Eat Pray & Love

Just the other day, I was very strongly recommended to watch this movie. I am generally not a very cruel critic of any movie, and my comments are not directed only at this movie, but a very general observation.

Eat is Italy, pray is India and love is Bali. For those of you have not seen the movie. The shot where in Liz arrives in India is anything but deplorable. She is in a dingy rickety ambassador taxi, the driver is in full throttle with no sense of driving etiquettes, there are children on the street who are narrowly missed, there is a cow in the middle, a biker who almost knocks over. All this is familiar to us, of-course. But is that it?!

What’s itching me here is the shallow imagination of an American who probably is having a blind eye to any sort of developed canvas in a country like India. I will not fault him, he probably does not know where it is on the globe. When you look out from a well, often the world seems to be a lot smaller. And then you got to use your limited competence to imagine, how a world would be.

Let me go back to how Kolkata looked in the movie. I am not saying all this is not present in India. There are places which will resemble exactly like how they showed. But then, the scene depicts what India is through the below average screenplay. Italy – for ‘eat’ part of Liz’s journey was a treat to the eye. Why should the meaning of India be poverty? There was a lot of scope for the author / director – whoever was the one who decided the sequence to showcase a changing landscape. From the airport to the ashram. That would have been a lot more realistic.

Why I am voicing it out here is not cos I am craving for any acknowledgement from the western society on how India is changing. But as an Indian, I would urge people who are here to take photographs, make documentaries, make movies – open your eyes and tell the truth. India is spread across spectrums, be in nature, be it wealth. With over 24 Hollywood movies pending permission to be filmed in India, I hope someone is coming here for a more realistic setting and not an ego massage for the American public on how much ahead they are.

Since we are talking about the movie, it’s an absolute treat to the eye – the Italian landscape, the food and the Bali sceneries. It’s a treat to the eye as long as you can avoid looking at Julia.