"Slumdog Millionaire"

Yashraj Production presents

"SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE"

Directed by Karan Johar

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Jamal Malik (Zayed Khan) is 1 question away from 2 crore rupees! How did he do it?

The movie opens i a police station. The police inspector (Johny Lever) is puzzled. How did this poor guy, who is surprisingly dressed in Gucci clothes, know all the answer! Jamal looks at him and gives the smile . "its written." he says...... this is followed by name casting.

We are taken back to slums of Bombay (it was Bombay then) where young Jamal is playing cricket. Surprisingly, they are using "NIKE" cricket bats and are dressed in NIKE shoes. Young Jamal (played by Aditya Chopra's nephew) is a smart kid. Though 9 years old, he fools adults! His gang has his brother salim (played by Karan Johar Nephew), a cute sardarji with his turban, a parsee guy (who is fully outfitted in traditional dress) and a girl called latika (played by Rani Mookerjee's neice). Latika is an orphan who stays with the brothers.They are smart kids as seen in "Kuch Kuch hota hai". However, suddenly they break out into a song, wherein we witness all the mischieveous tricks they play on the elders. At the end of the song, the frame changes.

The 2 brothers and Latika then go home to their mother, who had made warm dinner for them, though she works as a domestic maid, she is dressed up well with complete make up. However, to make her seem authentic, the director in a master stroke had added a black scar across he face. She puts them to sleep. On the wall, they have a picture of their deceased father. As the boys sleep, she thinks of the past.

The story now turns fascinating! She was not always a poor girl. She was a well to do lady but the corrupt business partner of her husband, who has 6 fingers in his hands, had robbed them! The film,through a song, takes us to Switzerland, Australia and some part of Africa as she and her dead husband sing and dance. However, the evil partner lusts after her body and her husbands property. When the song is done, they realise that they are penniless. Her husband dies while trying to save her "izzat", falling off a cliff.

Now, she is facing other problems. The local goon has set his eyes on her and as expected, lusts after her. It does not help matters as she always goes around dressed in deep cleavage and body hugging outfits. The local goon, though works for the big Don in Dubai. Inspite of all hardship, she ensures that her kids go to school daily in starched white uniforms! Jamal is the bright kid.

Time goes on. One day the local goon tries to rape her. After showing in graphic detail the rape scene, we are shown how she manages to escape by hitting his eyes. She just has time to make the kids escape. Just as the goon closes in, she kills herself to preserve her purity.

The movie moves forward. The 3 kids, dressed smartly, do petty job. But they all sneak into schools and study under street lights. Now and then, they hum the tune that their mom used to sing with their father. One day, they see the goon who killed their mom. Salim kills him. In the ensuing melee, jamal loses the other 2.

10 years pass. Jamal (now played ny Zayed Khan) works in a call center. Though he is a Chai waala, he is respected by all for his intellect and wisdom. The managers hold him in high esteem and he solves everyones problem. All the call centers female executive (surprisingly all dressed as sluts) plot to get his attention. However, he still loves Latika. This is shown to the audience through a foot tapping item number done by Kareena Kapoor.

Jamal has an idea. He decides to play his family song on radio city. Radio city accepts and on hearing it, Salim (now played by Shahruk Khan) rushes to the station (the time interval for jamal singing, Salim hearing and arriving at the station has been kept at 4 mins). The two brothers embrace as the teary eyed radio city staff look on.

Jamal finds out about Salim. Salim is now the right hand man of the Dubai based gangster. He is rich. Jamal decides to stay with him. He finds out about Latika (Rani Mookherjee). She is now a Bar dancer. Though she is thought as a low woman, she is still pure and virgin. Every morning, she walks around the tulsi plant (always dressed in a body hugging, tight , wet white sari). Latika manages to keep all evil man away from her. She had waited for Jamal. The moment Jamal is about to kiss her, she forgets all about her longing and starts singing.

In this now perfect world, dark clouds loom. The dubai based Don returns and sees latika. As expected, he lusts after her. Salim is in confusion. His girlfriend (played by Priyanka Chopra), who is a prostitute with a heart of gold advises him to leave everything and run away. Jamal realises that the only way he can solve this is by winning a lot of money. So he decides to play KBC.

We then jump into the present. After sometime in the Police Station, jamal slips into a coma. The doctors tells them that they cannot save him now and only God can work out some miracle. After this, we see a song where Latika is praying in a temple, salim is in a mosque and Salims Girlfriend is in a church. When they all simultaneously finish singing their songs, jamal wakes up and is ready for KBC.

The Don realises that if Jamal wins KBC, he will lose Latika. So he decides to attack the KBC station. When they reach there, however, they find Salim baring their way. The Don tries to win him over. Suddenly Salim sees that the Don has 6 fingers on his hands. He realises that this was the same person who had robbed their property. The Don relishes and says he will wipe out the entire family today. But no such luck. Salim wipes out the entire gang. But he takes a fatal shot as he is killing the Don. badly hurt, he staggers inside.

Inside, Jamal is about to answer the last question. It is then the Quiz master (Amitabh Bachan) sees an open locket dangling from Jamal's neck. He is shocked and asks him how he got that locket. He is all teary eyed as Jamal tells him that his dead mom had given it to him. By then jamal also answer the last question correctly and wins the prize. Latika comes and hugs him. The quiz master than reveals, to the shock of everyone, that he is their father. He tells him how he tried to search for his mother but never found her after he came out of the hospital after falling from the cliff.

The scene is broken by Salim staggering inside in a pool of blood. The audience sitting inside sit in rapt attention as a family reunion takes place. After talking to everyone for 5 mins, Salim dies in Jamals arm. Before he dies, he finds out that his girl friend is pregnant with his child. As he dies, the sad version of the family song is played.

Finally, we have the marriage of jamal and Latika, both dressed in traditional Punjabi outfit. Their is song and dance, while salims girl friend keeps on thinking about him. Finally, the song is over. The director fast forwards us to the future. We see all of them in a hospital room, with Latika holding her newborn baby and Jamal holding her. They decide to name it salim. As they dim out, the family song plays in the background.

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This is a sure contender for best movie, best direction, best actors and best actress at the Filmfare awards.

A Bird eye view....

I went for my grocery shopping a few days back...while i was waiting for my bus, i noticed something strange...it is worth writing about....

I was a very cold day...the previous day has been even colder...Because of that, the birds were behaving strangely.... there were thousands and thousands of birds in a a small area, just flying randomly in groups.... in fact the whole sky looked full of birds...they came, sat on an electricity line, then flew away, came again...it was very fascinating to see this....suddenly i observed something peculiar....

I am no Ornithologist, a person who studies birds.... Also all my prior experience of "Bird watching" were totally off the track!!! so i started this exercise without any prior bias...

Next time you see a large flock of birds sitting on a cable, you will observe that 90-100 % of the birds sit facing the same direction!!!! Agreed its not a path breaking observation...but i could not ignore the beauty of it....it looked so planned and much more sophisticated arrangement than a simple "bird brain" thought!!! I decided to observe it for some more time...

As the number of birds kept on increasing, the probability that the new bird will sit facing the popular direction increased...infact, after some time, i could have bet thousand rupees that the next bird will sit in which fashion!!! it was strangely funny... closer examination....i saw an even more funny thing...a new bird who come to the line can approach it in any direction...he then takes a right turn and comes and sits in the "normal" way.... if he sits in the opposite way, HE OR SHE ACTUALLY LOOKS AROUND, and changes the position.....I know all this sounds weird...I suggest you can try this excercise on your own and i am confident that you will come out with the same results!!!

Then one more thought hit me...why this is so? I could think of only two possible reason... One that there is some source of stimulus (like sunlight) in that particular direction, or secondly, it is just herd instinct!!!I think it is a combination of both the factor...then again there is something else i noticed.... the birds did not necessarily search for places where their allignment towards the maximum stimulus would be optimized!!!!! (I hope you are still with me....If u think this guy is going way over board with his birdy thing, i can understand!!!).... Like if you have 2 parallel cable across the road, birds on both side will face each other and the road!!!

Then i thought wheteher everything depended on how the first bird who came sat down.... unfortunately i could not observe this...but i could make an extrapolation.... if the first bird came and sat down in a particular manner, the probability is 90% that the next bird will sit in the same manner. For the third bird, it will be 95% and we can keep on going ahead!!!! btw dont quothe the figures anywhere!!!!!

Now, why does the first bird choose a particular direction? Here i think stimulus plays a part....I refuse to accept it that it is a total random event! The first bird has all possible options to choose from and he chooses the one that best suits him...the stimulus may be weak, but it may push him or her towards a particular orientation....what follows next i have already discussed!!!

Funny..... I think this is exactly how our traditions, culture and ethics developed... At one point somewhere in the past, the first person or first group of who came to a place started following a practice.... The other who came later copied them!!!