MUMBAI, India — The 10-year-old child star of “Slumdog Millionaire” was awakened Thursday by a policeman wielding a bamboo stick and ordered out of his home. Minutes later it was bulldozed along with dozens of other shanties in the Mumbai slum he calls home.
“I was frightened,” said Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who lost his pet kittens in the chaos.
“Where is my chicken?” he asked forlornly, picking through the shamble of broken wood and twisted metal sheeting in search of the family hen.
Eight Oscars and $326 million in box office receipts have done little so far to improve the lives of the two impoverished child stars plucked from obscurity to star in the blockbuster. They have been showered with gifts and brief bursts of fame, but their day-to-day lives in the Garib Nagar slum — the “city of the poor” — are little changed.
After the latest misfortune, Azhar and his family will be spending the night on the muddy ground surrounded by the rubble of their shack. His 9-year-old co-star Rubina Ali has fared no better: her family’s shanty was flooded for days last month with sewage water from a backed-up drain.
For Azhar’s family, the latest problem began at 11 a.m. Thursday, when a bulldozer and about 100 men descended on the slum to tear down 30 illegally built homes — a common occurrence in India’s chaotic cities, where officials struggle to keep crowding under control.
The result is a cycle of destruction and debt few can escape.
U.D. Mistry, an official with the city’s Bombay Municipal Corporation, said the latest razing was part of a “pre-monsoon demolition drive.”
He said only illegally built shanties — not homes that were legally owned — were bulldozed.
“They were removed. That is the principle,” he said, adding he was not aware the young “Slumdog” star lived in the slum.
Mistry said shanty dwellers who can prove they have lived there more than 15 years — which would include Azhar’s family — will be resettled elsewhere in government housing. Such promises often come to nothing, though, and even when slum-dwellers are given housing, it is often in poor-quality buildings on the outskirts of cities, far from jobs.
Residents of Garib Nagar vowed Thursday to rebuild, though many have yet to pay off the loans they took out — at 20 percent monthly interest — to reconstruct the shanties they lost when the city tore them down last year.
Azhar’s mother sat despondently Thursday afternoon on the stack of belongings the family managed to save. Nearby, Azhar dodged piles of metal sheeting and debris as he rode through his destroyed neighborhood on a shiny new bike given to him by a fan from Britain, a fancy black-and-red helmet on his head.
Azhar wants to move. “I am fed up,” he said.
Behind him a wrinkled movie poster of “Slumdog Millionaire” waved in the breeze. Scrawled in black marker was a message from the movie’s director, Danny Boyle: “Azhar, with love and thanks, Danny Boyle.”
“Slumdog” filmmakers say they’ve done their best to help the young stars. They set up a trust to ensure the children get proper homes, a good education and a nest egg when they finish high school. They also donated $747,500 to a charity to help slum kids in Mumbai.
Producer Christian Colson has described the trust as substantial, but won’t tell anyone how much it contains — not even the children’s parents — for fear of making the youngsters vulnerable to exploitation.
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