"Slumdog Millionaire" (or "Q&A") by Vikas Swarup

Read: 4/8/09

4/5 stars

I had little intention of reading this book before I had seen the movie. However, since my tutee started reading it and I thought it would be great to use it in one of our activities, I promptly went through five bookstores in two cities just to find a copy. Why did the four other bookstores in one city not have a copy? I honestly do not know, given it's such a popular work already courtesy of the multi-Academy winning movie adaptation.

So, like what usually happens, I've read the book before seeing the movie. Unlike what usually happens, I liked the movie better than the book.

"Q&A" (I much prefer to use the original title) is a highly readable and entertaining work. It carries the same premise as the movie--a boy from the slums of India becomes a contestant on a quiz show and goes on to win the biggest prize ever won by any individual in any game show. His veracity is doubted, however, because authorities reason out that a boy of his background and education cannot possibly know the answers to the questions. The boy then tells the story of his life and, in the process, reveals how he legitimately knew the answers to the questions.

However, though the premise is the same, the events in the movie only parallel the events in the book. In "Q&A," the boy's name is Ram Mohammed Thomas, an Indian orphan of uncertain creed, hence the combination of the Hindi, Muslim, and Christian religions in his name. He spends his early childhood in an orphanage, has to leave it eventually, runs in with a Muslim boy named Salim who becomes his good friend, engages in various jobs from the time he is 8 years old, grows up and eventually falls in love. Then, he finds himself on the game show, with an agenda that has almost nothing to do with winning the money.

It seems like a simple enough story, and it is. But set that story in India where the main character experiences extreme poverty, yet still maintains an optimistic view in life and eventually is rewarded for it, then you have an excellent feel-good story. Granted, Q&A and its revelation of India isn't up to par with Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, but it makes for entertaining reading.

Then again, I say that I liked the movie better because, though the book is highly optimistic, it is also too unreal, the encounters much too given to chance. At least, in comparison to how the story was told in the movie. Ram's life experiences in the book come out too fragmented; the answers to the questions in the quiz show come from events in his life that have little relation to one another. What I liked about the movie is that it was able to present a more synthesized story, something less like fantasy.

On a final note--some of my friends comment that they like the movie but it is nothing spectacular since, if you live in a third-world country, you see much of the same thing. I would agree that the situations aren't that unfamiliar to me. But oftentimes, I read a book or watch a movie not to look for something shocking or totally unfamiliar. I read a book or watch a movie because how a character struggles with his lot in life is what interests me. On this count, I loved both the book and the movie.