Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of Ram Mohammad Thomas and this story is set in modern India. The story begins in an interrogation room. Ram Mohammad Thomas answers all the questions correctly on a TV quiz show and wins a billion rupees, but Ram was suspected that he cheated in answers. The story takes us through the major events of Ram’s life.

One day, Ram and his friend Salim were taken on a day trip by a charity organization and they met a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller gave Ram an old one rupee coin. It was a lucky coin. Several months later, a big man came to the home, and adopted them. Actually, the man was a gangster, and the reason why he adopted then was to use them as a beggar to make some money, so they escaped from him. Ram managed to escape from the man and kept moving, and he lost his money, so he had to seek a job. He visits the Taj Mahal and he starts the job which is a tour guide. He met a girl at the Taj Mahal, and then they fell in love. However, she has to get married to a rich man to help her family. Ram tried to stop their marriage but in order to live happily with her, he had to prepare large amount of money for her family. Although it was very challenging situation, he decided to appear on TV quiz show.  

Although Ram is an uneducated street boy, I still think he is clever, daring and knows how to live comfortable in the slum. However, he is a bit dangerous because he killed a few men. This story describes his danger effectively and also his such a dangerous characteristic is showing the society of India. There are numerous poor orphans, and they are always facing several difficult situations such as poverty, poor surroundings, and bad people who scheme to make money with orphans. Children learn singing and they lose their legs, arms and eyeballs when they work as beggars. This is shocking news but employment of children is real thing which happens in India.

 

The thing I like is how Ram thinks about Japanese. He met Japanese tourists at the Taj Mahal. The tourists asked him to guide them, and they paid him 50 rupees with only five minutes work. Probably, he thinks Japanese would pay expensively for him. They dupe foreign tourists, particularly Japanese.     

Vikas Swarup was born in Allahabad in India. His first book, which was made into the film Slumdog Millionaire, took him only two months to write, but has now been published in forty-two different languages and made into a very successful film. He got the idea for Slumdog Millionaire after watching the popular TV show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This programme is known as Quiz Millionaire in Japan. He thought that it would be interesting if an uneducated ‘street boy’ who would definitely be accused of cheating won the top prize.

 

As I said above this novel became a movie. Dev Patel is a boy who grown up in the real slums of Mumbai and he played the main character. It is a 2008 British film, and it was nominated for ten Academy Awards. There are some difference between the movie and the novel. The main character’s name is Jamal Malik, and he has an older brother, Salim. The story was also changed slightly. If you are interested in Slumdog Millionaire, I recommend you read the book and watch the movie. You will enjoy.