Prisoners across TN wake up to Jai Ho

But over and above the message that Slumdog conveys,it’s the Rahman connection that has made the movie’s success a matter of personal interest for almost all across Tamil Nadu. Many in the prison have not even heard of the Academy Awards,but almost everyone knows Rahman and the fact that the world has opened its ears to him.

Almost as soon the Academy Awards were announced on Monday morning,the scene at the prison was like a sequence from the jailbreak film The Shawshank Redemption,though with a pleasant twist.

The public address systems of the nine facilities across the state played the award-winning song Jai Ho from the film for over 16,000 inmates,including long-term,medium-term and remand prisoners.

In Shawshank,the hero plays Canzonetta sull’aria from Mozart’s opera Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeakers — and is punished for it. The jail authorities here,of course,played a far more benevolent role in facilitating the celebration of Rahman’s success.

The loudspeakers are generally used to issue instructions and for announcing trial details of prisoners. “We thought ‘why not make use of it’? Now we also play patriotic songs in mornings and evenings,the list of which includes the Tamil version of Rahman’s own Vande Mataram (Thai Manne Vanakkam is the Tamil version). Everyone knows Rahman,they hear him every day,” said Nataraj.

Efforts are on to screen the movie in the jails when the Tamil version is out,he added.

This initiative to expand the experiences of prisoners is one of several undertaken by the jail authorities in Tamil Nadu to modernise the facilities and functioning of prisons,including providing education and even vocational courses to the inmates so that they can be absorbed into the mainstream once they complete their term. However,there is also criticism against the concept of “quality life” for convict.

“It is their confinement that is the punishment; we cannot add inhuman conditions as part of it. After we took up such small measures,the prisons have become much more peaceful. The numbers of petty crimes inside prison and problems among the inmates have also come down,” added Nataraj.