Slumdog Millionaire at IP Mall

Just a few days prior to our departure from Banaras, the other interns and I decided to take the high school kids that we tutor to see a movie as a goodbye outing. We assumed that the kids would want to see a Bollywood movie, which we thought might be a fun way to test our Hindi after having studied it for six months. Instead, the kids were all very interested in seeing Slumdog Millionaire, since it was drawing a lot of attention the world over. "Because, didi," my student Pooja said to me, "this is very famous movie about India."

On the day of the movie, the eight of us (five students and three didis) crammed into a couple of autorickshaws and headed to IP Mall. The movie was playing in one of Varanasi's only air-conditioned theatres, equipped with deliciously comfortable reclining chairs. Our students were extremely excited to be there; none of them had every been to the mall or to that theatre before, and seeing a movie was clearly considered a very special treat. I don't think that it would be flattering our vanity too much to say that the opportunity to socialize with their three Canadian didis made the outing all the more special for the kids.


Like all movies that play in Banaras, the movie was in Hindi. That meant that the English parts of the movie were dubbed over, and the subtitles during the Hindi parts of the movie were taken out. But between our minimal Hindi knowledge, our ability to read visual cues, and the opportunity to ask questions of our students, we were able to get the gist of the story.


I think it's fair to say that we all enjoyed the movie. The kids were excited to see an artful and critically-acclaimed movie that drew the world's attention to their own country. I was delighted by the experience of seeing a movie set in the country that had finally begun to feel familiar--just as I was getting ready to leave it. Perhaps the most thrilling aspect of the whole experience was the opportunity to compare the kids who accompanied us with the kids being portrayed in the film. Our students, in addition to many other kids on WLC scholarships, come from very poor homes. Many of them live with their families in one-room houses in slums, many of them have already had to work, often selling candles and postcards to tourists, but the difference is that they're all being educated at good schools thanks to unfamiliar donors across the world.

After the movie, we all headed over to McDonald's for lunch--something of novelty in Banaras. Then we hung around the mall eating ice cream, playing video games, and people-watching.



All in all, the outing felt like the perfect way to end our tutoring sessions. Our students are a group of tremendously bright, respectful, compassionate, and hardworking young people, and I already miss them dearly. I only hope that our goodbye outing was as memorable for them as it was for me.