide the soul of Mother Teresa. Once the boy who
eats cool cucumber sandwiches begins to talk, his
heart will melt, and the empathy flows like
faeces in the slums. THE AWGEE sociologists also
know that the grand hosts of India's grandest
shows all come from the slums. Amitabh Bachchan,
Shah Rukh Khan the only two who've ever hosted
the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire? And, of course, now Anil Kapoor in
this fast-break film who chooses to host it in
English, because the slum boy has lost his Hindi
as he grew up (just as Kapoor himself did the
upward mobility from the slums is a veritable
avalanche!).
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Awgee and awgee also know that these grand hosts
play sinister games, like planting wrong answers
and summarily handing over contestants to the fat
and tough police (for electrocution and
empathy). The media tells us the film is about
hope. And hope, as we all know, is greater than
inconsistency, inaccuracy, implausibility, dodgy
politics, and party pooper critics. And since the
film is about the triumph of impossible hope, it
is impossibly greater than all of the above. QED.
And yes, of course it is also a fantasy, a
fairytale. And since, for these poor sods, hope
too is a fantasy, it all coheres, hangs together
beautifully. The awgee readers of awgee media
know that this is the crucial difference between
people like Satyajit Ray, Mira Nair and the
Slumdog millionaires. Their films were about
poverty and street children this one's about
fantastic hope. In their heart of hearts, the
awgee readers know the poor are desperately in
need of hope.
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They also know that hope is all they can and
will give them. And let's be honest false or
true, fantastic hope is still hope. The media
knows something even more fundamental. Never
criticise the celebrity whose interview keeps
your shop alive. The road to poverty is paved
with robust criticism. The world of
entertainment is studded with shining pyramids of
implausibility. Each one's true reward is a
singing cash register. But great awards, fools
argue, must go to the fragile hutments of truth
and excellence. The wise, on the other hand, know
the wages at the Oscars better. They know they
have a rare gift (as in the film) for turning
ordinary shit into tasty chocolate and peanut
butter.
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It's Written by Tarun J Tejpal. Some rides are so
giddy you can't see the truth, says Tarun J
Tejpal. According to Tarun Tejpal sorrow must
not be cultivated it is a poor lifestyle
choice. Tarun Tejpal is a journalist, publisher,
and novelist. In a 26-year career, Tarun Tejpal
has been an editor with the India Today and the
Indian Express groups, and the managing editor of
Outlook, Indias premier newsmagazine. In March
2000, he started Tehelka, a news organisation
that has earned a global reputation for its
aggressive public interest journalism. Also you
can check Tarun J Tejpal.