Slumdog Millionaire Themes and Characters
Theme One: Effects of poverty
Quote: Publisher’s weekly states the novel “exposes the predicament of India’s
underclass in general.”
Quote: Outlook says it “points at dilemmas in a country in a country where divisions
of caste, class and above all, the wide abyss between rich and poor, nags at any notion
of equality, education and social justice”
- Ram as an orphan explains, “Street boys like me come at the bottom of the food
chain. Above us are the petty criminals… extortionists…loan sharks…dons…big
business houses. But above all of them are the police.”
Maman
We are appalled by the callous and calculating cruelty of Maman towards the boys in
his charge. He takes advantage of poor, street kids because he has money and so has
power over them. He misleads them into thinking that they are going to have a good
life but actually he ruins them. Ashok states "We are not schoolchildren. We are
beggars. We are required to give (their earnings) to Maman's men in return for food
and shelter. He is no angel, but at least he gives us two meals a day." Their immediate
need for food has to take over and so they are trapped into the cycle of poverty. When
a boy does not earn the required 100 rupees per day, "he remains hungry."
The boys are maimed to maximise their earning potential as they have to rely on the
sympathy of the public. With so many beggars, genuine and not, they have to be seen
to be more deserving therefore more hurt or deformed. It is an oversupplied market so
Maman has to fight hard for his market share and niche. This is made explicit when
the music tutor says "When he (Salim) sings it is magic. And his face. Who can resist
his face? I would say easily a potential of four or five hundred rupees. We have hit the
jackpot Maman.”
Our response as New Zealanders is horror at this complete exploitation and lack of
humanity. It is like human slavery and a world apart from the Welfare state where the
government has a responsibility to look after its weakest members. Children are
generally not orphaned or abandoned. There is a benefit system to provide care and
support for a parent and child, foster homes and CYF agencies to monitor care.
Ram and Salim are given a way out by the kindness of Neelima. Radhey states,
"Whenever I am a little short, I go to her. She not only gives me food, she gives me
money to cover the shortfall.
Life in the chawls:
Chawls are described as the " a bundle of one-room tenements occupied by the lower
middle classes ..the smelly armpit of Mumbai. We, who reside in the overcrowded
chawls, we simply live." It is a common roof over their heads and a "common place
where they shit and bathe. The residents of the chawl may not meet each other for
social occasions, but they have to meet while standing in a queue outside the common
lavatories. ... the walls of the rooms within the chawl are very thin ...you can listen to
almost everything going on in the next room."
The easiest way to understand them is to imagine them is a crowded block of
boarding houses/ homeless shelters/ bedsits/ one room dwellings which are very
overcrowded.
The way to survive is outlined by the manager to Ram. "Whatever happens inside the
four walls of a home is a private matter for that family and we cannot interfere You
are a young orphan boy. You have not seen life. But I know the daily stories of wifebeating and abuse and incest and rape, which take place all over Mumbai. Yet no one
does anything. We Indians have this sublime ability to see the pain and misery around
us and yet remain unaffected by it. So, like a proper Mumbaikar, close your eyes,
close your ears, close your mouth and you will be happy like me." So the principle of
hear no evil, see no evil and touch no evil is a means to stay alive. Ram rejects the
advice and becomes his brother's keeper; takes responsibility for others and wants to
make a difference.
Ram and Salim are just boys but can afford to pay the rent and that is all that is asked
of them. They live among all sorts of people.
Nita -Insight into tribal life:
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Nita is a 17 year old “Bedia girl” from the Bhind district in Madhya Pradesh.
The community's tradition is for one girl from each family to serve as a
communal prostitute called the Bedni. The girl earns money for her family
while the men spend their time drinking and playing cards.
Her appearance "is dark and beautiful, with lovely kohl-lined eyes, luscious
painted lips and long black hair plaited with fragrant white flowers. She wears
excessive make up and her arms and neck are bedecked with jewellery."
When asked why she is a prostitute she says, "Because my beauty became a
bane. My mother had the right to decide which of her two daughters would
marry and which one would become a prostitute. She chose me to become the
Bedni. Perhaps if I had been plain looking like my sister I would not have
been sent here. This is the price I have to pay for beauty, so don't call me
beautiful."
We get a glimpse at her predestined future. "Who will marry a prostitute? We
are supposed to work till our bodies start to sag or till we die of disease,
whichever is sooner."
Again the poor have no choices -she says "it is better to die of disease
tomorrow than hunger today…" When Ram asks her about her fear of getting
a disease - "Look, this is a profession for me, not a hobby. It gives me enough
to feed me and my entire family. If I was not doing this, my family would
have died from hunger long ago."
Her brother Shyam acts as her pimp but will not release her and lose her
earning potential. He has condoned her injuries as he allowed Prem Kumar to
see her for 5000 rupees. As a result "She has cigarette burns all over her chest
looking like ugly pock marks." She has "deep welt marks on her back as if
someone has used a horse whip."
Her recovery requires even more money so entering the contest W3B Who
Wants To Win a Billion is Ram's only chance of earning it; her injuries
become his motivation.
Theme Two: What goes round comes round
This is the idea of reaping what you sow, or getting what you deserve, or karma, and
is relevant to the stories of many characters, both Ram and the minor characters.
One can argue whether it is fate or the subtle hand of Ram that assists the natural
sense of justice we see when those who do evil and exploit others are punished, often
by an unrelated agent.
This adds to the fairytale, morality tale or the universality of the story where the
“good” guys win.
Case Studies:
Ram
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Ram is an everyman character as his name Ram Mohammad Thomas
suggests. As commentators have indicated, he represents the modern India –a
fusion of Hindu, Muslim and Christian influences.
Interestingly instead of resenting his orphan status and the fact that he was
abandoned at a church, Ram has an idealised or romantic view of his mother
as a good woman in distress. She is a tall and graceful young woman wearing
a white sari…long black hair blows across her face…With tears streaming
from her eyes, she smothers the baby’s face with kisses. She places him in a
bin… She takes one final look at the baby, averts her eyes and then, running
away from the camera, disappears into the night…
He has fused this scene with scenes from Bollywood movies also:
-the significant thing is that Ram becomes a chivalric hero himself who has a
strong code of honour and rescues damsels in distress.
Things do not come right for him until the very end of the novel, but there is a
sense that this hero deserves his prize –the money, girl and reputation at the
end.
Every chapter illustrates this idea too. In each experience in his life, often
tragic, he is often not only the agent of justice but it is from his experiences
that he literally learns facts and lessons that enable him to answer all the
questions correctly.
He is brought up by Father Timothy and innocently confesses that he “peeped
inside Father John’s room though the keyhole …and looked at some of his
things without his permission.-he later reports “Father John is doing
something bad to Ian.” The next morning Father John has murdered Father
Timothy and killed himself
Neelima Kumar
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Gives us an insight into Bollywood and the issues of celebrities. “They live in
a fish bowl. First they hate it, then, as adulation grows, they start loving it.
And when people no longer shower attention on them, they just shrivel up and
die”
Probably based on the Bollywood actress Meena Kumari.
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Neelima is a symbol or example for the confusion of what is real and what is
Bollywood –appearance and reality
Neelima gives Ram a job as a servant after he and Salim escape the clutches of
Maman –with his pay he is able to live with Salim in a chawl.
Her bedroom is a shrine to her achievements with the glass shelves which line
the walls all “loaded with trophies and awards of all kinds. There is another
glass case full of old film magazines. All of them have Neelima Kumari on the
cover.”
She has 114 cassettes of the films in which she starred and although the
tragedy queen of India says to Ram “I feel I have yet to play the greatest role
of my life.”
Has an “air of melancholy” about her; has “an obsession about beauty”, has
lotions and potions for everything as “we get so used to seeing ourselves in
make up that we no longer have the courage to look in the mirror and see our
real faces. Remember, an actor must be an actor for life. Films may end but
the show must go on.”
Ironic that the man who had came to rob her ends up having cups of tea “just
because he has seen a few of her films she feeds him biscuits and tea.”
Has a relationship with a man who is vaguely familiar who abuses her –she
has a black eye, bruises on her face and cigarette burns on her arm; she has
also given him cigarettes, whisky and money –she justifies the treatment by
saying “You have to feel pain, experience it, live it in your daily life before
you can become a tragedy queen”…“Sometimes I feel if pain can be this
sweet, how exquisitely pleasurable death will be” –almost invokes/ welcomes
death with this twisted logic
Recalls her role in a film called Woman with the lines, “Oh life, how fickle
you are, it is death which is my real lover, my constant companion. Come
death, take me in your arms, whisper the sweet sound of silence in my ears
and waft me away to the land of eternal love.”
Later, her injuries are more serious –swollen cheek, cut above eyebrow and
“cigarette burn marks all over her chest” –in her sorrow draws Ram to her.
“For the first time I felt that I was not an orphan anymore. That I had a real
mother, one whose face I could see, one whose flesh I could touch”p265/6
“It is the destiny of a woman to suffer in silence” but she later decides to stop
taking all the preservative creams and treatments and commits suicide
Sadly ironic that the “real tragedy” is not a film but how she was reported
when her body was found. Ram had run away out of fear and the authorities
discover her body after a month “a rotting corpse… the face and body have
decomposed beyond recognition.”
Expresses the wish to also “want to die young”
Cannot accept the change in roles offered and her haughty reaction makes
Ram quip, “I am unable to figure out whether this is a comedy, a drama or a
tragedy.”
Father John
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Father John treats Ram in a disparaging way calling him “idiot boy.”
He seems a bikie who wears leathers and is a homosexual possibly involved
with pornography too.
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Ram is brought up by Father Timothy and innocently confesses that he
“peeped inside Father John’s room though the keyhole …and looked at some
of his things without his permission.” He later reports, “Father John is doing
something bad to Ian.”
The next morning Father John has murdered Father Timothy and killed
himself when his activities with Ian are brought to light.
Maman
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Preys on the most vulnerable in society –orphan children.
Takes boys form the Juvenile Homes, teaches them to sing, eg songs from
Surdas a blind poet, maims them, eg burning their eyes out so they can evoke
the most sympathy and earn him money –a modern day Fagin from Oliver
Twist by Charles Dickins.
p108 “ one by one the children start trickling in and challenge our definition of
hell. I see boys with no eyes; boys with bent and misshapen limbs, dragging
themselves to the table; boys with two gnarled stumps for lesgs, walking on
crutches; boys with grotesque mouths and twisted fingers, eating bread
between their elbows.” The listing makes it more horrific.
They learn more from the boys themselves:
- Ashok –a 13 year old with a deformed arm says of Maman ”he is no angel
but at least he gives us two square meals a day.”
- Raju a blind ten year old tells them “You don’t get food. You sleep hungry”
if you don’t earn 100 rupees a day.
- Radhey “an eleven year old with a leg missing” tells them about the kindness
of Neelima and her need for servant help.
- Moolay says there is no point escaping as “you need to have connections
even to sleep in a sewage pipe.”
-Sikanda a “rat child” also Jitu the glue sniffer reinforce the despair of the
boys there.
Ram only finds out plan “to do them tonight” by accident but it reinforces his
previous unease and he has the wit to plan an escape.
Later when Salim is launching his film career and coincidently takes a photo
of Maman and gives it to Ahmed Khan in an envelope which gets him
assassinated, the reader feels that justice has been done
Shantaram
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Shantaram abuses his wife and daughter, physically, sexually and verbally.
He introduces himself as ‘a scientist, an astronomer” and we are initially
sympathetic towards him as a colleague has stolen his idea and claimed the
glory; his descent in fortune mirrors his failure to control his anger and
alcoholism to the point where the family has to live in a chawl.
As his alcoholism and despair increase, so does his violence –he threatens
violence “You will receive a hiding with my leather belt.”
One night he exceeds all limits and throws a piping hot cup of tea at his wife”
Then “The next night Shantaram again comes home in a drunken stupor and
tries to molest Gudiya.”
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At the end of the chapter he ends up spread-eagled at the bottom of a stairwell
after being pushed down by Ram through the rickety railing which the
manager had not bothered to fix despite requests.
Ram panics, “Only when I see Shantaram’s limp body on the ground do I
realise what I have done.”
NB Later we discover that he is only injured not killed and Gudiya changes
her name and intended study and becomes a lawyer who in turn rescues Ram.
Ahmed Khan
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A contract killer “licensed to kill”
Makes money on betting on cricket matches
Shows us an insight into match fixing and the huge black market involved in
India that has implicated many well known players, eg Chris Cairns.
He saved Salim on a bus which was attacked by Hindus in a sectarian round of
violence.
Salim lives comfortably there as a servant and gets a contract with Abbas
Rizvi as a junior artisit in Bollywood films –similar to being used as an extra:
When he discovers that Rizvi is to be a target ‘I immediately went to Rizvi
and told him about the contract on him.”
In return Salim is promised a big part in his next film and “he is funding my
acting course.”
Salim uses his initiative and implements his own justice when he changes the
photo of Abbas Rizvi with the photo he took of Mr Babu Pillau and Maman’s
address.
Salim “got licence to kill by proxy and he chose the perfect target”
In the end, Khan loses a lot of money when a cricket bet backfires and he was
shot by police in a shootout.
Colonel Taylor
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We are first introduced to him when he and his wife buy off “these bloody
Indians” with alcohol so servants don’t have to fill in the census. “Give them a
bottle of whisky and they’ll do anything.” –through this we also see the
corruption and systematic breakdown of govt.
Is the Australian Defence Attache and inside his home is known as “the man
who knows.”
He is able to solve every mystery and knows who has stolen, had forbidden
relationships etc –gives them only “one chance.”
His detective work parallels the van with the flashing red light but we later
find it is because of his surveillance.
We presume it is Ram who has informed the police, with an Australian twang
to “go to the India Gaite tonight at aite” as he has practised it as a joke.
Ram has a sense of patriotism and is affronted that Colonel Taylor is getting
“sensitive and top secret documents” from a clerk in the Ministry of Defence.
He also wants to even up the score as Colonel Taylor abused his wife because
of her affair with the High Commissioner.
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Note that Ram voluntarily brings his comfortable and secure job to an end by
acting on this matter of principle –but does get the 50,000 rupee question and
pay.
Prem Kumar
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A B-grade actor who holds a 29% share in the Indian subsidiary of New age
Telemedia so has a huge financial investment in the show "Who Wants to Win
a Billion?"
Earlier when Ram sees him leaving Neelima's place he describes him “Tall
with a decent face but his bloodshot eyes and scruffy hair spoilt the looks. He
is clad in blue jeans and a white shirt. He holds a sheaf of currency notes and a
lighted cigarette in his left hand and twirls some car keys in his fingers. He
seems vaguely familiar.”
He seems to be paid for having sex with Neelima and that seems to feed his
arrogance and lack of respect for her. He abuses her physically with bruises,
burning her with cigarette butts and later punches her “I see the cigarette
marks all over her chest, looking like little black craters.”
Later he pays Nita as a prostitute and abuses her too. She has “deep red welt
marks on her slim back, as if someone has used a horse whip.”
As a wealthy celebrity he abuses his power and thinks he can inflict harm and
cruelty without any consideration; he exploits the women as they are poor and
vulnerable -Neelima because she is weak and dependent emotionally and Nita
because her earnings help her family and her brother ensures she keeps going.
To Ram who is the saviour of the vulnerable and had loved Neelima as a
mother and Nita as a husband-to-be, this is intolerable. “I have seen this
before. I will kill him.”
Ram enters the quiz show for the purpose of revenge and to win the money
and free Nita.
Prem Kumar confesses what he did.
When Ram's credibility is proven and Smita forces the police to free him and
the producers to pay up, Prem Kumar dies of CO2 poisoning when he shuts
himself in the car. It is suspected he was killed by W3B people in revenge for
their huge financial loss. “The thugs financing the show probably took their
revenge on him.”