Mumbai slums hail Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar triumph
Among those following the Academy Awards with baited breath were hundreds of slumdwellers from the impoverished Mumbai neighbourhood that supplied the child stars who helped make Slumdog Millionaire the evening's outstanding winner. Scores of people gathered to watch the Oscars ceremony on television in the tiny ramshackle hutments of Garib Nagar, the area where the film's British director, Danny Boyle, found Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, and Rubina Ali Qureshi, 9, who play the film's lead characters as children. The announcement that Slumdog had won the award for best picture was greeted with whoops of joy by locals who hope that that the film's success – it won eight awards in all – will rub off on them. Rubina's mother told The Times: "It is not just important for my daughter that the film won, though she did work really hard: it was important for all of India. Yakub Abdul Sheikh, a neighbour of Azharuddin's family for 40 years, said: "We prayed t...