Criticism of the Vikas Swarup's Slumdog Millionaire book

This novel is a politically correct piece of work from an author who is a career diplomat. You will not see any bitter truths in this novel. When you are a diplomat you write this kind of novel. Ram mohammd thomas the name itself is insult to Lord Rama, but it is a great name if you want to look good by everyone. Putting Rama who was an Ideal man and had just one wife with Mohmmad who had 9 wives and his last exploit was a 9 year old Aiysha, is an insult to all hindus and hinduism. Rama's narrative Ramayana does not speak of religions as it is understood in the middle east and in the west. In Ramayana they talk about Dharma, which is one's duty in the world. How to be an ideal administrator, an ideal husband/wife, an ideal student and an ideal brother. That is Ramayana.

Mohmmad's koran is about seeing the world in "us and them" paradigm. "Us" are muslims and "them" is rest of the world. If you are "them" you deserve no respect. All kind of bad things can be done to people in the "them". I will not narrate them here. Please read about koran elsewhere.

Suffice it to say that you will not expect a career diplomat, who are usually taught to call an axe, with 20 other names but not an axe, to be able to tell the truth. I was disappointed by this novel. It is an attempt to fool people in to living in a wishywashy world.

On the other hand if you do not care about the truth, but rather live in fantasies, this novel is a great read.

PS: I have also written this review for at Amazon for the original book Q&A and the reprint slumdog millionaire.

Goodness does not make news

If you look at the news media, you will find that goodness makes no news. You wake up in the morning, you habitually go to yahoo front page, you are forced to read all the evil news early morning. And you feel bad. News media thrives on evil happenings in the world. A man wakes up, goes to temple, goes to work, goes to exercise, gives money to poor etc etc...it makes no news. A man who works on wall street as CEO of a wall street firm swindles the bank of millions. This makes great news. Usually the news is much worse than that.

What exactly is the point in reading all this news early morning. Do you really need to know a random story of incest in a foreign country. Perhaps not. Journalists have to keep their audiences hooked. In the age of ratings and revenues, it is very important for journalist to keep coming up with "great" stories all the time. How is it possible. In a real world, the real news content would be variable. It may take one page today or two pages tomorrow. But the news that you see on TV or radio is usually fixed in time. Same is true with news papers. Number of pages in a newspaper was usually fixed too. This makes you wonder, if the "news" really depends on the people who put the news out for you. Who needs this kind of news ?

Slumdog sucks !!!

What a terrible movie that only a Britisher could have made about India. It is gross and offending and a terrible piece of art that tries to shock the viewer so that the viewer never gets bored. Some of the scenes were totally unnecessary.

Trying to portray Muslims as the oppressed minority of India while totally ignoring the part played by the english people in helping fuel fanaticism among muslims so that they can be used to divide India back in 1947 and also used to fight soviets in 1980s, is an artistic attempt on hypocrisy. You will not see a filmmaker making a movie about intolerance in the so called religion of islam. Why ? because of all the noise that will be made in the muslim world. It is easy to show a hindu mob trying to kill "poor and oppressed" muslims because Hindus won't come after you and their is no fatwa in hindu religion.