My Life as a "Slumdog" Trivia Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. When we first saw the young Jamal with his bother Salim, they were playing cricket in a rather unconventional location. Jamal was playing as a fielder and tried to catch the ball, but was knocked down to the ground by something. Where were the children playing?

Answer: On an airport tarmac

The children were playing cricket on the runway of an airport situated next to the slums, and Jamal was knocked backwards while trying to catch the ball when an airplane came in for a landing. They were evidently trespassing, because airport security suddenly appeared on motorcycles to run the children off the airport's land, which led to a colorful and breathtaking chase through the Juhu slums.

The exhilarating scene played out to the strains of "O Saya", the Oscar-nominated song by A.R. Rahman.

2. Life in the slums was hard, and you made your money any way you could. From a young age, Salim was always the more enterprising of the two brothers. How did Salim earn a living at the start of the movie?

Answer: He operated a pay toilet.

Salim was shown charging people to use an outdoor toilet located at the edge of the slums at the start of the movie. When Salim lost a customer because Jamal was taking too long in the toilet, Salim got back at Jamal by trapping him in the toilet when he wanted to get Amitabh Bachchan's autograph. Jamal only managed to get the autograph by jumping through the toilet hole and holding Amitabh's photo high above his head so that it wouldn't get soiled. Salim still came out on top in the end, because he sold the autograph to a cinema projectionist while Jamal was having a bath.

3. After the attack on the slums, Jamal and Salim were orphaned and hiding out in an empty container to escape a heavy downpour. They were followed there by a very young Latika, another survivor of the attack, who waited outside in the rain, too scared to share their hiding place without their permission. Who invited Latika to sleep in the container?

Answer: Jamal

When they were playing, Jamal and Salim used to call themselves "Athos" and "Porthos", after two of "The Three Musketeers" they had learnt about in school. Jamal wanted to invite Latika in to share their container, saying that she could be the third musketeer, but Salim wouldn't hear of it. "I'm the elder in this family now," Salim said, "and I say she's not coming in, okay?" Later, when Jamal thought that Salim was asleep, Jamal called out for Latika to come in out of the rain. Salim was actually awake, but he did nothing to stop Jamal.

4. Salim, Jamal and Latika were "rescued" by Maman, and brought to a commune in the hills on the edge of Bombay. Where were the three children when Maman found them?

Answer: In a rubbish dump

The children were living in a rubbish dump when they were picked up by Maman. Latika was sifting through the trash looking for something to sell, and Salim and Jamal were asleep in a makeshift tent to escape from the sweltering heat, when Maman pulled up in a dirty yellow van.

He offered Salim and Jamal cold bottles of soda, and brought all three children to live with others just like them in an old, rundown house. They were given food to eat and a roof over their heads, but Maman wasn't as altruistic as he appeared to be, for he only rescued the children to train them to be beggars for his own personal gain.

5. After the orphaned children were taught how to beg for a living, Salim was placed in charge of them. He wanted Latika to take a baby with her for the day, but she refused initially. How did Salim convince Latika to take the baby?

Answer: By threatening to drop the baby

Salim went over to Latika and held out the baby. "Take her. It's for your own good," he said. "Babies earn double." When Latika refused, Salim said, "Take her now, or I'll drop her," and pretended to do just that. Latika reached out and grabbed the crying baby, while Salim just laughed. "Keep her crying and you'll earn triple," he told her. Jamal did not approve, but couldn't do anything to stop his brother.

6. After Salim forced Latika to beg with the baby, Jamal and Latika played a prank on Salim involving crushed dried chillies. What did they do with the chillies?

Answer: They placed them on his groin while he was sleeping.

Jamal and Latika picked the hottest chillies they could find, crushed them up (using gloves of course), and placed them on Salim's groin while he was asleep. Before long, Salim was awake and shouting in agony, to the delighted screams of the other children. Salim ran to the shower to hose himself down, and swore that he would get back at Latika.

7. When Salim discovered that Maman intended to blind Jamal so that he could make more money begging, he risked his own life to save his brother. The two of them escaped from Maman by jumping on a departing train. Why wasn't Latika with them?

Answer: Salim let go of her hand when she was trying to climb onto the train.

When Maman was going to blind Jamal, Salim created a diversion by throwing a bottle of chloroform in the face of Maman's henchman. Latika had been watching from a hole in the wall, and the three children made a run for it, with Maman and his men in pursuit. Salim and Jamal managed to climb onto a train as it was leaving the depot, but Latika was slower and was running to catch up. Salim held out his hand for Latika, but at the last moment he let go of her grasp to get back at her for the prank she pulled on him earlier. Latika was left standing at the side of the tracks. Jamal wanted to go back for her, but Salim told him what Maman had planned to do to his eyes, and convinced him that they would be killed if they went back. "Don't worry about her.

She'll be fine," Salim said to Jamal. "She always is."

8. When Jamal was mistaken for a tour guide by a couple of German tourists at the Taj Mahal, he sportingly played the part, and even supplied a history lesson about the famous tourist attraction that was more fiction than fact. He correctly informed them that the Taj was built by the Emperor in memory of his deceased wife, but fed them an erroneous account of how she died. According to Jamal, what killed the Emperor's wife?

Answer: A road traffic accident

In one of the funniest sequences in the movie, Jamal told the German tourists that the Taj Mahal was built by Emperor Khurrum for his wife Mumtaz, "the maximum beautiful woman in the world". He said that when she died, the Emperor decided to build "a five star hotel" for everyone who visited her tomb, but that he died before any of the rooms were built, or any of the lifts. "But the swimming pool, as you can see, was completed on schedule in top class fashion," Jamal explained, referring to the reflecting pool.

When asked how Mumtaz had died, Jamal solemnly said, "A road traffic accident. Maximum pile-up." When the tourist said that he thought she had died in childbirth, Jamal replied, "Exactly, Sir. She was on the way to hospital when it happened." In reality, Mumtaz died in 1631 while giving birth to her fourteenth child with the Emperor.

9. Just before they returned to Bombay, Salim and Jamal chanced upon an outdoor performance of an opera near the bank of the Yamuna River. What do Salim and Jamal do under the bleachers of the makeshift theatre?

Answer: They steal from the audience.

Salim, Jamal and a bunch of other street kids were shown stealing the handbags and belongings of the people watching the show. Jamal was shown briefly watching the opera, but that didn't stop him from stealing a purse or two. The opera being performed was Christoph Willibald Gluck's "Orph�e et Eurydice", which was based on the well-known Greek myth. According to the legend, Orpheus was so saddened by the death of his wife, Eurydice that he journeyed all the way to the underworld to convince Hades and Persephone to release her.

The myth had some parallels with the story of Jamal and Latika, as Jamal spent most of the movie trying to save his true love, Latika, from Bombay's "underworld".

10. Salim and Jamal finally found Latika getting dance lessons in a brothel in Bombay. They were about to leave with her, when Maman and his henchmen burst into the room. Who shot and killed Maman, ensuring that he could never hurt another child again?

Answer: Salim

Salim had brought a gun to the brothel, and could have walked away with Latika and his brother, but he couldn't take the risk that Maman wouldn't come after them, so he shot and killed Maman. Later, Salim went to seek out Javed, a rival of Maman's, who offered Salim a role in his organization. Latika was surprised but grateful that Jamal had come back for her - she thought that Jamal had forgotten all about her. "I never forgot.

Not for one moment," Jamal said to Latika. "I knew I'd find you in the end.

It's our destiny."

Source: Author jmorrow

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor skunkee before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Dev Patel was great in "Slumdog Millionaire", but it was the children who played the younger versions of Jamal, Salim and Latika who stole the show. This quiz explores the early events in the lives of these three children.

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