By Salman Akhter
Right from the first Oscar winner for India Costume Designer Bhanu Athaiya for ‘Gandhi’(1982) and an honorary Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award to maker Satyajit Ray in 1992, There have been several attempts to get the Oscar from Bollywood like Mahboob Khan’s ’Mother India’(1957), Mira Nair’s ‘Salam Bombay’ (1988) and Aamir Khan’s ‘Lagaan’ (2001) but none of these were able to reach beyond nominations.
I could never believe a director of ‘28 days later’ would ever choose a subject of Vikas Swarup’s fiction ‘Q & A’, which was overlooked by Indian Film Makers, he went ahead and tried to sign the Super Star Shah Rukh Khan who anchored the last Indian version of Who Wants to be A Millionaire, SRK refused this offer for his own reasons which Anil Kapoor grabbed with both hands, Rest is HISTORY that has been created by ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.
Now, that, Oscar results are out just now and it is now proved that Bollywood has finally been taken to Oscars like a kid holding little finger of Danny Boyles and being shown how the Oscars are won. There have been debates upon, what, if the same movie would have been made by an Indian Maker, would that have received same international response as Danny Boyle’s ? this itself is a million dollar debatable question.
But I have a dream, one day Hollywood makers would send their movies to Indian Awards in Best Foreign Film Category and feel equally privileged to be nominated as our Aamir Khan, Ashutosh Gowarikar,Vidhu Vinod Chopra or Shah Rukh Khan feel after sending their movies to OSCARS for recognition.
