I have thoroughly enjoyed watching this year’s Oscar awards night especially that my most favored movie to triumph won smashingly that night, in a fashion that I had expected, just like the way “Titanic” did it some years ago.
“Slumdog Millionaire” was such a runaway winner that it bested other nominees from almost every category it was nominated in, from “Best Picture” category to “Best Sound”.

It was kind of a unique feeling seeing or experiencing for the first time how oriental culture takes hold of the rein away from the West, as we are so accustomed to, and never let’s go, even just for one night, in music and in visuals. A.R. Rahman’s music just scintillated the night away that his musical number with M.I.A. on stage that night was just one for the books.

Maybe it’s time that we see the oriental side of the spectrum; maybe it’s time that the world recognizes that the Asian artistic spirit is just about to make a comeback and be here for good, not in hostile competition with the Western Culture that we all had adored for so long now, from art to music, but in a harmonious and Zen-like co-existence.

Slumdog’s sound and soundtrack had particularly made some extraordinary strides that for the first time an Asian musician won the nod in the movie scoring category. In this line, I would like to share how haunting and sublime the movie’s sound and music through this video, “Latika’s Theme”:

It’s a music that was played in the most emotional moment of the film, when Dev Patel’s character, Jamal, was finally about to be reunited with Latika, his love interest for a very long time, after a very long and tumultuous search, one that had caused even the violent demise of his older brother Salim.

It’s a haunting sound, like a sound from a long time era, an ancient sound that perhaps this was a sound that ancient India had been cradled in, upon a magnificent era of art and architectural achievements - from Angkor Wat to Taj Majal.

Slumdog Millionaire should remind us all how India, or the people thereat, had once the most advanced culture on the planet, having had the oldest religion in Hinduism, the direct precursor to another well-patronized religion in Buddhism, where it’s founder had been an ancient Indian prince called Siddharta Gautama, who was later on to be more popularly known as Buddha or “the enlightened one”.

In the story of Siddharta, he was once a very young and richly prince of great nobility and surrounded by all the grandiosity that life could ever provide, from gold to pearls, and had not known any form of misery or suffering whatsoever. One day, Siddharta heard a sound from somewhere far afar, and he was so enamored by the sound of the music that he had followed it. In his pursuit of the sound that he had not had heard previously, he was led to the outside portion of their home, to a place where he had never been to before, and there for the first time he saw a lot of poor and miserable people, many sick and dying. The scenes of misery and struggle had baffled him entirely that when he returned home, he had somehow chastised his mother for not telling him that in fact, life is not all joy and merriment but in reality, also of sorrow and pain. This realization had been the main instigation for his extensive soul-searching later on, one that had led him to the forest, and stayed hungry for days and nights to come, in pursuit of enlightenment.

When I heard “Latika’s Theme”, I somehow felt how Siddharta Gautama must have felt when he said that there was indeed a very beautiful music somewhere out there.