“Jai Ho” echoed across India and among Indian expatriates worldwide, Saudi Arabia included, when low-budget commercial smash “Slumdog Millionaire” predictably won eight of the 10 Oscars it was in the running for, making cinematic history on Monday as Bollywood, the world's largest producer of films, proclaimed loudly its arrival in Hollywood, the world's richest. For Indians, the joy was not so much about Bollywood finally matching up to Hollywood as it was about the quality of the country's artistic talent that has exploded on the world stage, opening the flood gates, according to TV anchors and commentators, of an expected international wave of new interest in India that should put paid to long-held stereotypes and help reveal seldom acknowledged aspects of an India on the rise. “We rocked the world,” said Indian percussionist Sivamani on TV as the awards were announced at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles and the echos of the “Slumdog” title track “Jai Ho” — an exuberant Hindi phrase that literally translates as “victory” – resounded worldwide through TV channels covering the biggest and most prestigious cinema awards event of the year. Even the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, congratulated the “Slumdog” team, along with the makers of “Smile Pinki,” a short documentary about a village girl with a cleft palate. But “Slumdog” is not a purely Indian film. It's director, Danny Boyle, who adapted the script from a book by an Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, is British. So are its producer and screenplay writer. But the cast is almost entirely Indian and a lot of the dialogue in the movie is in Hindi . Even Dev Kapoor, who plays the protagonist, Jamal, though British, is of Indian origin. And the film is set in Mumbai, more precisely in its slums, revealing a dark side of the country that Indians have long felt uncomfortable about showing to the world. “But now that that's done – and how! – Indians have nothing more to hide and we can now look forward with pride to letting the world discover how much more we have to offer,” said Moideen Kutty, an electronics technician in Jeddah.
