[Assam] From NYT--More on SDM /Slumdog Millionaire' Kid Stars Face Uphill Battle

[Chan Mahanta]

	http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/17/arts/AP-AS-MOV-India-Slumdog-Kids.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 17, 2009
Filed at 2:24 p.m. ET
MUMBAI, India (AP) -- They are not your typical movie stars.
Ten-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail lives in a lean-to made of 
tarpaulins and blankets. Nine-year-old Rubina Ali's home is a tiny 
bubble-gum pink shack. A murky open sewer runs down her narrow lane.
Plucked from one of Mumbai's teeming slums to star in the 
Oscar-nominated hit ''Slumdog Millionaire,'' they are India's real 
slumdog millionaires.
Like the film's hero, an impoverished tea seller who wins money and 
love on India's version of ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,'' they 
now have a chance to escape the grinding poverty they were born into. 
But as their still-unfolding story shows, things never go as smoothly 
in real life.
The filmmakers are helping the children, but fast discovering that 
good intentions and deep pockets don't guarantee success. Meanwhile, 
sudden fame and relative fortune are sowing resentment within the 
families and with neighbors, who wonder why their big-eyed boys 
weren't cast instead.
The Oscars will be presented Sunday at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre. The 
Fox Searchlight release has grossed more than $100 million, but the 
children's lives seem nearly as fragile as before.
''He's supposed to be the hero in the movie, but look how he's 
living,'' said Azharuddin's mother, Shameem Ismail, sitting on a 
rotting board outside their lean-to. ''It's a zero.''
About 65 million Indians, roughly a quarter of the urban population, 
live in slums, according to government surveys.
''Most of them are doomed to remain as they are,'' said Amitabh 
Kundu, dean of Jawaharlal Nehru University's School of Social 
Sciences in New Delhi.
It's too early to tell whether Rubina and Azharuddin -- Azhar to his 
friends -- will buck the trend.
The filmmakers debated whether to use slum kids at all.
''Part of your brain thinks, would it distort their lives too much?'' 
said Danny Boyle, the British director, by phone from London. ''Then 
someone said, 'These people have so much prejudice against them in 
their lives. Why should we be prejudiced against them as well?'''
Rubina was cast as the young Latika, who grows up to become the 
hero's love interest, and Azhar as his brother, Salim.
Boyle and producer Christian Colson figured education was the best 
way to help Rubina and Azhar. They got them places in Aseema, a 
nonprofit, English-language school for underprivileged kids in Mumbai.
Some arrive at Aseema with matted hair, never having seen a mirror 
before. Many need counseling. On one blackboard, the lesson of the 
day read: ''I must close my mouth when I eat.''
School chairwoman Dilbur Parakh said half make it through high 
school, and she tries to find vocational training for the rest.
The filmmakers also paid the children for 30 days of acting work, 
give the families a small monthly stipend and set up trust funds that 
Rubina and Azhar can tap once they graduate.
Colson describes the amount in the trust as substantial, but won't 
tell anyone how much -- not even the parents -- for fear of making 
the kids vulnerable to exploitation.
As the movie's popularity swelled, the filmmakers' plan began to fray.
Journalists swarmed the school, forcing Rubina and Azhar to stay 
home. The families started demanding more, asking for cash and new 
houses, Colson said.
When the city razed Azhar's neighborhood, Colson wired the family 
money for a new home. He doesn't know what happened to the money, but 
the family remains camped out in a lean-to.
Most troubling, he said, the parents' commitment to seeing their kids 
through school has waned.
So the filmmakers have agreed to buy apartments and allow the 
families to move in. But they won't transfer ownership to the parents 
until Rubina and Azhar finish school at age 18.
The filmmakers have also faced criticism that they didn't fairly 
compensate the children, but have declined to reveal how much they 
paid, again citing fear of exploitation.
''It's becoming a full-time job dealing with the daily hassle,'' 
Boyle said. Still, he added, ''I'm glad we did it, even with all the 
headache.''
He hopes to give Rubina and Azhar an education rather than a jackpot 
-- what he called a ''slow nurturing'' instead of ''a sudden dash for 
glory.''
''Moviemaking is distorting,'' Boyle said. ''The last thing you want 
to do is turn them into a star.''
But directing movies is easier than directing lives. Stardom is 
already distorting Rubina's world.
The latest additions to her family's meager belongings -- some 
stainless-steel pots and old blankets -- are two small photo albums.
Inside are photographs of Rubina wearing a glittering ''salwar 
kameez'' outfit and sitting in a helicopter, ready to fly off to a 
strange new world of red carpets and Bollywood heroes.
''My friends when they see me on TV say, 'Look, you're going to be a 
big actress when you grow up. You're going to forget us,''' Rubina 
said. ''I say, 'You are my best friends. How can I forget you?'''
She dashed outside and scurried along the sewer. ''See this?'' she 
said, pointing at a tract of weeds. She seemed proud to pronounce a 
new English word to a foreign visitor: ''jungle.''
But on the narrow, dirty lanes Rubina knows best, most kids speak 
Hindi and Urdu and forgo school to work.
''If I wear something nice then people say how I'm trying to show 
off, and I normally don't talk to them in English,'' she said.
Azhar's mom, wrapped in the sparkly pink sari she wore to the movie 
opening, wonders where all the money the filmmakers promised is.
''I don't know if I should go ask them if money is coming in,'' she said.
Her husband usually brings in 1,500 to 3,000 rupees ($30 to $60) a 
month selling scrap wood, but now is hospitalized with tuberculosis, 
Ismail said.
Azhar sat at her elbow, distracted. His friends had been staring at 
him as he talked with one journalist after another.
''My friends have seen me get new clothes and go in cars and get 
books,'' he said. ''Even they want that sort of life.''
He celebrated his birthday recently by buying a cake and balloons for 
his neighbors.
Now he wanted to buy his friends chocolate, but his mother controlled 
the purse strings.
Azhar began to cry. Tears ran down his small face.
''It's my money and you are using it!'' he shouted.
''We have 200 rupees,'' his mother said. ''I'll give you some later.''
He kept crying, twisting his body in small unhappy thrusts. ''You're 
not giving me money,'' he yelled. ''You're spending it on other 
things.''
His mother grabbed a piece of brick and raised it over her head.
''Is it your money?'' he shouted, daring her: ''Hit me. You hit me!''
Then he fled.
Suddenly, school, Bollywood and the upcoming Oscars all seemed 
terribly irrelevant. There was only the plain dirt Azhar and his 
mother live on, and the immediate, unruly desire for cash.
Ismail tossed the brick to the ground, rolling her one good eye in 
exasperation. She can't see out the other one and says she needs 
6,000 rupees ($120) for an operation.
''He's a star,'' she sighed.