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Mumbai slum movie captures world’s acclaim

SALWA, Kuwait – Who would have thought it? After thousands of productions featuring Bollywood stars, one has finally come along that has managed to both awe the world with its original insight to a street boy’s life and sneak away not one, not two, but eight Academy Awards.

“Slumdog Millionaire” portrays a young man with the simple vocation of a chai walla, Jammal Malik, who has lived his life on bits and pieces in the slums of India, and has somehow managed to luckily land a place on the show, “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.”

By recollecting memories from his grim yet eventful past, Jammal manages to successfully slide his way through several rounds on the show and shock all of India by actually walking away with the astounding prize money.

“The movie made me very proud,” says Vasoda Roa, an Indian woman living in Kuwait who watched the movie with her husband. “We’ve finally managed to shine some of the light on Indian actors and give them the recognition they deserve.”

The director of the movie, Danny Boyle, manages to depict the horrid truth of life for the poverty-stricken in the slums and makes some wonder whether life for some really is as terrible as illustrated on the big screen.

“It made me think about whether it was all true,” said Asaad Ali, 15. “Do people actually live like that? It’s a whole different world from what I know so it makes me really curious.”

“Slumdog Millionare” provoked a lot of powerful responses from different people. Some found it intellectually moving while others assigned it as just another old movie with a great plot.

“I loved how the movie defied all conventional beliefs about the definition of the term ‘educated,’ ” said Samina Mujtaba, a Pakistani woman who said she immensely enjoyed watching “Slumdog Millionaire.”

“The movie showed how education is linked to every experience a person has in his or her life and is not measured entirely by what a person has learned in school,” said Mujtaba.

By Sana Ali is a Reporter for Youth Journalism International.