The India Expert

The British movie  set in  Mumbai, SlumDog Millionaire, won four Golden Globe awards yesterday including Best Film and Best Director.

The music for  the movie was composed by the “Mozart of Madras”,  A.R. Rahman, who is now a Muslim but was born to Hindu parents and named A.S. Dileep Kumar until his conversion to Islam.  Rahman has been a top composer in Bollywood for almost two decades.  He was noticed internationally for the music of Oscar-nominated Lagaan in 2001 and for the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, Bombay Dreams.

Unfortunately, the folks hosting the Globes mispronounced Rehman’s name, twice (two different ways). Better have the Oscar team practice their pronunciation.  And here is a Western interview of Rahman, shortly before he won the Globe.  (If you want to be an expert on India read carefully to note how the interviewer may be culturally insensitive.)

I was intrigued by The Telegraph’s characterization of SlumDog as  the first movie of the Obama era. At least Obama knows how to pronounce “Pakistan” correctly (the first American President in my memory not to say Pack-istan  but Pahk-istan).

Other trivia: The lead character in the movie was names Ram Mohammed Thomas (a combination of a hindu, muslim and christian names) by the author of the book. But the director preferred a muslim name for the star.

Posted on January 13th, 2009 by Gunjan

California-based management consultant Gunjan Bagla runs Amritt, a consulting firm helping American companies to succeed in India. He is author of Business in 21st Century India: How to Profit Today from Tomorrow’s Most Exciting Market (Hachette Book Group, July 2008).