Fly like paper, get high like planes

Like India, it is a heady mix of color and big dreams and the dusty, filthy heart-breaking things one must do to achieve them. A simple enough story, that could happen in any country- Of a young boy who wants to win a pot of money, and hopes that his love will watch him on live television and come back to him.

It could be any boy, in any country. But like India, the film is the color of dusty streets and dhobi ghat, of clothes of many colors that fly with the wind like street children playing cricket on a runway. He takes off from the slums, running from righteous fire and a dying mother, selling trinkets on trains and having the time of his life.

Every tourist spot has people trying to make a fast buck, and the boy is no different. But Jamal is Indian, and his story wraps an emperor from a few centuries ago into a luxury hotel with a swimming pool, ties it all up into an elaborate, child-like scam, and presents it to you with an endearing smile. You could smile and give him a hundred bucks for the act, or you could rage at the inefficiency of the system that forces street children to steal the tires of a car.

A rare perspective- the 'foreign' viewpoint is obvious in the juxtaposition that runs throughout the film- insecticide sprayed at the railway stations as a boy runs through the poisonous mist to find the girl he left behind, and the people too poor to afford a television who crowd on the pavement to watch one man win a million. India runs through the story, as much a character to reckon with as Javedbhai and Manan.

The film pulses with unrelenting power in a city that really never sleeps, in a country that can ride on the dreams of one man and put bullets into a dozen others on its journey to the top. Unapologetic for its inadequacies, unmindful of the heartbreak it takes to make a dream happen - Like India, the film goes deeper than I can put into words, and every frame made me ache for home even as it transported me there. And I'm still high from Slumdog Millionaire.