Slumdog Millionaire

A real life movie or just an ideal situation?

I know it has been raining quite heavily since the past few days and everyone has been restricted to their homes thanks to our wonderfully equipped and operative infrastructure. But I took this time to read some books and watch some movies. I decided to rewatch the Oscar-winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

I had originally watched it some 10 years ago, and I re-watched it specifically because I knew there was a very important message in the movie that everyone had missed. I even googled ‘message in the movie Slumdog Millionaire’ and reviews kept going on and on about how the movie teaches us about love, resilience and all that mumbo jumbo. It was quite astonishing to see that literally no one understood what the underlying lesson of the movie was. Yes, movies and books are all about perspective and we all construe them in our own ways, but this one was different.

Just to refresh your memory, Slumdog Millionaire revolves around a chaiwala who gets a chance to be on the game show ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’, and eventually wins 20 million Indian rupees. Though he’s never received any formal education, Jamal Malik, through his life experiences of growing up in a slum under inhumane conditions, learns from everyday events that unfold.

Every time he is asked a question on the show by the host, Jamal Malik reminisces and through his rough upbringing tends to cough up the correct answer — call it luck or destiny.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Throughout the early half of the movie, Jamal and his brother Saleem can be seen playing in the slum as little children, occasionally getting in trouble with the police too. While they’re busy being delinquents, their single mother scolds them for slacking around. She then bathes them and personally walks them to a nearby school in their slums. The school is more of a single room housing nearly 50 or so children who are all seen sitting on the floor busy reciting whatever their teacher is reading aloud from a textbook. Once the teacher sees Jamal and Saleem sitting in the corner, he barks instructions at them to get their books out. Unfortunately, the poor kids don’t have books. Visibly infuriated, the teacher beats the kids with his textbook and then gives them his own textbook to read aloud from. The little brothers, with their tiny, smudged hands, struggle to open the book upright for which they get more of a beating. Finally, they open up the book and it reads ‘The Three Musketeers’.

Fast forward to Jamal as a contestant on the show; he gets all questions correct and is presented with the last question which would win him 20 million rupees. The question reads “In Alexandre Dumas’ book, The Three Musketeers, two of the musketeers are called Athos and Porthos. What was the name of the third Musketeer?” Jamal suddenly gets a flash back of his and his brother’s tiny hands trying to grip a book while being physically beaten by their teacher. And before you know it, he has won the 20 million.

Sounds idealistic? That’s because such things don’t happen in real life. But what’s important here is the value of education. No matter where you come from, who you are and what you do, education goes with you a long way. It will do you wonders. The movie might just be a movie, but the significance of giving a child a book is unmeasured. It is baffling how everyone missed out on something so pivotal and obvious. Or maybe it is just me; I am too biased towards the value of literacy. I profoundly wish that our politicians read a book. Had they valued education, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th, 2022.

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