'Barah Aana' (2008), based on Aravind Adiga's debut novel 'The White Tiger', shortlisted for Man Booker 2008 and directed by Raja Menon, exposes the hypocrisy of Indian's upper and middle class, and its atrocities committed against poor people. Featuring Naseeruddin Shah, Tannishtha Chaterjee, Violante Placido Vijay Raz, Benjamin Gilani and Barry John film has been a subject of intense debate in the Western press as India emerges to become a super power.
New York Times says: India may be changing at a disorienting pace, but one thing remains stubbornly the same: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to behave as though some humans were born to serve and others to be served.
“Indians are perhaps the world’s most undemocratic people, living in the world’s largest and most plural democracy,” Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, two well-known scholars of Indian culture, wrote in a recent book, “The Indians: Portrait of a People.”
The subject, usually overlooked, has been raised by a provocative new film depicting India from a servant’s-eye view. The movie, “Barah Aana,” by Raja Menon, tells the story of three migrants to Mumbai from the ailing villages of northern India. They work as a chauffeur, a waiter and a security guard, sending most of their earnings home. They are heroes in their villages, but in Mumbai they are invisible men, enduring the callousness that comes with being an accessory to other people’s lives.
Synopsis:
A gripping drama about a group of friends who become entangled in a crime that unexpectedly changes their lives. It revolves around a diverse assortment of characters representative of Bombay today--a hustling, bustling megalopolis filled with exploding wealth, opportunities, and dreams. The plot has many layers to it, but a central intrigue drives it forward, with elements of humour, action, and suspense along the way. The story is very much moored in urban India but the themes it touches upon are universal
Yet millions of maids, drivers, and servants slave for rich Indians every day without anyone knowing what they think about their dreadful living conditions and unkind bosses.
Britain's Daily Telegraph says: Now a new film and a prize-winning novel have changed things - brutally laying bare what the poor feel about the rich, but never dare to say out loud.
Raja Menon's film Barah Aana ("Short-Changed") and Aravind Adiga's novel White Tiger are searing indictments of how affluent Indians behave towards their domestic staff.
They offer, for the first time, a provocative insight into how the "have-nots" perceive the new India - a fast-changing and rich society where wealth is flaunted and where there is no place for them.
Mr Adiga shows a wealthy couple setting up Balram, their illiterate driver from an impoverished village, to take the rap for a crime the wife commits.
Drunk after a night out, she insists on driving. When she hits and kills a beggar child who runs across the road, the family compel Balram to sign a confession saying that he was behind the wheel.