Slumdog Millionaire’s young stars return to slum lives

London, March 07: Even with its huge success, the movie Slumdog Millionaire has not been able to make a difference in the lives of its stars, who were seen back at the same place they were before – the slums. Child star Azharuddin Ismail still stays in a plastic-sheet shack, which is close to a fetid stream of raw sewage, and even after the glitzy Oscars ceremony, he and his co-star Rubina Ali, nine, still live in the putrid stench and squalor of their Mumbai slum home.

Azharuddin Ismail, or Azhar as his friends call him, shares the ramshackle 4ft by 8ft home of blue and yellow plastic sheets with his family, and dines on cow’s milk and pao, a type of soft bread. He and his father Mohammed Ismail and mum Shameen sleep on a dirt-strewn floor on grimy blankets, and for warmth, they would huddle close to one another. And their toilet, shared by hundreds of others, is the filthy stream running behind the shack, clogged with sewage and stinking household waste. It is hardly the life of a movie star, and Azhar, who has been described, as a “flower growing in the muck” of the slums by his dad, is eager to get out. “I won’t be in the slum for ever. I want to be an actor,” a website quoted him as saying. ANI