Slumdog millionaire

Amitabh Bachchan has criticized Slum Dog Millionaire. He says India is not all about slums and dogs. There is more to the country.
In his words, ""If SM (Slumdog Millionaire) projects India as [a] Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

I have not seen the movie and definitely cant comment on it but there is a lobby of people here who seem offended. Well, when the theme of the story is about a boy in Dharavi, Dharavi is what you will see in the movie. Why would the director be bothered about what portrait of India is being shown to the world? This is not a documentary on India and hopefully westerners see that. The director's goal was to rake in big moolah and man, has he done that!

But an interesting observation here. When the West takes out its telescope and zooms in on the East, what it expects to see is countries full of slums and poor people struggling hard for their next meal. Stories about poverty sell. This is a fact. They have this "Frog in the well" mentality and in a way they are reassuring themselves that their life is blessed.

But, we have to also understand that the countries in the Asian continent had to see so many invasions and wars. Something from which the western world has been relatively shielded. We have so many internal problems that threaten our very being. We are still finding our foothold in the world arena. So, poverty will definitely be a part of our countries as is with other "developed" nations. But what the West should also recognize is that being a poor country doesnt really take away from the beauty and the culture that each of these countries possess. There is nobody superior here and coming from a particular country or having a certain skin color doesnt really bestow upon you the happiness or the "blessings" that we all strive for. The truth is that We are all just a species named "homo sapiens" lucky enough to get favourable conditions to survive on a small planet that we call the "Earth" in a big galaxy that again, we have named the "Milky Way". What is beyond that, nobody knows and nobody understands.

Hmmm...I think my train of thoughts is moving faster than what I am writing. Started with a movie and ended with something else! Been a long and tiring day. Time to sign off.