Millionaire Acts

I’m sure you are now all familiar with the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” by Danny Boyle. It gathered the most number of awards from the recent Oscars Awards. It’s all about the story of Jamal Malik, an 18-year old orphan from slums on Mumbai in India. He joined the Hindi version of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” game show and won.

With the whole country watching the show, he is just one question away from winning the grand prize of 20 million rupees. Unfortunately, just before he answer the last question, police arrested him on suspicion of cheating – how could a ”slumdog” like him know so much where in fact he has a low education? How come that he can be doing so well on the game show when others who are brigther, more educated and wealthier than him have failed?

Jamal answers these questions by telling his life story in the slums of Mumbai from his childhood with his brother Salim, his crush for Latika and their fight to survive on the streets to justify each correct answer that he has.

What are the lessons that we can learn from Slumdog Millionaire?

Experience is the best teacher. Jamal had experienced a lot of challenges living in the slums of Mumbai. The fight for survival taught him a lot of lessons in life. Some of these lessons cannot be learned through our traditional schools but through our experiences in real life.

Life is a learning experience. We need to fail first in order to succeed. During these different trials and challenges in our life, we become strong – we become street smart. Every experience that we had contributes on who we are right now.

Will power. There’s a saying that if there’s a will, there’s a way. One of his dream is to find his true love Latika. His will power and his eagerness to find Latika guided him to review his past experiences that ultimately led him into the right answers to the questions.

Be thankful for your blessings. As you can see in the film, there is a clear picture of poverty in the slums area. Millions of people in this world were given almost nothing. Comparing your situation to them, consider yourself as lucky and thank God for all the blessings that you’ve been receiving.

Honesty is the best policy. There’s this famous saying that “the truth shall set you free”. In this movie, Jamal is being accused of fraud and cheating as he knows every answer to the question. A lot of contestants who are more educated than him participated in the contest but they did not win. How can he won the game where in fact he’s not that educated? Each question was related to his life and with common sense, he got the right answers!

There is always hope. There is one scene in the movie where the entire city stops to see if Jamal can answer the final question. Mumbai turns into one parking lot, with its citizens, mostly the poor, tuning in and supporting their hero. During that sequence, Boyle enlarges the situation, from being a mere personal quest for Jamal to find Latika (and vice versa) into a national quest to prove that there is something more to life than poverty and suffering.

Even if you are in that hard situation right now, don’t lose hope. As long as you are alive, always expect the best to happen. Be optimistic and take the necessary actions.

How about you? What are the lessons that you’ve learned from this inspiring movie? Truly, Slumdog Millionaire deserved to have won the various awards from Oscars.

P.S. Here is the trailer of the movie if you haven’t watched it.

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