Dreams die fast for India’s poor.
Shafiq Syed, who played Krishna, the adorable chaipau kid in Mira Nair’s 1988 film Salaam Bombay, is now a grownup driving an auto-rickshaw in Bangalore.
Apparently, the success of Salaam Bombay did not do much for Shafiq Syed’s prospects in Bollywood, according to a TOI story.
Wonder what will happen to the poor Slumdog Millionaire kids. They are now riding the crest of popularity thanks to the phenomenal success of the movie at the box office and at the Oscars.
But after the media attention wanes and the Slumdog Millionaire buzz fades as it inevitably will, will these kids also fade into obscurity like Shafiq Syed.
Ten years from now, will this blog do a post on Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail (who played the young Salim in Slumdog Millionaire) pulling a cycle-rickshaw in the narrow alleys of Patna or Chennai?
Who knows.
Since it’s Incredible India, anything’s possible.
We are not the betting kind but if we were, we’d wager that Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail a.k.a. Salim will slip into obscurity sooner than you can say Jack Rabbit.
Krishna – Auto-Rickshaw Driver; Salim – CycleRicksaw Puller? added by SearchIndia.com on
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The fame/money has already gone to the heads of people in his family and that’s when you know the house of cards will come crashing down and he will be stuck in his current situation a decade from now, trust fund or no trust fund. There was a report last week about his father slapping Azharuddin because he didn’t want to wake up to give an interview to a newspaper his father promised access to, presumably because said newspaper was probably promising to throw 100 rupees at his father at the completion of the interview.