I have never been a great believer of resurrections, (forgive me oh Lord!) I never had the strength of character to visualise someone going through one, let alone experience one for myself. But things change.
For a change I woke up bright and early today, wanting to be a part of the "Slumdog hysteria" that has gripped all and sundry around me. I was dragged out of a stupor last night and made to sit through, what I thought would be the sheer torture of 3 hours of Abhishek Baba, or in less confusing terminology, I was dragged to a late night showing of "Delhi 6", and apart from the fact that I surprisingly enjoyed the experience, I was awed to notice that many had come there to show their solidarity to the great genius of a man called "Rahman", since he scored the absolutely magnificent music for this movie too. The topic of choice at the Pop-corn stand and the loo was whether Rahman would really complete this dream run with the icing on his cake of success,,
Come 9.30 am today,,he did!
Mumbai stands vindicated, we stand vindicated, and contrary to what many are saying, this film does not expose anything that isn't already there, it shows that we have a never-say-die spirit, which is our main survival tool. It is not about cinematic genius alone, it is also for timing and destiny. There in the audience was Mickey Rourke too, who has made a brilliant comeback from near-ignonimity with his film this year, then there were the children, sorry,, the"slum-dogs" from our streets, rubbing shoulders with Legends of the Screen, there was Rahman drowning every voice of criticism with his virtuoso-like performance,,What is this, if not a dream come true?
This was a dream, and a great one at that, the one thing that I carried home with me after watching "Slumdog Millionaire" was the spirit of a city, a nation of people who truly, deep somewhere in their hearts, do believe that things, ultimately, finally, will go right, that we will come up Aces, we are like an entire country of the proverbial tortoises, pipping many a Hare to the finishing-line.
I have been away from this for almost 50 days,,I have been going through some tough times, health-wise (thanks Lambu-ji, for calling up, and sorry I wasn't able to talk much that day, there were reasons), and today's events made me decide to give things one more shot, one more try. I am going to see if things can be sorted out
"Jai-Ho",,,,,,, the lines in the song really are good. They make you want to believe, "Slumdog" wants you to believe.
