Slumdog Milllionaire & Q&A

Last week of February 2009, saw history in the making with British directed Indian film Slumdog Millionaire grabbing eight AA (Academy Awards). The brouhaha about the movie had already started at the GG (Golden Globe) Awards. Suddenly promos sprang in the Indian channels as “Coming soon to India”. Dev Patel the main actor and the other newbies did not impress me in the promos but it was after watching the movie I saw the potential of the actors.

I saw the movie and was boggled by its freshness. Though poverty in Dharavi slums of Mumbai had been the much touted subject matter of many Bollywood flicks but Slumdog had an underlying optimism and was not a sob-sob story. The journey of a chai wala in a BPO winning KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati?) as well as his childhood sweetheart was a story of hope and the human spirit. After watching the movie, I just couldn’t resist myself to lay my hands on the book Q&A by Vikas Swarup. For those who are not enlightened, the theme of Slumdog Millionaire was taken from this book.




I thought that the book will be same as the movie. But I was in for a pleasant surprise. I came to know that all the questions asked and the protagonists were different. Though the book and movie starts in the prison, I was aghast to know that the movie’s protagonist was named Jamal while the book has a guy called Ram Mohammed Thomas an orphan who was dumped in a church as an infant.

In the movie, Jamal has got a brother Salim while Ram in the book has a friend called Salim. The book surprised me a lot. As it had sleazy details about the Mumbai underbelly and India as a whole. There were tales of homosexuality, incest, junkies, prostitution, Bollywood blues, everything that is so hush-hush in the Indian society.

Ram Mohammed Thomas falls in love with a prostitute whereas Jamal falls in love with Latika a street urchin. The story in the movie is simply done without much gross details. But I almost popped my eyes reading the novella. Ram Mohammed Thomas is sued by the producers as they don’t have a billion rupees to give Ram as they were banking on the ad revenue and Ram makes the dreaded mistake of winning W3B in the second month. Hostility of the hierarchy and the well-off against the have-nots is so vividly described, that you can feel the horror.

Also, unlike the movie the events culminates into a beautiful tapestry and connects itself in the end. Yes, there are twists that makes this book a fabulous read. But some chapters like the war tale of Pakistan and India in 1971 definitely does not connect with me at least. I felt it really does not fit in Ram Mohammed’s rags to riches story.

The book was definitely a page turner, as I am slow in reading I finished the book in 36 hours. This legacy of converting a book to a movie has been going on for decades. Very few have succeeded in achieving the right portrayal and spirit of the book. Slumdog Millionaire doesn’t disappoint us in this case definitely and Q&A surely has a class of its own.