Why is a penniless waiter from Mumbai sitting in a prison cell? Is it because: a) he has punched a customer; b) he has drunk too much whisky; c) he has taken money from the till; or d) he is the biggest quiz-show winner in history?" So begins the tale of Ram Mohammad Thomas — arrested for answering 12 questions correctly on Who Will Win A Billion?
He is a poor orphan who hasn't ever read a newspaper or attended school and so cannot possibly have known the answers to the questions. This plot may sound familiar. It is, in fact, the opening paragraph of Q&A by Vikas Swarup; later made into the award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Q&A's protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas was renamed Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire.
Almost a year since the hit film was released, Weekend Review caught up with Swarup reflecting on the film, his inspiration, forthcoming work and where his brilliant story came from.
"I wanted to write something different. I did not want to write a typical family saga, a generational love story or a magical realist tale. And then it struck me, why not tap into the global phenomenon of the syndicated televised quiz show," Swarup said from Osaka-Kobe, Japan.
He is at present Consul-General of India in Japan, having previously worked as a diplomat in Pretoria, South Africa.
"The Indian edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire — Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) — became the most popular show in the history of Indian television. It changed the very definition of a quiz show. Earlier a quiz show used to be about showing your knowledge; [KBC] converted it into knowing the value of money. The issue was, who should be my contestant?" he said.
While he was creating Q&A, a scandal surfaced in Britain about a contestant cheating on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Charles Ingram, his wife Diana and college lecturer Tecwen Whittock were found guilty of "coded coughing" which led Ingram to the jackpot of £1 million.
Inspired by a project
"So I thought, let us have a contestant who would be accused of cheating but who would actually know the answers from his life's experiences. The inspiration for such a contestant came from a news report about slum children — who had never gone to school — using a public computer facility in a project called ‘Hole in the Wall' which was started by the National Institute of Information Technology in 1999," he said.
"This led me to juxtapose the quiz show format with the life story of an 18-year-old penniless waiter living in the biggest slum in Asia. I wanted to show that knowledge is not the preserve of the educated elite. This is how Q&A was born," Swarup said.
Slumdog Millionaire follows the life of brothers Salim and Jamal, [and] their struggle to survive.
Swarup needed to find an authentic voice for his protagonist, which meant he had to do a lot of research.
"I had never actually lived in Bombay. And I had not visited the slums of Dharavi where [Jamal] resided. So I did a lot of research," Swarup said.
"But research can only help you create an authentic backdrop. At a fundamental level, I believe all human beings are alike, with the same dreams, desires and passions. One only has to take certain things out of the equation [such as money] to visualise the lives of the disadvantaged," he said.
Readers are sometimes dismayed by film adaptations of their favourite books. What does Swarup feel about his novel's film adaptation?
"I had ‘creative control' on the screenplay. Simon Beaufoy consulted me before he began working on the script and even took on board some of my suggestions," Swarup said.
Edge for the written work
"Most readers tend to prefer the original novel over the film but it depends on how the work is adapted. Some films are very faithful to the original novel and some take more liberties. If the film is well made and preserves the soul of the original novel, it can add to the novel's appeal for a larger audience," Swarup said. "Films obviously have more impact because many more people see films than read books," he said.
Now, Swarup's second novel is due to have the same treatment as Q&A. John Hodge (of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave and The Beach fame) has recently been commissioned to write the screenplay for Six Suspects, and Radio 4 is making a radio play based on the novel.
Six Suspects was released in July 2008. In Swarup's words, it is an unconventional murder mystery — the tale of six people (a corrupt bureaucrat, a clever actress, a small-time thief, a credulous American, a stone-age tribesman and an ambitious politician) who are all suspects in a murder investigation.
"I wanted to experiment with a polyphonic narrative. So using the anatomy of murder as the framing device, I have tried to plot a narrative with six different voices." Like Q&A, Six Suspects is also structured. The book is divided into six parts — Murder, Suspects, Motives, Evidence, Solution and Confession, and is now being translated into 21 languages.
