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I thought I had written my last post on Slumdog Millionaire. Even then, I was apprehensive: some inevitable stories about the lives of the kids back in their slums had started emerging early. The latest to find a place among cable news headlines is about the Oscar-winning movie's youngest, wide-eyed star Rubina Ali's father trying to "sell" her off for $300,000 to undercover reporters posing as a rich middle-east couple eager to adopt the celebrity kid.
The "news" was a sting operation by British tabloid News of The World. The story was on CNN and on Fox and everywhere else. The tabloid has fought off allegations that this was entrapment and said they had worked on a tip-off that the father was already looking to give up Rubina for a price. So, here's what we have now -- Rubina's father has denied wanting to sell his daughter (he did concede that he had met the fake couple), Rubina stands by her father, her biological mother is back to claim her and insists the girl's dad is evil and has successfully turned the child against her (video of the mother and stepmother slugging it out), the cops have dropped the case, and we have got a peek into an unsavory lifestyle that wouldn't move a fly in India, had it not been for the Oscars.
A few months back, the other Slumdog star, the youngest Salim, who lives in one of Asia's largest slums, was reported to have been slapped and kicked by his father in front of cameras when he refused to talk to onlookers and passers-by mesmerized by the boy's worldwide fame.
For those familiar with poor education, poverty and life in the slums, this is business as usual. So what changed? Success. Fame. Oscar. Imagine what this can do to a child, to straddle two disparate worlds. To walk the ultimate red carpet one night and sleep on an excuse for a bed the next. With no help to cope emotionally, was this not bound to happen?
And this is not a first. Four years ago, Preeti (or Puja, as she is known in Asia's largest red light district in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata) was in the Kodak theater too, part of the team the picked up the Oscar for best documentary film, Born into Brothels by Zara Briski that documented the lives of children of prostitutes in the red light district of Kolkata.
That was then.
Unlike a couple of other children from the film who are studying in the United States, she has now joined her mother's trade. She says her trade has made her prosperous. But the memories of that night under the arc lights linger on. She says in this Times of India story:
“It seems like a fairy tale now. I still see it in my dreams. I get goosebumps when I remember the heart-stopping moment when the award was announced. All of us kept screaming with joy. Zana aunty made sure we, too, went along to collect the statuette. My head was swimming, there were so many eyes on us, the deafening applause, so many cameras flashing...”
[...]
“Zana aunty and I are in touch by email. She was upset that I, too, had joined the trade like my mother, something she wanted to save me from. But this trade has really paid off for me.”
Twenty years ago, Mira Nair's path-breaking Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay! also used kids off Mumbai's streets. One of them even won the President's award for best child artiste. Poverty, not success followed, and the kid had to pick up the pieces and move on. He is now an autorickshaw driver in Bangalore.
It's not that every such success entitles one to lifelong fame and fortune. But as I watched the two Slumdog kids from real slums soak in the L.A. sun and all the glamor that comes with it, I wondered how they planned to bridge this gap mentally and emotionally. It's great that the producers of the film have set aside a tidy sum for their future and have set up a trust to finance their education, but is it just about the money?
"These kids need a counselor, their families need a counselor," I
