Director Danny Boyle finally
came to the rescue of the
Slumdog Millionaire kids today—the kid actors that
didn’t become millionaires, that is, but went back after dressing up for the Academy Awards to the Mumbai shanty homes they grew up in. The corrugated tin and cardboard shelters, that is, they lived in until they were demolished, over the last two weeks, along with most of their contents, by Indian authorities.
First the world was treated to the vision of
9-year-old Azhar in tears in the scorching sun, clutching his salvaged
Slumdog poster—signed by Boyle—and a plastic bag with his few remaining possessions. A week later
Rubina's family was similarly rousted without warning by a sledgehammer-wielding government "cleanup" team; photographers snapped away as the child star watched men rip apart the pink walls of her flimsy, suddenly illegal home.
It was quite a coda to the fairytale film whose eccentric mixture of neorealism and Bollywood froth earned more than $320 million at the box office and eight Oscars.
Boyle said today he and a producer flew to Mumbai as soon as they heard the kids were homeless; they’ve bought an apartment for Azhar’s family and they’re working on one for Rubina and her mother.
That’s very nice, as is the trust fund that’s supposed to send them to school, but you have to wonder what’s the matter with the Indian government. Don’t they give a damn about bad press? Don’t they understand how many people have seen the movie? Reporters and cameramen always seem to be hanging around these kids when bad stuff happens—but that doesn’t seem to offer them any protection. Literally the day Azhar got back from Los Angeles after the big night at the Oscars,
his father started beating on him—on camera—for being too tired to give interviews.
Then Rubina's father tried to sell the kid. Or so the divorced mother said.
Maybe the government’s willfully obtuse demolition of the kids homes is their way of saying screw you to the Westerners who made the world’s largest slum—cheek-by-jowl with a gated luxury community—the subject of a morality tale, and made these kids into mini-heroes. You raised the kids’ expectations, gave them fantasies, showed them America; they’re your problem now. Kind of the reverse of
Madonna’s adoption frustration in Malawi: Take them, and their annoying families, too.
