In 1988, a film centered on Mumbai’s slum-street-kids attracted international attention. It won quite a few awards at major film-festivals and even got an Oscar nomination as the best foreign film. That film was Hollywood-based director Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay. 20 years later, British director Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire portrayed the same world and did even better, winning international awards by the dozens.

Slumdog’s astounding success made me revisit Salaam Bombay- the first movie made about Mumbai’s slums featuring Indian actors and sporting Western directorial sensitivity! But I found that despite their similar canvases, the two films presented two vastly different pictures and that’s why they made an interesting comparison study.

Salaam Bombay – as real as it gets!

Salaam Bombay doesn’t have a coherent, linear plot. It is like a stomach-churning raw slice of life in Mumbai’s seedy streets and slums. The film tells the tale of Krishna- a ten-year old boy, who ends up coming to Mumbai when the circus where he had been working winds up. Coming to the city, Krishna gets a new name- ‘Chai-Paav’ (Tea-Bread)! It is a none-too-flattering sobriquet indicating his ill-paid job as an errand-boy working at a tea-stall. The world around him is harsh, strange and sordid. The boys around him are just like him- without a family, without a home and even without a proper name! They are known by strange nicknames like ‘Keeda’(Insect), Koyla (Coal) and ‘Panvati’ (Bad luck). When they get a chance, they do small part-time jobs but mostly they just while away their time smoking, gossiping, gambling and even robbing old pensioners. Theirs is a world bereft of innocence; a world where pimps, prostitutes and drug peddlers are everyday acquaintances; a world where only survival counts. There everything else is meaningless- everything including hopes, dreams and emotions! Will Krishna ever be able to escape from the clutches of the big bad city to return to his village? Or will he be gobbled up like million others, who lost their way while trying to make something of their lives?

Salaam Bombay is not just a depressing downward spiral of a street-kid’s life; it is much more than that.  It is a grim portrayal of the big city’s worst kept secrets- the slums, the red-light areas and the hopeless lives of their nameless, faceless residents. Raghubir Yadav as Krishna’s drug-addict friend ‘Chillum’, Nana Patekar as the pimp-cum-drug-peddler ‘Baba’ and Anita Kanwar as Baba’s prostitute-wife ‘Rekha’ deliver well-nuanced performances. But director Mira Nair’s real talent is evident in the way she extracts such natural and moving performances from her child- actors, most of whom were actually slum-kids! Shafiq Syed as Krishna, Hansa Vital as Baba and Rekha’s daughter- Manju and Sarfuddin Qureshi as ‘Koyla’ are simply unforgettable.

The story and screenplay were written by Mira Nair and Sooni Taraporevala by interacting with real slum-dwelling children. They made no effort to sugarcoat these real-life hard-luck stories with a feel-good twist. With its slow, unglamorous and painstakingly realistic portrayal Salaam Bombay classically followed the traditions of the art-house cinema and thus remained limited in its appeal.

Slumdog Millionaire- as unreal as it gets!

Well- skip this para if you are one of the zillion viewers who have seen Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner a trillion times! Otherwise here’s a quick recap. Based on Indian diplomat-turned-author Vikas Swarup’s novel ‘Q & A’, Slumdog Millionaire intriguingly begins with a multiple choice question. ‘Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? A) He cheated. B) He's lucky. C) He's a genius. D) It is written." Next we see Jamal being tortured in a police cell where the cops are trying find out how an uneducated tea-boy like him got all the right answers on the TV quiz show – ‘Who wants to be the millionaire?” Then a series of flashbacks reveals how each and every question and its answer was somehow connected with some traumatic event in Jamal’s colorful life that began in Mumbai’s slums, took him all across India and finally landed him in the contestant’s seat of the famous show.

Unbelievable, incredible, far-fetched, implausible- call it what you will, but one thing is sure. Slumdog Millionaire was one riveting tale where human endurance and fate colluded together to conjure a triumph of a lifetime! It took us through the dark corridors of poverty, crime, physical abuse and sibling rivalry but it didn’t end in darkness. Instead it offered light at the end of the tunnel. Here a determined individual aided by destiny, finally fulfilled his dreams against all odds!

With a plot where convenient coincidences, unbelievable characters and factual errors galore, it is easy to see why the film has also received its fair share of brickbats. But despite those valid criticisms, the film still scored on many counts. Startling documentary, racy crime thriller, spirited romantic saga and high voltage reality-show – Slumdog Millionaire operated in various guises. Its breakneck speed, roller-coaster narrative, tantalizing suspense, atmospheric music, spectacular camera-work, taut editing, utterly believable performances and cunningly manipulative direction – everything gelled together to keep the audience glued to the screen from start to finish.

What Danny Boyle managed to do in Slumdog was to create an amazing fusion of languages, cultures and film-genres in one enjoyable mainstream movie with universal appeal. What he pulled off was not easy. Juxtaposing the reality of Salaam Bombay on the fantasy of Amar Akbar Anthony, he managed to sell the Bollywood masala in Hollywood garb!

Is it real India?

Even though I am in complete agreement with critics and viewers finding out various glitches in the story and characterizations of Slumdog, there is one thing I don’t see eye to eye with them. A significant portion of Indian intelligentsia was aghast that Slumdog’s stark portrayal of Mumbai’s slums, stations, sewers and sickos presented India in poor light. They feltl films like Slumdog and Salaam Bombay focused only on the negatives plaguing India, without bothering to present its progress as an emerging economic powerhouse. It is not real India- they proclaimed! But is it so?

India- or for that matter any country is too diverse to be portrayed in totality in any one film or a documentary but that doesn’t mean that the poverty and misery portrayed in these films is unreal! The grand mansions, glitzy saris and glamorous marriage-functions portrayed as Indian culture in TV serials and Bollywood movies; for me, that is unreal! Sure I squirmed and felt wretched and ashamed many times while watching Slumdog and Salaam Bombay. Because these films made me realize that still there are so many people in my country, who are living in subhuman conditions and not enough is being done for that! Salaam Bombay had resulted in formation of ‘Salaam Baalak Trust’ to care for city’s street-kids. I had hoped that Slumdog will do better even in that respect but instead what we are seeing is a sickening, mad rush by impoverished parents to sell off slum-kid actors to the highest bidders! Truth is always more potent than fantasy- the real slum-world is much more darker than these two films ever portrayed!