Slumdog Millionaire: A Novel (39 page)

8. How sweet is this story? And how sour?

9. Who is your favourite character? Which is your favourite episode?

10. Do you think this story could be set in any deprived area of the world – in London? New York? Mexico? What makes it especially Indian, and what makes it universal?

SECTION 3: READ ON

Other works set in Mumbai's underprivileged backgrounds:

Fiction:
Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories,
by Vikram Chandra (Faber, 1998)
Baumgartner's
Bombay,
by Anita Desai ( Heinemann,

1988}
Bombay Ice,
by Leslie Forbes (Weidenfeld, 1998)
A Fine Balance,
by Rohinton Mistry (Faber, 1997)
Bombay, Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai,
Edited by

Jerry Pinto, Naresh Fernandes (Penguin Books India, 2003)
The Death of Vishnu,
by Manil Suri (Bloomsbury,

2001)
Show Business,
by Shashi Tharoor (Picador, 1994)
Bombay Time,
by Thrity Umrigar (Picador USA, 2001)

Non-fiction:
Maximum City,
by Suketu Mehta (Review, 2005)
Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories
from Asia's Largest

Slum,
by Kalpana Sharma (Penguin Books India, 2000)

Web Detective

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay A
comprehensive history of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), including descriptions of the city's geog raphy, demographic, culture and media

http://www.himalmag.com/may2001/review.html An insi
ghtful review providing background on some of the issues tackled in
Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's Largest Slum
by author Kalpana Sharma

http://www.searchindia.com/search/bombay-pictures/ dha
ravi.html A photo depicting the squalid living conditions in Asia's largest slum located within rock-throw distance of the metropolis'

downtown

http://icmr.icfai.org/casestudies/catalogue/Leadership

%20and%20Entrepreneurship/LDEN028.htm A feature on the Mumbai Tiffin Carrier service, or

'dabbawalas' in Hindi, which was noted by
Forbes
magazine as one of the world's foremost entrepreneur ial successes – in the same league as multinationals Motorola and GE

http://kbc2.indya.com/index.html The
official website of
Kaun Banega Crorepati
(liter ally,

'Who Will Become a Millionaire'), the Indian version of
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

http://kbc2.indya.com/kbcl/kbcl_crorepati.html A link t
o the mini-biography of the only jackpot winner in the Indian
Millionaire
history

http://abc.go.com/primetime/millionaire/ showhig
hlights/players.html A list of the jackpot winners on ABC's original
Millionaire

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000821/bio http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0451321/bio

Biographies of Bollywood superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan, cited in the pages of
Q & A

http://www.indialawinfo.com/bareacts/ipc.html#_Toc

496765206

Link to Indian Penal Code sections 330 & 331 cited by Ram Mohammad Thomas' lawyer upon demanding his release from the police station