Slumdog Millionaire changes the Indian society

Mumbai. The popularity of British movie Slumdog Millionaire, widely confused to be an Indian movie by the innocent Indians, is taking shape of a craze and fad now. After the movie won 8 Academy Awards, widely known as Oscar awards, every Indian has become a fan and follower of Slumdog. Indian slum dogs, also frowned upon as stray dogs till yesterday, are getting respect and love never seen before in the Indian society.

People were seen cleaning and feeding slum dogs in many parts of the country. Many people queued up to buy or adopt these slum dogs, which inspired a few unemployed investment bankers to open a trading house for slum dogs. These bankers turned dog-sellers changed the names of most of the slum dogs into English ones before putting a price tag on them.

“I have just bought a female dog named Lassie, she is so cute even with the fleas on her left ear. My friends living in London are now jealous of me and are asking me to send them pups of Lassie, whenever they are born. I feel so important.” Sourav Roy, a resident of Colaba, told Faking News.

The movie has also given a chance to the forgotten MNS leader Raj Thackeray to come back to mainline politics. He claimed that his pet dogs James and Bond were actually slum dogs, and if he was a millionaire today, it was all due to those canine friends, and not corruption, as was the case with leaders from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Raj Thackeray also advised Indian companies to start promoting slum dogs instead of foreign breeds of dogs in their marketing campaigns. His polite request, denial of which would have attracted polite protests from his supporters, was quickly accepted by Mobile telephony company Vodafone, which changed its trademark Pug with a Slumdog.

Many experts believed that Supreme Court’s decision to stay the Bombay High Court verdict allowing municipal authorities in Maharashtra to kill stray dogs was also inspired by the success of the movie. Faking News tried to contact Chief Justice to get an opinion but we were threatened with the possibility of getting sued for contempt of court, so we dropped the idea and effort.

The sudden fascination of Indians with slum dogs has also created ripples in the online world, with netizens debating the causes and effects of it. While the effects were visible everywhere in the society, the causes remained elusive. While some people maintained that Movies, along with Cricket and Politics, were the greatest influencers on the Indian psyche, some people blamed it on the slavish mentality of the Indians.

“It shouldn’t be a matter of surprise or research. Indian society is known to acknowledge the merits of anything desi (domestic) only after firangs (foreigners) have acknowledged the same. It happened with Swami Vivekanand, it happened with Mahatma Gandhi, and now it’s happening with Slumdog.” Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, a famous sociologist, commented about the trend on his blog.

Whatever be the reason, the saying “every dog has its day” has come alive with the success of Slumdog Millionaire.