“What would we do with the money? We need a house”… -- father of a kid who acted in the movie reacted when one of the news reporter asked him in an interview.
"We saw some parts of the shooting (film) in our slum, and that was nice, but I won't go and see the film," said a boy, 12, resident of the same slum. "I only like Shah Rukh Khan films," he said.
That is what the ground reality of the today’s poor world is. Kids from the slums who worked in the movie had fun while working on the sets; meeting bollywood stars, wearing new clothes, eating chocolates, attending promotion parties. But everything vaporized after the fun-dream is over and when they are back to their ragged houses.
This weekend, my friend and I decided to have beers in an open-secluded area and to not to go to any busy restaurant. It is always hard to find a place in delhi, where u can sit and drink beers in open, as the dilli thullas are alarmingly available in all areas. They also harass you if they catch you taking alcohols in open. As it was pretty dark (seven in the evening), so we decided to go to a small playground situated in the outer-skirts of Vasant Kunj. We were on a bike, so we skidded our bike inside the playground from an unwired pavement.
Cows were grazing in the field. We went inside the middle of the ground and sit on the dry grass. It was quite dark, surrounded by trees, but we were enjoying our sips. We were sharing our lives and discussing strange things, as what people do when they are intoxicated. Suddenly we found a bunch of kids surrounding us. ‘Kya chahiye’ I triggered unhappily. Two kids said collectively, ‘botal’. Actually these kids reside in the slums touches the ground fence and they saw us entering the ground.
We tried 3-4 times to send them back to their slums, but failed. Failingly I said, “jo bhi humse jyada door jaa kar bethega usko hum botal de denge”. Kids ran and sit at quite a distance from us. We sighed as it was suffocating seeing them around us. But they were eyeing on our bottles, and waiting for it to finish.
Few minutes after we finished with our beers the kids ran to their life to grab the bottles. I stopped them and told them to stand peacefully, gave bottles to two kids (6-8 yrs old) and few bucks to the others.
Slumdog millionaire that bagged so many awards worldwide has raised a question to ourselves; Are we emotional about poverty and have a soft corner in our hearts when we see poor?