I lived in India for five months last spring—a semester abroad from Columbia University. As an English major with a concentration in Sustainable Development, I believe I was fated to keep a blog while there—and that it was equally my fate to spend much of my time writing about the environmental and economic development catastrophes that went unnoticed all around me—the trash burning in piles everywhere, the complete lack of any kind of garbage collection system, the overwhelming absence of environmental knowledge. It was helpful to have my blog as a journal of sorts to write about what I saw and experienced every day. I have entries detailing the trash and dirt and filth that is everywhere; the masses of people, the likes of which only experience allows you realize what “over population” and “one in every sixth person in the world is Indian” actually mean. The images still in my head of begging children tapping on the windows of our auto-rickshaws, their fingers reaching inside, disheveled and dirtier than you can possibly image children could be; the picture of the seven year old girl wading through the piles up to her knees in plastic bottles and trash bags and human waste, carrying on her hip her own little baby brother. Images to make your heart break—even the most unsentimental, hardhearted.

While I lived perfectly comfortably, and in no ways was I even close to being among the poorest of India, I saw the poverty and the filth from the very moment I woke up (the maid who swept my room and washed my clothes arriving before sunup only to leave by 8am to get to her ‘real job’ then to return at 6pm to do night duties) to the moment I went to bed (the starving puppies that run wild even in the nicest of neighborhoods and never sleep at night, whining all night). And it was there in every moment in between: no trash cans in the whole country, people throwing every piece of waste and garbage out the train windows day and night, burning plastic and empty bags in every city, littered across the fields of my own college campus.

In describing these moments of what I saw, I felt, at least partially, successful in translating how profoundly affected I had been by my time living in India; but there is only so much I can say.  Writing about what I saw takes me far, but only so far. Pictures really are, in this case as in so many, worth a thousand, a million words. In particular, profoundly real are such pictures in motion—that is to say, movies!

Sadly, however, I feel that India has been misrepresented in the movie world. Oftentimes, India’s spirituality is idealized, as in Wes Anderson’s “Darjeeling Limited” where the colonial history is used to further the theme of the lost history of brothers. In other cases, as in many Bollywood films, it is the westernized, rich and glitzy sides of the culture that get highlighted, while the issues of poverty, population overflow, and garbage are glossed over. I had yet to feel comfortably saying of any movie, “Here is a movie that represents the India that I saw.” That is, until now.

To put it simply, if you haven't seen Danny Boyle's ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ yet, you must. There are a lot of reasons to see this movie, not the least of which is environmental—which is fitting, as this is appearing on an environmental blog. Because this is not simply a rave review of a fantastic movie that has a rich plot and solid acting (which this does have). There is a whole lot more I want to say, which has everything to do with my own understanding of the issues of the environment and economics, as they directly confront the experiences I had living in India last spring.

Probably you've heard at least a word or two about this film, but a brief synopsis will be helpful (and nothing can really be spoiled here, because the plot is pretty clear within the first 5 minutes of movie): Jamal Malik, born into the slums of Mumbai, India is one question away from winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Unable to believe that the slum-raised, chai-serving orphan, now a boy of 18, could have possibly made it this far in the game without outside help, the show breaks for the night before the final question, and the Indian police arrest and interrogate (read: torture) Jamal, expecting him to confess to cheating. But Jamal sticks to his story—that he had no help from anyone. To prove his innocence, he recounts for the police through flashbacks into his childhood, the truly unbelievable episodes of his life that explain how he came to know the answer to each question.

While realistically implausible that Jamal's life would coincide perfectly with these precise questions, the movie highlights a far more poignant position: that is, the emotional, social, and environmental story of an India that is darker than Wes Anderson or Bollywood has been willing to show us. In suspending our disbelief of relativity and coincidence, we realize that this movie reveals to us a true story of the Indian slums, the unbearable hardships of human existence, and the journey of children who do not give up on love and loyalty. It sounds corny and it sounds predictable—and in some ways it is just that—but on a basic level, Boyle has created a film that soars above the plot-twisters and double-crossing agents of Bond and other predictably unpredictable movies. Instead, conflated as it sounds, he has grounded a feel-good movie in the real-world horrors of the slum life of Mumbai's poorest. And in so doing he has brought to life a world that is usually neatly and quietly hidden from our view.

I lived in Hyderabad, while in India, which is located in the south of the subcontinent, landlocked in Andhra Pradesh, high on the Deccan Plateau. Hyderabad was once the seat of the Mughal Empire in India; and historically, the city has been upheld as an example of peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims. In recent years Hyderabad has been affected deeply by the IT business boom that has spread across most of India; and as a result Hyderabad is best known today as the second biggest tech center in the country  (trailing Bangalore only). Hyderabad is where so many of your calls to Verizon help-lines get answered at all hours of the day and night. As a result of this influx of IT wealth Hyderabad has grown exponentially, stretching miles beyond the original city limits—city sprawl that appears to be never-ending to the naked eye. There are western clubs, nice restaurants, and an ex-pat population of at least a decent size. And yet, amid that urbanization and development, the streets are filled with dirty beggar kids, trash of all kinds, and animals everywhere. And of course, Hyderabad is no spectacular exception—much, if not all of India, has boomed in similar proportions, with similar population, poverty, environmental, and social consequences.

Of course, from a sustainability point of view, the question is how can India (and the world), provide economically and socially for the increased masses of the developing world, while still maintaining any semblance of environmental protection? This is not a new issue, of course; it is simply a restating of the problem inherent in protecting the environment while working to bring the growing populations of the world the same rights and goods that citizens of developed countries enjoy. It is the pivotal question at the heart of the study of Sustainable Development. And from the perspective of an American college student, already studying the economics of environmental change and the politics of sustainability, it was an invaluable way of seeing how profoundly interlinked and complicated the problems of development and environmental degradation actually are.

And this is where I feel the movie particularly rings true. Because it manages to present these issues, not outright, but more subtly through the very problems the character face, the ways in which they come to terms with their new life realities, and in their unflagging adherence to their own loyalties and love. The film then, is not just true to the complicated life-histories of India’s varied populations; nor is it unique only because it throws together the problems of poverty and filth with questions of justice and loyalty. Rather, it is all of these, and it is more: it shows with cinematic clarity precisely what the social, environmental, and economic trade offs actually look like of the population boom in India’s most depressed slums, for her most undervalued heroes.

So, yes I love the movie because it shows the India I at once loved and feared. But not just because it is a good story. Nor do I love it just because it brings the entire city to life, with an indiscriminating eye for the good and the evil within it—we get the slums and the pimps, the laughter and the smiles; the cool sun glasses and dictatorship and patriarchal terror over women; the human waste and piles of plastic garbage; and the saris and the silks. What the movie shows is that all aspects of India are Indian, and thus it accepts them all as realities present today. Here is a movie I can say, “Watch this. Then talk to me about India and about garbage and about too many people, about sadness and mutilation.” For here is a movie that does capture the highest and the lowest that humanity is capable of—and it was this above all else that most shocked me about India: the death right next to the life; the child’s eyes peering out of the filthy hair; the beauty of the flower amid the trash heaps burning by the side of the roads.

This is not a documentary film of the slums of India (because there have been those, too) because the points of depravity and horror are not the focus of the film—as a documentary would have it. Rather the poverty and filth are simply part of the larger story being told. As such Boyle has managed to incorporate this harshness into the world of his film in the same way that that harshness actually exists in India today. The film does not qualify or comment on the issues of trash, population overflow, and poverty. It simply states them as facts.  And it is therefore not a movie about solving the problems of India, but rather a baseline of understanding from which solutions to the fundamental issues at hand can be formulated.