Though I have travelled in India often and extensively, I’ve not been since the economic liberalisation that has resulted in 71% of Indians having mobile phone subscriptions, as opposed to the 5% that had them ten years ago. This startling statistic comes from Sunil Khilnani’s programme essay for David Hare’s new National Theatre play, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” based on the book by Katherine Boo. Prof. Khilnani also says that the number of Indians living in poverty has gone from about half the population to “less than a third.”
I suppose I’ve been to India at least half a dozen times, maybe more. Even from my first visit, in the early 1980s, I realised that the editorial view of the newspaper I worked for at the time, The Observer, was simply a case of unreflective, genuflective left-wing crassness, as it was perfectly evident even to the tyro traveller that there was a strong urban middle-class, with the same ambitions, level of education and tastes as most of my friends, family and acquaintances in Britain or America. An old Observer hand took me aside when I returned, and said that there was a formula for avoiding being castigated by editorial conference (and the sort of readers who wrote letters to the paper). He said that, if you were going to write anything positive about food, travel or art in India without mentioning that, of course, these goods and pleasures were not available to most Indians, who live in desperate poverty, you must start every piece by writing, “There are two Indias, one of obvious, heart-rending poverty, and another middle-class India…” Having paid obeisance to the party line, you could then write whatever it was you actually wanted to say.
Such posturing condescension did not come easily to me, but it was impossible to avoid resorting to this tactic if you wanted your words to be published in what was then the greatest of Sunday newspapers.
I don’t think there’s any parallel with getting a play about India commissioned and performed by the National Theatre, but “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” doesn’t quite dispense with the still-prevalent liberal pieties, though it stems from Katherine Boo’s excellent New Yorker pieces in which she “embedded” herself in the slum of Annawadi, placed so uncomfortably next to Mumbai airport that you cannot miss it, even from the taxi taking you to your beautiful rooms in the old part of the Taj Hotel. The title comes from a hoarding advertising hard-wearing kitchen tiles – an extraordinary luxury for slum-dwellers building an extension to their house.
The wonderfully drilled all-Indian cast, directed by Artistic-Director-in-Waiting of the National, Rufus Norris, all make the most of the Bollywood cheeky charm of the young men and the sharp humour of the powerful older women who are (naturally, as fit older men are away working) most in evidence in slums like Annawadi. The playwright has skimped a little on the plot of the piece – there’s no real romantic interest to distract from the tale of universal corruption and downward social and economic mobility of those who are left out of the boom-economy. It’s a touch deterministic (like the Theodore Dreiser of “An American Tragedy”) in showing us what happens to those left behind “when the usual avenues of upward mobility close down,” in Prof. Khilnani’s formulation.
But nobody can resist the feel-good allure of the free-spirited, good-natured, intelligent and resourceful slum lad – not even David Hare. So though the drama needs tightening up, and though this is a long evening watching predestination do its worst to a lot of mostly attractive people, I commend it to your attention.
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