Slumdog Millionaire versus Q&A

In my experience, movies based on books rarely live up to the promise of the book. But as I started reading Q&A by Vikas Swarup while comparing it to Slumdog Millionaire I found it hard to unequivocally decide which was better – the book or the movie. So I decided to do it the quantitative way!. I wanted to compare the two and assign points as I went along. Eventually I gave up because it turned into a no contest.

First of all we have the issue to of language/medium. I am okay with everyone talking in English because that is the language of the movie (and the book), but the movie is inconsistent with it’s usage of language. It is as if the director couldn’t make up his movie whether he wanted to use Hindi or not. In the book, this problem is not there but there is another, more serious, problem. The author dumps thoughts and experiences on the narrator that the narrator could not possibly have ever had. I don’t have the book with me right now and I read it a few weeks ago, so I do not have an example, but if you have read The White Tiger or A Fine Balance you would know what I am talking about.
Book: 0 Movie: 0

In the book, the show is called Who Will Win a Billion or W3B. The protagonist wins the jackpot before even the first episode is aired. The producers don’t have the revenue to afford a billion rupee prize until the first eight months. They offer the commissioner of police a cut of 10% (of what?) to prove the protagonist guilty. The police have a confession almost signed before a young female lawyer mysteriously appears and rescues our guy.

I thought that the book was more irreverent and cynical (a prize of a billion! the biggest prize ever!) and the producers have a more credible motive of denying the prize. Book wins.

The first question in the book concerns Armaan Ali (and not Amitabh Bachchan) who is the next big superstar in the tradition of Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan. It is the hero’s friend (not brother Salim) who is a devoted fan of the film star, not the hero himself. The whole episode is quite silly in the book but handled pretty well in the movie. Movie wins this one.

In the book, the protagonist is abandoned at a church. He is adopted by a Christian family but his adopted mother runs away and his adopted father returns him to the church where he grows up without realizing the difference between father and Father. The church undergoes the danger of being attacked for “conversions” so the boy is renamed Ram Mohammed Thomas (after a brief debate over the merits of names Ram Thomas and Mohammed Thomas)

The movie turns him into a Muslim boy orphaned by rioting Hindus. More dramatic but I like the book version (even though the book character sounds like Anthony Gonsalves). Book wins.

At some point the stories in the movie and the book start to diverge. A point to note here is that, unlike the movie, in the book the order of the questions does not chronologically align with the incidents of the protagonists life. Thus, the narration jumps back and forth making you do the guesswork to fill the gaps between the different story fragments. I find is hard to understand why the director would throw out this interesting non-linear narration in favour of the straight line and predictable story line in the movie. Book wins again.

In the book I kept waiting for Latika to show up. There happens to be a girl on the train though who Thomas rescues from a dacoit but she is quickly forgotten. There is no mention of the three musketeers. Should the movie lose a point for being too lovey-dovey? Was Danny Boyle attempting a “Bollywood” take on the story here? Not so sure here.

Book: ? Movie: ?

Okay, so after a point, the book loses it completely. No point bothering with the scores because halfway through the story, the book becomes too *fantastic* using too many coincidences and doesn’t even pretend to be realistic. Given that the movie itself is fantasy-like, you have to imagine how worse the book would be.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the questions from the book and the associated flashbacks:

Question 1: Can you name the blockbusting film in which Armaan Ali starred with Priya Kapoor for the very first time?

Flashback: Thomas lives in a Mumbai Chawl. He’s about 13 and he works at a foundry. His friend and roommate Salim is a huge Armaan Ali fan.

Question 2: What are the initials on a cross?

Flashback: Thomas is raised by a christian priest and lives with him in a church in Delhi until he is murdered. After that he is taken into a remand home.

Question 3: Which is the smallest planet in the solar system?

Flashback: Thomas lives in a chawl in Mumbai. Next door to him is a disgraced scientist Shantaram who has to work as a clothes salesman. Thomas becomes friends with Shantaram’s daughter Gudiya. Gudiya has a cat named Pluto (her father is a scientist, remember). Shantaram takes to drinking and assaulting his daughter.Thomas pushes him off the stairs one night and kills him to save Gudiya. He runs away by train to Mumbai.

Question 4: Surdas, the blind poet, was a devotee of which God?

Flashback: Thomas is bought from the remand home by Maman and taken to Mumbai. Actually, his friend Salim is bought because of his good voice and Thomas is given away as a freebie. Salim thinks Thomas’ name is Mohammed (which is his middle name). Maman has them trained for singing. Thomas meets one-legged Radhey and learns about a former actress Neelima Kumari who needs a servant. One day Thomas and Salim overhear Maman and Co. talking about bliding Salim and run away. Thomas starts working as a servant for Neelima Kumari.

Question 5: What does it mean when a diplomant is declared persona non grata?

Flashback: Thomas works in Delhi for an Australian diplomant Col Taylor who replaced Col Waugh (Waugh? Taylor? really! who’s next – Ponting?). Thomas finds out that Taylor is involved in espionage. Thomas calls the police on him. Col Taylor is declared persona non grata.

Question 6: Which of these is the capital of Papua New Guinea?
a) Port Louis b) Port-au-Prince c) Port Moresby d) Port Adelaide

Flashback: Thomas works as a bartender in Bombay. One day he meets a customer Prakash who gets drunk and narrates his entire life story to him. Prakash works for his brother Arvind. He goes to NY on business and meets a Haitian woman Julie (from Port-au-Prince) who marries him for money. Later he goes on a honeymoon with her to Port Louis. Prakash is getting drunk because he feels guilty about having abetting Julie in killing Arvind using voodoo magic(yeah really!). Now he has fallen out with Julie and wants to marry his secretary. As his narration ends, he dies at the bar from a massive voodoo magic inflicted heart attack

Question 7: Who invented the revolver?

Flashback: Thomas is leaving Delhi because he no longer has the job at Col Taylor’s residence. He has his entire earnings in 50 crisp 1000 rupee notes on his person. There is a dacoity on the train and he loses the entire sum. As the dacoits are leaving, one of them tries to molest the girl sitting in the same coupe with Thomas. Thomas shoots him with a gun(a Colt) he stole from Prakash but the money is already gone with the other dacoits. Thomas escapes from the train and hops trains all night, unknowingly reaching Agra in the morning.

Question 8: What is the highest award for gallantry given to Indian armed forces?

Flashback: There is a war. A full blown war like 1971. Thomas is in his chawl in Bombay. An ex-army veteran tells tall tales about his bravery in 1971 which won him the PVC. He hangs himself when people find out that he was a deserter.

Question 9: How many centuries has Sachin scored?

Flashback: Thomas is back in Bombay after leaving Agra. He runs into his old friend Salim on the streets. Salim is in acting school now. It so turned out that he met this junior artist during his dabbawala duties. That encouraged him to try for an acting job. He went to a photographer but found it cheaper to buy a camera than to have photos taken. During his random photo shoot, one of the subjects turned out to be Maman (the beggar master). Running away from Maman, Salim gets into a bus where he is almost killed by a Hindu mob instead. Another Muslim passenger, Ahmed, scares away the mob by producing a gun. Salim starts working for this guy but later finds out that he is a contract killer. One day Salim finds out that Ahmed is going to kill the producer who has promised him a role. So he swaps the producers photo with Maman’s photo. The producer offers Salim a two year course in acting. In the meanwhile, Ahmed loses money after betting on Sachins’s 37th century.

Question 10: Which year did Neelima Kumari win her National Award?

Flashback: Thomas is in Bombay working for Neelima Kumari. Her mother dies. She has a lover who tortures here with cigarette burns. Neelima Kumari dismissed here other servants, commits suicides by ODing on painkillers.

Question 11: Costard is a character in which Shakespeare play?

Flashback: Thomas is in Agra. He falls in love with a prostitute Nita but needs four lakhs to free her. He steals the money but the demand is raised to six lakhs because some client tortured Nita with cigarettes. He gives away the money to some arbitrary gentleman whose son is dying. The gentleman gives thomas his card. As Thomas is leaving he sees an ad – for W3B. Later, during the show, Thomas finds the card in his pocket. The guy, Utpal Chatterjee, is an English teacher. Thomas uses Friendly Tip to call him. The English teacher has to guess!

The One Billion question: What was the name of the Mumtaz Mahal’s father.

Flashback: Thomas knows this from his Agra days. The producers pretend that the question wasn’t for real (a try ball !).

The One Billion question II: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata number 29, opus 106, also known as the Hammerklavier Sonata, is in which key?

Flashback: Thomas goes to the toilet. Prem, the host, has to accompany him. Thomas pulls a gun in the toilet. He is on the show to avenge Neelima Kumari and Nita. Prem gives Thomas the answer. Thomas uses LifeBoat to eliminate two answers. He finally goes with the answer Prem gave him. He wins a billion.

***

In the end it turns out that the lawyer who rescued Thomas was Gudiya, Shantaram’s daughter. Shantaram had only broken a leg and that magically fixed his drinking problems. Prem Kumar dies mysteriously. Maman’s beggars are freed. Thomas ghost produces a movie for Salim. Thomas marries Nita and buys a Benz and a Ferrari. He throws away his lucky coin because “luck comes from within”.