Misery of the Slumdog children

TEN-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail is wearing a cotton shirt with the slogan “Fun & Joy” emblazoned on it – but he isn’t having much of either as he contemplates the ruins of his home in the shanty colony of Garib Nagar. It has just been torn down by the authorities, who say the shelter was illegally built on government-owned land.

SLUM STARS Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail Rubina Ali and the rest of the child cast SLUM STARS: Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Rubina Ali and the rest of the child cast

A few days later, nine-year-old friend Rubina Ali suffers a similar fate. She was made homeless when her shack in the same slum – in a pocket of land in an affluent suburb – was also razed to the ground, leaving her barely time to run inside and rescue the precious dress she wore to the biggest night of her life just a few weeks ago.

Such scenes occur every day in Mumbai, a sprawling city where housing is cripplingly expensive even for the burgeoning middle-class, and where life for the poor is a struggle for survival. The problem in the slums is not just a lack of plumbing or mod cons. They’re illegally built and can be demolished at a few minutes’ notice.

What has turned this familiar plight for the poor into international news is the fact Rubina and Azhar are two of the stars of Slumdog Millionaire. Despite being chosen for a film that has taken £215million at the box office so far, they’ve ended up back where they started, living the miserable life exposed in the movie.

DEMOLISHED Rubina Ali walks through her home DEMOLISHED: Rubina Ali walks through her home

The pair were plucked from obscurity to play the youngest versions of female lead Latika and Salim, brother of the film’s hero. Three months ago they were pictured with director Danny Boyle in Hollywood, each holding one of the film’s eight Oscars.

Other child actors in the film, such as Ayush Mahesh Khedekar who played the youngest version of lead character Jamal, came from more prosperous backgrounds. But for the two poorest principals – the most authentic “slumdogs” – Boyle and his producer Christian Colson promised to “do the right thing”.

They announced they were setting up a trust fund which would give the youngsters a good education and then pay them a “substantial amount” at 18. Meanwhile they would also make sure the pair got a regular income to ensure they didn’t live in poverty, and promised to house them decently.

‘We have been abandoned by the film-makers’

But a series of horror stories since the Academy Awards triumph seems to indicate something has gone badly wrong.

Aweek after the Oscars, Azhar was pictured back in Garib Nagar, crying in the aftermath of a beating from his father. Then Rubina’s mother, who reportedly abandoned her family five years ago, made a sudden re-appearance and was filmed wrestling in the dust with her ex-husband’s new wife.

Throughout all of this, the children were subjected to bullying from fellow “slumdogs”. Next, Rubina’s father, Rafiq Qureshi, fell prey to a sting operation by a downmarket British newspaper, which claimed he had tried to sell her to a reporter posing as a wealthy Arab sheikh for £200,000.

Qureshi denied that, but proceeded to denounce Slumdog’s makers. “We have been abandoned by Danny Boyle and his associates,” he said. “We’ve been given no money and no house. There is no trust fund I’ve been told about. The monthly allowance promised to Rubina and Azhar stopped before they went to the Oscars. I feel betrayed and hurt.”

The pictures from Mumbai of the children picking through the ruins of their slum shacks appear to give weight to his criticisms. But a spokeswoman for Celador Films, co-producer of Slumdog Millionaire, insists Boyle and Colson’s conduct has been impeccable.

“There has been much consideration and care – morally, emotionally, practically, financially, every which way you can imagine – since the conception of the film for the children involved,” she says. “A considerable amount of money, even by UK standards, has been given to them. Obviously the children were paid for their roles in the film. A trust fund was also set up which will mature and be given to them at 18. Danny, Christian and Celador Films have gone out of their way to protect and care for them for the rest of their lives – I can’t stress enough how generous the provisions have been.”

The trust set up by Boyle and Colson has announced it has hired a social worker to look after Rubina and Azhar’s welfare. The two men have also pledged £500,000 to Plan, a children’s development organisation, for a five-year programme aiming to improve the lives of between 2,000 and 5,000 children from Mumbai’s slums.

The most frustrating thing, the Celador spokeswoman says, is that both families have already been provided with good accommodation. In other words, they did not in fact need to live in the slum shacks that have just been demolished.

She refuses to give details of the nature or location of the accommodation, but insists: “It is 100 per cent irrefutable. They have been provided with it and it’s available now. It is permanent housing, for the whole family, and high quality. I don’t know why they’re not in it. You’d have to ask the families themselves that.”

So who do we believe? A media source in Mumbai says there two possibilities. “They may have organised accommodation, but perhaps it isn’t ready,” she says.

“They could be building a bricks-and-mortar hut – we call it a pukka house – in the slum itself, or maybe they’ve arranged an apartment somewhere which has not become available for some reason – though I must say it’s frustrating if they won’t tell us what that is.

“The other possibility is that the families don’t want to leave their slum. Shanty towns are in central areas, whereas the apartment the film company could have arranged may be miles away. It’s like leaving a slum in Westminster for an apartment in Croydon – you might prefer to rent out the apartment and stay in the slum.”

S he says the second possibility is less likely, because the Indian media would have unearthed this. But importantly, she insists, both parties could be right: the producers may well have put the stated arrangements in place, while the families have yet to access them. “If they’re saying they are giving them a monthly income, they probably are,” she says. “But their parents don’t understand who is on their side. Someone could have told them that making a song and dance and getting in newspapers will get them more money.”

But, she says, is the situation for Rubina and Azhar may not be as bad as the footage suggests. Partly because nobody seriously disputes the existence of the film-makers’ trust fund – and also because, for slum-dwellers, demolition is not as bad as it looks.

“Alas,it’s routine. It happens every three months or so. People just re-settle in the same place using the same flimsy materials. This is getting publicity just because it’s the Slumdog kids.”

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