The Beauty in Slumdog Millionaire

During one of our few casual interactions, one of my colleague who hails from China declared that he was planning on watching Slumdog Millionaire over the weekend, which triggered my curiosity to learn his reaction to the movie. Not that I feel it is the best movie (even though it bagged quite a lot of awards) nor does the movie represent any of the bright or good side of the India, but somehow the fact that it is gaining so much popularity makes me happy.

The discussion of the movie started with few common questions about India and the “Who wants to be the Millionaire” show aired in the movie. I believe he was trying to learn about life in India. After some discussion on the movie came his puzzling question. A bit surprised at first, I quickly gathered the question to be very obvious coming from a bachelor. The answer to his question was a very simple Yes/No, but have you been in a situation when a simple yes/ no demands a lot of evaluation before you can take your stand. Well, that was my situation when he asked, "Do you think the girl in the movie was beautiful per Indian standard?"

If I answer yes, I thought I would not be able to introduce the famous beauties of India, Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra alike to this bachelor friend of mine. Part of my heart wanted to boast about the Indian beauties, the fact that they have been winning so many beauty pageants lately sure was something to be showcased here. But my mind didn't agree with me. Why should I categorize the actress as not beautiful when she was representing the common Indian girl and I believe that is what was in the mind of the movie director. In my opinion, Frieda Pinto (the actress in the movie) is one of many intelligent looking girls who might not be categorized as beautiful by technical standards but are quite appealing and easy on eyes to many!

So how did I answer to his question, I said "No". Yeah I wanted to show off the famous Indian beauties and I quickly did an image search for few popular Indian actresses to change his perspective towards Indian beauty. We talked on this topic for few more minutes and then he kind of concluded that, because the actress was representing the slum area of India the director did not choose a beautiful girl to play the part.

Honestly, I was not planning on giving him that idea, nor did I put it that way in words. And yes I was a bit thrown away by the conclusion myself. But for him the average women are not beautiful was the point to take away.

I kept re-evaluating our discussion for quite some time to figure out how I could have changed the conclusion only to realize that may be he hoped or already knew that No was the answer to his question.