About Slumdog Millionaire

A friend in Canada wrote:

We went to see "SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE" Not because of the "OSCAR" hype.
The setting is in a Mumbai, India slum. The film is a typical Hollywood production. It portrays India's worst with a happy ending when love prevails.

The reality is that the majority of the slums are filled with industrious hard working people. Behind many doors there is a small business. One person sells flowers, another occupies a corner of the sidewalk to cut rocks, next is a person repairing shoes. Another is expert at removing wax from people's ears, or cutting hair. A frail looking lady hawls a bag twice her size containing plastic for recycling. The list goes on. It really is amazing how ingenious the people are at eeking out an existance.

The slum is not a cesspool of prostitution, mafia and beggars, as the movie may suggest.

I came to know Ramesh who lives in a slum in Mumbai. A very pleasant normal 11 year old. No different then boys his age here. Ramesh has two brothers and a sister. The father expired. Mother works as a domestic earning an average of $1.50 a day. Ramesh is lucky, in that his family is acquainted with a Christian family who will lend some support to them. They will help him with his school work.

Meanwhile, Ramesh is only one out of the 42 million people living in India's slums, a population roughly equal to the population of Spain. But 42 million slumdwellers occupy less space then the city of Toronto. We bemoan lack of privacy on our one acre lots, a slumdweller would be happy to share it with 100 others and still feel blessed.

George Couperus