It’s been a rough two weeks for the child actors who starred in the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. First, the shanty home of Azharuddin Ismail, who played the main character’s older brother Salim, was razed by Mumbai authorities who wanted to clear the path to the drain it was located near before the monsoons. “When they came I was sleeping, they shook me awake and one policeman even threatened me,” Ismail told reporters from Reuters. “What can I do if they have demolished my house? I will sleep out in the open.”

Then, a week later, Mumbai’s railway authorities did the same thing to the makeshift dwelling of Rubina Ali, who played the heroine Latika. A spokesman for the railway said that “These structures were on railway land, which is for the benefit of commuters and to be used by the railways.” Rubina wasn’t home when the police arrived to demolish her home, which was lucky, since they beat her father with bamboo rods when he tried to stand in their way, sending the man to the hospital.

Evidently starring in an Oscar-winning film that grossed over 338 million dollars doesn’t preclude you from being homeless.

Granted, the kids are better off than they were before the movie. (Even if there were allegations that Rubina’s father tried to sell her to an undercover reporter posing as a sheik.) They were given 150,000 rupees for the movie, about $3,000.00 American, and a stipend for daily living expenses. They were enrolled in school, a new experience for them. And the filmmakers have ostensibly set up a trust fund that the kids will receive upon graduation from high school, but they won’t tell anyone how much money it is for fear that the kids will be exploited. (Or in the hopes that they will be less embarrassed by the sum in a decade, who knows?)

But the last I had heard, the precocious cherubs who put Mumbai on the map had been promised brick-and-mortar homes from both the filmmakers and the government. So what gives? Why aren’t these children comfortably ensconced in modest apartments, safe from the monsoons, policemen with bamboo sticks, and inconvenienced railway commuters?

In a Feb 25 interview with director Daniel Boyle and producer Christian Colson, the masterminds behind Slumdog Millionaire, they assured the UK’s Daily Mail that the two children and their families would be moved to flats worth 20,000 pounds within a couple months. “These are bricks and mortar flats,” Boyle said. “They will have electricity, running water and good sanitation.” But, “They have looked at a number of places but like anyone choosing a home, it is taking some time for them to agree on a final one.”

Really? They’re still living in the slums because they haven’t been able to decide which house to buy?

In defense of the filmmakers, their previous strategy for getting the children into proper homes hadn’t worked. (They had tried once before, after the first time Ismail’s hut was razed, several months ago.) At that time Colson said, “The way Azharuddin is living now is substandard. We were told his home was razed a few months ago, and wired money over immediately. The family gave that money to a broker, who promised to find them a new place to live, but has simply disappeared with the cash.

“We realized just sending money is not the answer and have evolved our plans over the past few weeks,” Colson continued. “The families are not equipped to cope with that sort of money.”

Evidently. But still, one would think that people clever enough to create a film that swept the Oscars could figure out a way to get these kids and their families into real homes posthaste. And since their shanties have been demolished and the monsoons are on the way, there’s no time like the present.

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(Original photo by Jorge Cortell, used under Creative Commons license.)