Rubina & Azhar

FILM ini meraup sekitar Rp 3,8 triliun dari penjualan tiket hanya dalam delapan bulan. Keuntungan yang tak terbayangkan bila mengingat anggaran pembuatannya yang berkisar Rp 150 miliar. Tapi bagaimana dengan nasib aktor cilik yang memerankan film ini, apakah hidup mereka juga beruntung?

Saat ditemui oleh reporter bernama Mary Murphy April 2009, Azharuddin masih tinggal di perkampungan kumuh Garib Nagar, Mumbai, India. Azhar adalah pemeran Salim kecil dalam film  Slumdog Millionaire. Di situ pula bermukim Rubina Ali. Pemeran tokoh Latika saat masih kecil. Sang reporter menulis, ia kerap mengunjungi daerah-daerah kumuh di tiga benua. Dari keseluruhan tempat tersebut, Garib Nagar adalah kawasan pemukiman terkumuh yang pernah ia datangi.

Murphy bercerita, untuk dapat sampai ke rumah Azhar, ia harus melewati jalan yang penuh sampah dan melalui selokan yang dipenuhi kotoran. Seorang lelaki membuka celana dengan  seenaknya dan buang air kecil tepat di depan matanya. Bahkan ia juga melihat seorang perempuan buang air besar tak jauh dari tempat ia berdiri. Di atas perkampungan kumuh itu, terbentang jalan tempat orang berlalu-lalang dari stasiun kereta ke gedung-gedung pencakar langit yang mewah di Kompleks Bandra-Kurla. Di kompleks itulah berdiri kantor pusat Bursa Efek Nasional dan perusahan-perusahaan multinasional.

Rumah Azhar adalah gubuk berukuran 2,5×3 meter persegi. Tanpa atap kecuali sehelai plastik kuning dengan lubang besar yang dipasang di atas salah satu sudutnya. Ruang itu kosong melompong. Yang ada hanya sebuah televisi rusak, barang pecah belah yang juga sudah retak, beberapa bungkus tas plastik berisi pakaian serta tiga kaleng besar. Kaleng itu kadang digunakan sebagai toilet bagi empat anggota keluarga yang juga tinggal di situ.

Ketika Slumdog Millionaire dinominasikan dalam ajang Oscar pada Januari 2009, sang sutradara Danny Boyle mengemukakan bahwa ia punya rencana untuk menyekolahkan Azhar dan Rubina di sekolah berbahasa Inggris di lingkungan yang baru. Ironisnya, setelah pulang dari Los Angeles untuk menghadiri Academy Award pada pertengahan Pebruari 2009, nasib Azhar maupun Rubina nyaris tidak berubah.

Kawasan Kumuh Mumbai, India

Ibu tiri Rubina berang terhadap para pembuat film Slumdog karena mereka tidak langsung memberikan dana perwalian Rubina kepada keluarganya. Ayah Azhar juga mengeluhkan hal yang sama. Sehari-hari ia menjual potongan kayu untuk mendapatkan uang. Namun karena penyakit tuberkulosisnya memburuk, ia yang sudah kian kurus tidak bisa lagi menarik gerobak atau berjalan jauh. (Ayah Azhar akhirnya meninggal pada awal September 2009).

Kisah pilu para aktor cilik ini diangkat oleh Reader’s Digest India edisi April 2009. Juga tayang berita Dateline di stasiun NBC-TV. Beberapa koran pun ikut membeberkannya. Karena tekanan dari publik semakin besar, akhirnya para pembuat film Slumdog kembali ke Mumbai. Para produser film tersebut benjanji untuk kembali memberikan uang saku bulanan Rp 1,35 juta kepada tiap keluarga.

Akhirnya pada Juli 2009, Azhar beserta keluarganya pindah ke apartemen seluas 76 meter persegi di Santa Cruz seharga Rp 500 juta. Sayangnya, Rubina tidak seberuntung itu. Ayahnya menolak apartemen. Juga uang saku bulanan dan dana perwalian untuk Rubina. Mengapa? Sang produser Christiana mengatakan, “Ayah Rubina tidak ingin sepeser uang pun di tahan dalam dana perwalian. Semuanya harus ia pegang sendiri. Uang dan juga properti serta kendali langsung terhadap asset-aset tersebut. Dan kami tidak bersedia mengabulkannya!” ***

*Diolah dari Reader’s Digest Indonesia edisi November 2009 dan beberapa sumber lain.

Link review Slumdog Millionaire [klik]

Roma Annie Isobel, Alice Grace, Isabella Mavis, Vida May, Ivy Jean, Rubina Alice, Thora Mildred, Nora Elsie, Margaret Louisa, Eleanor Lillian, Alice Louisa, Ida Constance, Constance Winifred, Emily Mabel, Zeta Tui, Daisy Sylvia Florence, Audrey Josephine.

Henry Maxwell, Alexander Archibald, Herbert Edmond Henry, Bertram Thomas, Wallace Llewellyn, Russell Samuel

I received the following poem as a comment from a blog visitor. Her name is Rubina. Hope I have permission to disclose her name here in my blog. Have a read.

“When my life was a roller coaster,
You promised to be there,and you did.
You held on to me afraid that I will fall again.
You guided me out of the tunnel when I couldn’t see in the dark,
When I didn’t know which direction to go.

When I was tired,
You took a rest with me,lending me your shoulder to lean on.
You lend me a listening ear when you know I had so much to say.
You didn’t complain,you didn’t whine.
You just stayed on till I was ready again.

When I fell again,
You didn’t scold me,didn’t give up on me.
You made me make a promise,
But when I broke it,you were still patient with me.
You taught me new things,many lessons on how to treasure and appreciate.

When I finally stood up strong,
You told me you are proud of me.
I was touched and I know I couldn’t let you down anymore.
I made a decision to move on,to look forward,to look on the bright side.
So here I am, a totally different person!

Thank you my friend…

 

Another Poem from Rubina here again,
I peered thru life
Ever avoiding strife
But now I’am done
My barriers broken, for one has found me
Reached in and unbound me.

His love has made me feel alive
In everything I feel Ican survive
His need for me and mine for He
Has made a bright sunshine everyday

A nice new start
With hammering heart
We colored the world w/ our dream
Nothing is as it did seem
The darkness of my solitude is done
He is my rising Sun.

But I know that time will come
Coz something has been said and done
The sunshine and dream will be over
And evrything will be gone forever.

Yes, life is so unfair…

Rubina”

Thanks Rubina for your great comment. I have lots of things in my mind to write and there are few pages as draft in the blog which are not published yet as I need to give them shape.  I am not so busy but I need to sort out few things. I start  writing about something, either it becomes too long and can’t figure out how much detail to write about the issue or I need to read  more facts and figures about the issue. I always move to new issue without completing what I started. Thats why those articles remain in drafts.  I will take some comments from you and try to give new things to the blog visitors.

Your creations are welcome in the future too.

A slum section near Bandra (East) train station, Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Azhar and his family in front of their home. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

The home of Azhar in a slum near Bandra Station, Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Azhar is exercising in the slum where he still lives with his family next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Children are playing inside the slum next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Rubina Ali is looking at the mirror inside her uncle's house in the slum where she still lives with her family next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Rubina Ali is smiling while on the streets near her uncle's house in the slum where she still lives with her family next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

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It appears that almost eight months from the Oscars’ big night of Slumdog Millionaire, and after so many promises were made by those in the production circle and the Indian Government, the children might finally move out of the slums of Bandra Station, Mumbai.

Not only, but it seems the children might end up owning two houses each, or even more, as the details of various pledges are becoming more clear. Both the trust that Danny Boyle set up for the children and the Government  have promised new homes for the families, while there are rumors about a third one in the state of Kerala. If that was the case, the children might have really won it big this time. And come on, why not? I think they deserve it.

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Azhar is laughing with friends in the slum where he still lives with his family next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Azhar is playing with a water pump near a drain in the slum where he still lives with his family next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Rubina Ali is smiling while on the streets near her uncle's house in the slum where she still lives with her family next to the train station of Bandra (East), Mumbai, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

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The movie in itself, beautiful, but maybe a little too near to be a modern-day fairytale than anything else. There is some agreement over the clear existance of the social problems represented in the movie, but it would need 1 in 100 billion chances for the story plot to actually happen altogether.

But then, what about all the inspiring movies where something is clearly wrong with the odds of chance? They are movies, and that is a good enough reason. However, they should not be confused with real documentaries or journalism, even though a fictional movie might be based on or be inspired by real events, in this movie we are not provided with a clear perspective or in-depth reporting in the lives of street children in India, gangsters or the likes. We are given hints, yes, and we are offered a partial window over those realities in a way that might be similar to real-life experiences, however it should not be considered exhaustive at all.

Nevertheless, I believe this is not what the slumdog guys wanted their movie to be all about.

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On the other hand, a part of the magazine story was to meet Shafiq Syed, the other famous Indian child actor and main role of the 1988 Cannes Camera D’Or Winner ‘Salaam Bombay’ , directed by Mira Nair. Now a grown-up man of 34, he lost his grip on fame and works as a rickshaw driver in Bangalore, his home city.

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The poster of 1988 movie Salaam Bombay where Shaifq Syed, now 34, is the boy on the left. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Shaifq Syed, 34, is portrayed inside his home in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Shaifq Syed, 34, is driving his rickshaw from home to the city centre of Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

Shaifq Syed, 34, is smiling at his daughter, Simran, 7, while playing with his children in their home inside a poor neighbourhood of Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

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A happy father-of-three, he lives humbly but with the conscious pride of those people who feel they deserved more from what they have accomplished and failed to somehow obtain it. Let’s not forget that in his early teenage years, Shafiq was already living on the streets in both Bangalore and Mumbai, before being discovered and invited to act in the movie, which some say presents reality more objectively than Slumdog Millionaire.

After the fame (he wasn’t however taken to Cannes for the award ceremony – times were different I guess) Shaifq had to return to the streets for some time and he was not even allowed to live in the ‘home’ of the Salaam Balak Trust, an NGO established by the producers to help street children in India after the movie’s success. The reason being Shafiq was a couple of years older than the rest and would not ‘fit in’. How ironic…

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Shaifq Syed, 34, is holding her daughter Simran, 7, in front of their home in a poor neighbourhood of Bangalore, Karnataka, India, while his elder son Waseem, 11, is standing by. Copyright: Alex Masi - All Rights Reserved

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These days Shaifq has more mundane worries like paying the monthly  installments of his now-owned auto-rickshaw or earning enough money for his children’s education. His bubble has burst a long time ago, but when you hear him recounting his stories and adventures in detail, you cannot but smile, feel proud of the man standing in front of you and yes, also grow a little sad.

For more images from this set, feel free to visit this page.

Zulfi

“Evenings are worst. Just look at the piss-yellow sky.” and I sit on the shit-colored doorsteps streaked through with red hemorrhoidal marble of the Rich Building. Waiting. And the yellow of sky deepens. “People get drunk at parties. Seriously drunk. And dehydrated.” And I bring my fist down upon my knee. Viciously. “Damn dehydration.”

You see: I though I’d made a real breakthrough. A scientific one. I was on the brink of exploding the myth of gender-relations… to grasp the true meaning of the word rape. I was going to be the most sensitive, the most happily socialized, the best behaved organism on earth. And then… Godamn this Dehydration.
About this dehydration— Mariel’s dehydration—the night of the 10th, or was it the morning of the 11th? It was painfully clean that morning. Dry walls drawing from me. And a strange echo, a breathlessness resounding about me… yet far off. And my dull, mechanical slip-slappering against what appeared to be paper. Paper. I felt as though I was ripping through a tunnel of paper. No crying out, no tears… just rigidity, a refusal to participate on Mariel’s part. This was a circus-act gone horribly awry: insistent on performance, when no one cared to watch. I could see the apes pointing, chattering. My stomach churned as I bent to take a lip in my mouth, frigid and getting colder. Chew, chew, chewed on it until my mouth was numb. It plunked out of its own accord. I tried to focus on the entire face. Her eyes were closed and I could see the purple of eyeballs roll beneath the skin. The cheeks were flattened out and bluish like the walls of the room. Then, suddenly, I felt myself well up. I panicked, pushed the face away with my forehead. Jumped out of my skin. The eyes snapped open, a flash of a dark red beneath the stream of lashes. Cupping myself tightly between both hands, I had scrambled onto the carpet, panting, my cheeks wet with sweat. And that’s the story.

Well, that’s what could be called the immediate details. Then there’s more. Not details, but the painstaking explanations and the hasty dismissals. At the Friar’s party the other night, she had been drinking, and leering, then drinking again. Before I ran off with the Mufti to get blazed, Mariel and I had nearly fucked. Except she was so terribly drunk that the smell was getting to me. When Mufti drove me back to the Friar’s house later on that night, Mariel had left for a party at Carlyle Lake. “Go down North Decatur and take a left on Clairmont. Carlyle Lake, it’s right across from UA. They said they’d be at the pool. ”

The wind had died down a bit but it had started to rain. The water that whipped over my feet as it swamped the road reached up to my ankles. I stopped beneath the bridge and smoked a couple of cigarettes as the train rushed overhead. In the yellow light that splashed against the sheet of rain, I saw a procession of tanks and artillery being hauled over flimsy wooden carts towards who knows where. Mufti and I had spent quite a few hours that evening getting him blazed off of these very train tracks. When he had dropped me off at the Friar’s, he looked happy, ecstatic even, with his head tilting forward, the hair hanging from his forehead and over his eyes and his sly lips curling stupidly into a smile. Had we hung out a bit longer on the tracks in the mud and the rain, he might even have been inspired.

At the pool at Carlyle Lake, Mariel’s fish-netted zombies had been replaced by damp, shriveled white-flesh quivering next to the water. Mariel was the queen among these, resting her blue-blonde head against the cool blue fence with a pink towel wrapped around her hips. A pink-haired cutie in a cherry-colored bikini was whispering something to her and giggling. As I walked over to them, Mariel tilted her face towards her neighbor and sank her mouth down upon her lips. The blood had rushed to my cheeks as I stopped on my tracks. Mariel looked up and her eyes smiled sweetly at me as she raised her arm unconsciously to wipe the glisten from her lips. I saluted then turned away from her, hoping to see someone I knew behind me, so I wouldn’t have explain the blush on my face.

Within seconds, Mariel was at my chest, tugging at my shirt, pulling me down next to her, her eyes whirling– shallow, drunken, small as a rat’s. I ducked low next to her and watched Pink-hair pass her fingers through Mariel’s hair, and through my hair. And the three of us stared at the shallow blankness in each other’s eyes and we smiled through this shallow blankness until our eyeballs were quivering with happiness. Suddenly, the pink-haired cutie threw back her head and, with her pink tresses curling and pouring against her neck, with her throat gurgling beneath the sleek skin, she pulled a glass of whiskey from the air and took a sip, letting the whiskey trail along the fullness of her lips and down the curve of her chin. There was a whisper of a silence and then the red lips were against me, murmuring and I couldn’t make out what she was saying but the hint of intoxication, a solidarity with all the drunk fat-asses of the world—a world in which each drunk fat-ass was content with the certainty that no one else would judge him because everyone was a drunk fat-ass—this hint of being taken for a hole, a clueless abyss within which any cute chick with pink hair may pour out her drunken confessions terrified me. I felt Mariel lift away from Pinky and me, even as the red lips blossomed before my mouth behind their cage of liquid pink.

My eyes rushed towards Mariel’s form as it lifted away and her cheeks were drawn into her face and turning blue at the edges. My hand reached out for her arm, grasping it, and we walked away from Pinky and the pool, then up the tiled steps. With each step, Mariel’s eyes deepened, the yellow fading from their surface as she drew the towel around her hips, smiling.”I’m moving in with Heather for the month. I think its Carlyle Lake 811. Across from the railroad-tracks.” I nodded, understanding that I would be spending the night. She searched in her purse for the key as we walked down the rows of empty parking spaces, swathed in the green flicker of rain and more rain and lamplight, and the shadows rushed and shrieked at our sides. And then she unlocked the door and we entered.
I unlaced my shoes and stepped onto the carpet. The sitting room was empty, except for a narrow, painful looking couch in the center surrounded by a trail of unpacked boxes. Tossing the towel towards one corner of the room, Mariel stretched herself onto the couch and pulled a blanket over her breasts. A shiver rushed through me as I drew towards her, reaching along the waist to feel her form fill against my arms. A cold air blew in from the window, scattering the blinds. She was thrashing below me, her flesh leaping, leaping, her eyes widening. And then I was growing within her—inexplicably, because she was no longer frantic beneath me and the wind above us was suddenly fiery. And her eyes were aghast.

At that moment, I understood, with the rage that only a man can know, why my cheeks had reddened at the sight of Mariel and Pink-hair by the pool. The first love, I’ve heard, was made in the desert. I imagine Mariel and her pink-hared friend– kooch against kooch, with the vultures looming. Poocho na kaisey meiney rayn bitayi. That is to say, don’t ask me how I managed to pass that night after those eyes turned aghast upon me, again and again. It occurred to me why I couldn’t stomach the idea of Mariel being with another girl. Two women in bed together are possibly the most infuriatingly innocuous of images for a man with any self-respect to swallow. There is pleasure to be had in the slime and rain, but what if, even in the middle of the night, the sand is hard as nails and carries no moisture, if the wind is dry and howling overhead, if the rocks grind into your flesh then fall off, leaving no punctures but blue, stinging indentations, each bruise breathing beneath the skin and stinging with each breath. “The first love was made in the desert,” I would murmur, and I would step into its shriveled aspect with a prayer on my lips, “ let them greet me with a splash of woman’s flesh, swelling, blossoming along my height,” but no… no. It was paper. Mere paper. I passed the night in the wind and the rain and a dry woman raging in my arms after I had fled her insides. And once in a while she would moan and turn her cold blue face towards me and I would reach into the withering depths of her kooch and examine the dark, swallowing sand. And once in a while there would be a rush of blue and red lights as a fire-truck would shriek down Clairmont Road followed by the screaming of police sirens.
I had fled from this desert because I was going to gush into her like the solitary iguana gushes, a lonely desert god, awakened and ready bring forth the rain. We would have fucked and then, who knows? In a couple of months she might have been pregnant and sooner or later I’d be going to jail for rape, or for bailing out on child-support, or some other manner of criminal trespass. It struck me, as violently as one can be struck by a hysterical instance of Truth, that I wasn’t wearing a condom. “Fuck,” I muttered as I pulled on my pants, then walked over to the couch to hold Mariel until daybreak.

I tried to speak to her about it when I ran into her yesterday at the Med Grill. My approach wasn’t necessarily direct. Not by a long shot. She kept peering into me through her tangle of blonde eyelashes and I kept glancing at the entrance to the restaurant as though expecting a policeman to walk in at any moment. The owners of the restaurant—Arabs– squinting at me from behind the counter, had their reasons for not trusting me. I’m sure they didn’t want any trouble. They’d had more then their share the last time I was there. I suppose we’ll talk about that some time. Either way, I gulped at my coffee and began to talk.

“Women fake it all the time,” she said dismissively after I had finished talking.
“I know it. It’s second nature to them. But: I’m not talking about women faking anything. You still don’t get what I’m talking about.” I leaned back in my chair and attempted to pull a smile. Then I looked down at my cup.
“Well?” she carries on, oblivious to the trembling of my hand.

“Well, what?”
“Care to tell me what you’re talking about?”

“No… too busy feeling superior to you.”

“Congratulations. Another man thinks he knows more about women than women themselves.”
“Tell me something first. A couple of things, rather.”

“Oh? What?”
“About how it hurt when we first fucked.”

“Trust me, it didn’t matter to me then. I was so full of myself.”

‘Of course it’s still bothering me. How is a man to have any self respect when you tell him a thing like that months after the fact. And all the while, you have had him believing that all he is Shri Krishna himself when it comes to pleasing women. Burst my fucking bubble, you did.”

“Did I ever tell you how cute you are between the obscure Hindu references and the self-righteous Muslim rage.”

”The Hindu references are very standard. And the rage could just as well be Calvinist rage.”
“Whatever you say. As for the first time we fucked, I really didn’t care. I was too completely absorbed in the feeling that I was on top of the world.”
“How so?”
“Well. I remember that we were fooling around on top of each other and then suddenly you fell over to one side and I looked up and you were just lying there and it occurred to me that I could do whatever I wanted. Cause you wouldn’t run away or anything. And so I did. And when I let you in and you started to move, each stab of pain only heightened that feeling.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I could do whatever I wanted. And you wouldn’t run away or anything. And then we did it. And it felt like my insides were screaming when I was on top of you but I didn’t care cause I was doing it. It was my body. And I wanted you inside of it even if it hurt like hell… or maybe because of it.” She looked thoughtful, adding pensively, “Maybe it was the thrill of doing something you want to do in spite of what your body is used to and completely on your own initiative.”

“You make me like such a little man-whore.”

“That’s what you get, baby, when you pretend not to have any initiative. Pulling all that bullshit straight out of your ass when you damn well know that if there is no initiative nothing ever gets done. Though I must say that I appreciate the gesture.”

“Tell me now, the pleasure that a woman gets from fucking, how is distinct from the pain that you felt? I think this is important for my argument.” She had spoken some days ago of a clicking, snapping, gulping feeling and how that, apart from the thrill that attempts to burst through a woman’s veins after she climaxes, was her fondest sensation of them all.
“Well, the pain is more like the uncomfortable feeling one gets at the presence of something inside of you that shouldn’t be there… And you don’t feel that way anymore when everything around you seems to be affirmation that this something is not really distinct from you.”

“Everything such as what?”
“Such as the taste and feel of his sweat and his body becoming indistinguishable from yours.”
I decided to let the matter rest. Sort of. I approached it obliquely to rid the situation of some of the somberness that it had been acquiring.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I’m a phenomenal flirt?”

She stirred uneasily, her cheeks inching nervously upward, drawing her eyes into a squint. “No,” she replied. Then she gulped.

“At least you’re not aghast.”

“Huh?”
“At least that didn’t make your eyes widen. That would make me believe that I’m raping you.”
She bristled and told me that she didn’t think I minded it all too much—that feeling that I might be raping her.

“One doesn’t rape in conversation, you know? So, yeah: I’m a pretty good flirt.” I looked over across the restaurant at a pair of girls frowning at each other. “Doesn’t that girl in the orange sweater look fuckable?”
“She looks like your kind of girl. If that’s what you’re asking: yes, I agree.”
“That wasn’t a very sexy agreement: want to flirt?”

She glared back over her coffee-cup, put it back down on the table, and began raking inside it with a spoon. “ I didn’t know you were that kind of guy,” says she after a pause, forcing a tight smile.

“You didn’t? How else did you think I got to fuck her, then? Or them? Or you for that matter?”
“Me/them? I don’t like the conflation. Maybe you should explain. I’m as dense as a fuckable boy.”

“Speaking of fuckable boys: you still don’t think Orange-sweater is a fuckable? I do.”
“My heart is warm.”
“No? Not moist.”
“That is flirtatious.” She was suddenly taken aback, “Finally Monsier E’tranger is getting the hand of it. And no, the thought of you on top of Orange doesn’t make me moist.”

“Sehr Dank, Fraulien. And I haven’t been working at it either, if that is what you’ve been thinking. You suppose it comes naturally?” I remember placing my foot gently between her legs.

“What comes naturally?”
“This,” I pressed gently with my toes, “Is pressure flirtatious? Or vice versa?”
“The pressure between my legs is flirtatious—at least the kind I find most acceptable.” An Arab man had passed us, glaring furiously over his shoulder.
I take her clenched fist in my hand and bring it to my lips, “Flirting is never about getting into her panties… did you know that? Bet you didn’t.” I slip my hand into her pants, feeling the wetness fold around me, drawing it upward with my fingers.

Her smile thawed even as she said, dictatorially, “You flirt to fuck. And to fuck again. So, sometimes, it isn’t about getting into her panties.” Now her eyes begin to gleam, “because sometimes her panties are already off.”

“Silly Woman-Childe. Flirting is not about fucking. Not even close. I don’t mean to give flirting a bad name, but I assure you… it’s about something deeper than just fucking. Also: how can flirting be about fucking when fucking is flirting? Also: what do you think of this leer?” I tried to pull the greasiest looking leer I could pull at the moment.
“Silly Woman-Childe, indeed—Anyway, you don’t call it “flirting” when you flirt, so this is completely irrelevant. I think my “flirting” is about something deeper too, except, I have come to terms with my baseness.” She searched into my eyes, waiting in vain for them to melt, “Which is why I think it is endlessly amusing why you should trouble yourself with this woman-childe. Last, a leer? You aren’t capable of that and you look clownish when you try.”

I thanked her for the thoroughness of her reply. Then I repeated, obstinately, almost irrelevantly because, really, the conversation had passed beyond that, “Fucking is a kind of flirtation.”

“Is it?” She was no longer uneasy. Instead, I sensed a lashkar of condescension building inside of her. “How so?”

How so, indeed.
That evening I went home with Mariel and we fucked on the narrow couch in her sitting room until the carpet was smelly with condoms—pink, green, blue.
“You know,” she had ventured to speculate as she had nestled her head along the crevice between my chest and my shoulder, “it’s been almost two years since whatever-this-was first started.”

Had it?

“Has it?” I speak out against the darkness around us, not looking at her, not caring to see if she had intended to be nostalgic or if this had just been her public service announcement for the week. I didn’t look at her, knowing that she was ending something here. She lay against me in such a manner that her face was looking away from me and towards the darkness, and she had spoken away from me and into the darkness and I had felt her weight strain from me as she held her spine very straight and drifted away, murmuring. “I like you very much,” she said, and all the while her body remained tense against me, ready to leave, “but I have so much to offer that you could never appreciate. And you too, have so much to give, but not to me.”

“Oh? Are we so distinct… so mutually unappreciative?” I waited eagerly for her assent, the dark air slurping gently at the space between our thighs.
“Well, I think what I’m saying is truer for me than for you.”

“Cause, naturally, you have a lot more to offer then I would care to appreciate. I think you just hit a bull’s eye.”

And she knew that I wasn’t being ironic. That I was being sincere: what was there to appreciate, after all, in initiative? Especially on part of a woman? And a white woman at that? So what if she can mix drinks? I don’t drink mixed drinks. And if she likes to dance? Dancing is dumb. Brainlessly orgiastic even.

“Yeah,” I tilted my head towards her and waited for her to return my look, “we are different people. No?”

I had my hands along her stomach and I pressed the flesh to me and waited for her to bend towards me, for her breasts to fall over me. The shadows of the cars turning and passing along the street outside spiraled around us and crowded against the wall behind…

But now I’m supposed to be waiting for Rubina and not Mariel. This– this us– is no longer something I care to continue. It is sapping my strength, it is making me pass my evenings in silence, in a cold, devastating aloneness over shots of vodka, mugfuls of rum and the tainted water runs through my blood, dilutes my blood, until I am a most brittle thing: a thing of the air. An appetite for desperate chases, this glance rapidly shifting from a rush of summer leaves vivid with gore to the motionless lip of a sun-drenched lake, striving to extract from these the ultimate measure of taste, longing for the immediacy of an equilibrium hanging from a thread… a string of meat hacked out of woman-flesh.

And why is it, then, that I am waiting for Rubina and not Mariel? Last night, even as Mariel rested her head against my chest, Tony had called out to me from the window. A cold air passed across my face and I drew my blanket closer to my body, not caring to look out the window and wave at him. I’d had enough of his white liberal-ass nonsense the night before, when he’d told me how he needed me, how he needed access my body unconditionally. And then he had thinned out, taut and tight-ribbed against the autumnal air, leaving a trail of ash and a half-full pack of cigarettes. Now he called out again, more insistent this time, like the cold air that had slipped underneath the blanket and made me shiver.
“Zulfi, lie next to your cold white woman and be reminded of your limits. And let me remind you of distances. Let me assure you that I’m closer to you than she will ever be—that I will never be a burden for you, no, nor the limit that she becomes even as you touch her very depths. In my face you will read nothing but contempt for these things that she cannot help. You are an affront to her color, her interests, her values, much as she is to yours. But that is all. She encumbers you with her living weight. Unburden yourself in me, Zulfi, unburden yourself in the dead thing that speaks to you as a brother, and you will find a power that is limitless. You have nothing to lose with me, nothing to weigh you down—I will not ask you to compromise yourself in what we are to accomplish together. My investment in you, just as yours in me, is something both of us can afford: we can not owe each other anything. Be in me, Zulfi, and you will find that you are almost free…”

A pain shooting along my right temple, I heaved Mariel from my side and shifted my body next to the window. As I looked out, a pale form rose out of the patch of moonlight on the pavement across the street. Red eyes lifted blankly towards my window, the face a mesh of ice and darkness focused beneath the trembling white film of incandescent sweat. “Yo, monkey,” I found myself addressing the specter in affrighted contempt, “let yourself in. We’ll talk.”

There was a creak and a whimper, and then Tony was squeezed next to Mariel and me, his red eyes gliding across the room in a steady sweep. His cold white hands, the fleece of red hair bristling against our flesh, wandered dreamily over my body, the jagged bloody fingernails furtively scraping along the slope of Mariel’s belly. All the while, he was speaking of Rubina Roy, his too hot Afghan girl-friend who hadn’t put out and now it was too late, too, too late. And then, as his fingers began digging into Mariel’s stomach, massaging the flesh near the navel, Tony transfixed me with his eyes—yellow now, not red—and imparted his mantra: to pass through the thickest of walls, slip clandestinely along the classified crevices.

“To slip through thickets of walls, soft as a ghost, a shadow, a dreamer, and yet to know that we are none of these things, what astonishes us most is how neglectful we are of the simple fact that things become more permeable the thicker you make them.

At no other time would it be more opportune to exercise this new-found science. The Roys are returning from the ghaats. As we speak, Mrs. Roy is hot on our trail. We have been made to understand that she intends to eat us:
Round eyes bowling into the darkness below the dining-table, we recall the punch of her breath at our face, “You want Ruby, eh? Well, she’s in her room. You better find it before I find you. If I find the two of you together, I’m going to have your pale ass for breakfast.” Her teeth were all edges and sparks as her face lifted away.

Following to the ghaats the procession of blue-turbaned mourners, these eyes were weightless as curtains of dust-storms. They followed as though with them: over the hill and toward the sloping valleys, smeared with jaundiced villages, fringed with colony upon colony of dispossessed- mud-huts, clumped and steaming like horse-shit, coiling up against the navel of the hillside.
We were passing a train of mound-like steaming huts when our thoughts turned to Mariel, her very little money, and her new used-car. We knew at once that she was there. We looked around one of the huts until we came upon the doorway at the back where Mariel’s green eyes blinked out from the dark. Her car was parked in the back, strewn with a sparse cover of reddish straw.

In the swath of darkness, Mariel’s eyes had spread into themselves and yawned. The eyelashes fluttered above them like streams of lazy, reddish lightning. We stole away quietly before she began speaking.

When we got out into the open, we found that the Roys had just reached the ghaats. We went no further but watched from a distant lip of the hill so as not to draw too much attention. Besides, we had no inclination to be the only white boy in the party.

It was the most astounding little demonstration of South Asian unity we had ever laid our eyes upon. They were all there: Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Parsees. And, of course, the real Indian deal: the Hindus. We felt happy and full and free. I say we, because it was indeed a union of multiplicity. And I felt that I was behind it all, participating in it by my sheer presence on a hill, distant, yet closer to each one of them then his own skin… his own heartbeat. You see, with the addition of a heartbeat, each of us exceeds himself, bumps himself out of his skin. The aim of the Buddhist is to make it all stop. And this I did. I made it all stop. Stop.”
I told him to stop touching Mariel that way, glaring at him. He looked back at me, the film of yellow over his eyes darkening as he wearily dragged his hand from her. Slowly, deliberately, I said to him, “So, you want me to fuck your girl-friend for you? Cause you can’t? Cause you’re dead? Sounds like you want to exploit me.”

He sighed, breathing heavily. “I probably do,” he said wearily, “but why do we waste so much time on being morally outraged? You and I have other things on our mind.”
“What will I get in return?”
“Whatever you want. There will be freedom everywhere you look. All you have to do is tell me what you want.”

Mariel shuddered as I got out of bed, reaching for my clothes “What about Mariel?”
“Don’t worry,” he murmured, placing his face sideways against her chest. “She’ll be alright here.”

Mariel shuddered once again, moaning as she stretched out her arms, then wrapped them around the back of his head. He closed his eyes, burrowing his face in the white of her flesh. I turned away from the darkness settling over them and walked out, closing the door gently behind me.

So I sit on the steps outside the Rich Building—where the auditions have just taken place– beneath the tatters of a worsted evening and wait. I feel altogether predatory. Empowered. Disgusted with myself. Two remarkably fuckable blondes with well-used, well-kept asses go by. A security-guard comes out to smoke. He sits down on the bench in front of me. He’s about my height. Pink and fat. With dark circles below his eyes. I find him to be insanely human. We both watch the firm, undulating backsides and contemplate rape, each to one’s self. A smile sweeps over his face. A warmth mingles into my stomach.

So: my theory was beautiful. And dangerous. It made any discussion of a mediating third, an impartial party intruding upon two brutal entities, altogether irrelevant. The Law was made irrelevant. Rape was reduced to an exclusive contract, one of mutual ill-will, between two people. It became reducible to a gift of pain reciprocated. By the refusal to be pleased. By the denial of pleasure. By a withholding of a crucial sign of the game: juice… moistness. In a game in which fucking is the ultimate form of flirtation, rape acquires new meaning.

No longer the architect of the crime, the rapist becomes its victim, the most wretched among a race of creatures—that is to say, men—whose very function is to initiate. But, in this case, the law refuses to sanction the exercise of this function to the toads and the reptiles. It withholds from these their humanity because they have yet to evolve out of their primordial bestial toadishness– their crusty reptility– into something for women to admire… something for women to crave down to the dot of their being.
So: to wait with the pisswarm evening settling into the spread of pines at the bottom of the hill, a rush of shadows pouring against my flesh and onto the ground before me. The lamplight flashes through my hair and onto my face and it is suddenly night.

The security-guard lifts himself with a grunt and steps back into the library, patting his ample hips with an air of contentment. A crushed cigarette-butt breathes, glinting gently beneath the bench. Then it goes out. I can hear the drawl of Tony, my dead friend, as it rises out from the crouching, swirling dark, seeming to give advice.

“You will meet her outside the library. You will walk her to her apartment and when she asks you to come in you will not refuse. “
I remember I told him– my white-boy friend’s ghost, that is– that it all sounded pretty hit and miss. As a plan, you know. He reassured me that it was the farthest thing from a plan. It’s simply the way things are done… if you want to get into a hot ethnic chick’s pants. I didn’t deem it necessary to remind him that I myself am hot and ethnic, even if indifferently so.

Once inside, I’m to sit on the bulky rag of a sofa facing the kitchen as she boils water for tea. If she offers to make omelets, I should look about vacantly. I might even say yes if I feel so inclined. I should do so discretely though: under my breath, coughing a little, rounding off the end so as to keep from hissing. Under no circumstance should I make any move that hints at a definite purpose. Nor should I offer to help her. Any show of intentionality is out. Initiative is completely out. “Remember,” I could hear him whisper into my ear, “you are three years old.”
It didn’t take me long to conclude that Tony is a moron. That he really has no clue what he means by initiative. He seems to think of initiative primarily as a productive force: as simply a means towards an end. He doesn’t really understand the concept of ultimate flight, of going through walls, of constantly plucking and eating everything in sight. This, the hunger, the distracted craving for everything, is the true productive force. Does not the small, tight figure of an Allah lie writhing at the end of our desires? Don’t think. Don’t ever think. Just feed, fuck, slumber…

And, maybe, one sad morning when there is nothing left to feed on, our stomachs will touch: mine with Hers. I will touch against the fat, eternal muzzle of a millionth of a second. Then feel its languid sliding into the smug figure of an insufferable Another, an unendurable Absence, a Betrayal, and a Nothingness.

But Tony, my convert, this ghost, this Hindu is wiser, more cautious in his predictions. Not Allah, but only a well-hung wretch of a god cowers beyond our skins. This suppression he speaks of, this focused inattention, this assumption of the role of one cook too many on part of the supplicants at the altar of the Omelet-maker, already reeks of purpose… of initiative.
The dead kid, with all his book-learning, with his pageant of sexual conquests, despite his weightlessness, his ghostliness, his ability to possess living bodies, will never grasp the absolute simplicity of a Hole: a dank, dark space where gods prefer to hide. So they may be found there if one would care to look…

I see a car turn into the driveway. It hesitates, then begins crawling towards the bridge: One Way. I see some blonde tatters, a pale cold face, two flashing eyes, the hint of a clenched fist pressed over the steering-wheel, the taut white forming over the knuckles… It is Mariel. Mariel: worrying. Over her and over me and over us and whomever. My eyes burn as she pulls into a parking-space and waits, the engine still running. I wonder if I should run to her, slip into the back-seat of her car pulling her with me… if I should ask her, as she struggles to unhook her brassiere, if she will indeed consent to being raped… that is, if she will consent to my loving her the only way I know how, for I am not, even by the most fantastic stretch of the imagination, the One, i.e. the fittest among the species, the most lucrative among the boyfriends, no, nor even the gentlest, kindest, most suave, best-behaved. I am none of these and she knows it, knows that I am practically of no value, so little is my worth for her—for anyone.

Rubina is walking along the bridge towards me. She is wearing a stiff green jacket over a dark blue skirt. Her braids fall neatly over her shoulders and her face is luminous against the dull, piss yellow of the lamplight trailing in front of her. “Rooobinaaa!” I run over across the street to her. She gives me a tight, tight smile, then instinctively grabs on to her purse. I’d actually be flattered if she were to fold her arms instead. I need her to give me a sign, to tell me that I am a threat, not to her purse but to her person. I don’t want her thinking that she can pay me off. I want her to run her cool fingers through my hair and reassure me of the keenness, the cleanliness of my access to my primal self. Then I want her to call the police even as she is curled into my chest and give them my name and her name and where to find us. And even if the policeman is human, even if he is man, he will have to report to the scene in uniform. And in this guise, as the avenger of yet another innocence ravaged against her will, my kinsman will betray us all. Then he will go home and gossip to his wife about what little brown men do to the little brown women.

“Heading home?” I am walking next to her and our shoulders touch now and then and she begins stepping off the sidewalk and onto the grass.

“Yes. I needed to get away for a few hours. I have to be back by midnight though.”
“Schedule getting kinda crazy, no?”

She laughs. She tells me it’s never been much better. I plunge into her with my shoulder again then apologize as she stumbles into the grass, then scrambles back onto the pavement. I look back to see if Mariel’s car is still there. It is, so I wave turn around and wave at it. A wide smile flashes out from the darkness.

“Hold up for a sec. Mariel’s gonna give us a ride.” Rubina raises an eyebrow. Mariel pulls up next to us. Rolling down the window, she asks us how I’m doing.
“Good, good. Mariel, this is Rubina. We were just walking to her place, you know. Care to give us a ride, no?” Mariel smiles again. Even wider than before. Relaxing her fingers over the steering-wheel just enough for the white to evaporate from her knuckles. “Sure thing, Zulfi. Nice to meet you Rubina.”
Something almost wicked creeps into the corners of her lips. I shudder.

Rubina wants to drive to the CVS down North Decatur. “Feminine products,” she declares illuminatingly. Mariel purses her lips looking sweet as the smear of cherry against the cherriest, rubiest lips. She parks on the curb next to the entrance. Rubina steps out onto the sidewalk. We wait. The most silken silences melts into the bitterest anticipation, profoundest revulsion spoiling at the core with a sudden, tongue-tied seed of hope. I light a cigarette. The ash accumulates upon the pavement. I toss the spent butt onto the ground. It is my gift to the earth of this unnameable spot, this unwashed ashtray of a city, so frank, so pitiless in its frivolity, so brazed to the slenderness of its own appetites.
“How are you Zulfi?”
“I’m okay. Sleep well?”
She says nothing. Only nods when I ask if she just woke up. “Left your place around four in the morning,” I light another cigarette. “Couldn’t sleep. Think it was the heat.”

“What did you do?”
“Went home and took a shower.” Another silence follows.

“Zulfi, I…” She is almost weeping.”

“Saw a ghost yesterday? I know.”

Rubina walks towards the car, smiling, carrying some blue card-board boxes in a plastic bag.

Sibset Echo with any of the following Freya, Persephone, Cora & Juno.

Echo Rubina Alice

Echo Selene

Echo Zelda Jane

Echo Juliet Rosalind

Echo Aurelia Jane

Echo Cybelle

Echo Theodora

Echo Demeter

Echo Delphine

Echo Guinevere

Echo Helene

Echo Imogen Belle

Echo Lilith Pearl

Echo Lucretia

Echo Lula

Echo Meredith

Echo Nerissa

Echo Nympha

Echo Pallas

Echo Perele/Pellonia

Echo Theophania

Echo Minerva

Echo Myrrha

Echo Cordelia

Echo Calluna

Echo Nephele

Echo Neptunine

Echo Zipporah

Sukey Channah Écus

Celestina Cora Birch

Lulana Cicoria

Rosalina Michelle Ajonc

Jilly Trinket Bramble

Jesslynn Skydancer Bee

Zenobiah Jonnesha Lent

Aisha Magan Rosehip

Margareette Aster

Rubina Rheanne Tatters

Melissia Dawne Lilla

Aurelia Sahirra Gelbe

Lorinda Mai Achillea

Maymie Izabele Katzchen

Merry Blanche Lime

Roald Hawke Crinllys

Alisabethe Nelke

Alura Tearlag Birchtree

Whittie Hasel

Pandora Tammsan Elder

• Huvitav, millises vanuses on inimene lõpuks suuteline iseendale silma vaatama?

• Ma olen lapsest peale käsitlenud elu mingite stseenide jadana.  Ja kuna stseenides tuleb osaleda, muutun ma samaaegselt ka vaatajaks, see tähendab, jälgin sündmuste arengut selliselt, nagu näidendi autor ja näitlejad mulle seda esitavad.
• Onu Misha õpetas teda mitte hulkuma ükstakama kus, vaid marsruuti paika panema ja võtma sellest marsruudist kõik mis võimalik.
• Ja tead, kust tuleb see, et neil uues kohas hästi läheb? Ma olen selle üle palju mõelnud … Saad aru, keedes lapsest peale rahvaste, rahvuste ja inimtõugude paabelis, teadsime me, et inimene võib olla teistsugune, veelgi enam: ta on alati teistsugune, kuid on vaja, tuleb koos eksisteerida, kuna meil pole üksteisest pääsu, koos eksisteerimine on kõige tähtsam, elu selle peal püsti püsibki! Just see oskus teist mõista ongi üks kõlvatu inimloomuse parimaid omadusi, nagu on selgunud kõige erinevamate emigratsioonide ekstreemsetes tingimustes. See, mida Läänes kutsutakse ilmetu sõnaga “tolenrantsus”. See pole mitte tolerantsus, vaid sunnitud armulikkus, lihtsalt omaenda “mina” taltsutamine – kui sa saada ru, et sina ei ole teistest parem, aga tema ei ole sinust üle.

Rubina Alí, la joven actriz de “Slumdog millinaire” se ve envuelta en una polémica familiar  tras ganar el Óscar

Rubina con sus amigo/Fuente: blogspot

 Con tan solo nueve años la pequeña Rubina Alí, protagonista de la película galardonada con un Óscar “Slumdog millonaire” se encuentra en medio de una gran polémica familiar tras la publicación de un artículo en el diario semanal sensacionalista británico News of the world .

 Un periodista haciéndose pasar por un importante jeque árabe visitó al padre de la actriz buscando la venta de la niña por 226.695 euros. Según la revista sensacionalista el padre de la joven mordió el anzuelo y pidió esa cantidad al periodista.

La familia de la pequeña desmiente este hecho y acusa al sensacionalismo británico de querer ganar popularidad a partir de la fama de Rubina.

Pero no solo esta desgracia cae sobre la pequeña, ya que la protagonista de la célebre película continúa viviendo después de conseguir un óscar en las mismas circunstancias que anteriormente, en una de las muchas chabolas de Garib Nabar, al Norte de Bombay.

Rubina Alí y su familia todavía no han recibido la esperada casa que la dirección de la película prometió, así como tampoco ninguna ayuda para que la pequeña y sus hermanos puedan estudiar.

Son muchas preguntas las que están sin respuesta después de que la fama viniera a Rubina tras ganar el óscar. Lo que sí está claro, es que la niña está muy feliz, aunque precisamente no es el dinero lo que le haya traído felicidad.

Vanesa Sáenz Pérez-Aradros

The poverty-stricken father of Slumdog Millionaire child star Rubina Ali plans to become a millionaire himself-by SELLING his nine-year-old daughter.  As a person who has worked in a shelter this is a sad reality that is too often visited upon.  Too many are too willing to create beautiful children but not raise beautiful adults.  For more on this story click here.

I am going to keep it 100% honest, I have friends that have fallen on both sides of the fence in regard to paternal resposibility and as I grow older the disgust toward irresponsible parents has become relentless.  I realise that everyone you may sleep with may not be your number one choice to create a lifelong bond with but that is what having a child with someone entails.  You don’t have to love your child’s mother but you must love your child(ren).  If you don’t want children then make sure that you don’t create any but once you have do not disrespect the one God like gift we have been blessed with; the ability to create life.

I am too self focused to have a child, not to mention I have not found a woman I want to marry yet (Call me old fashion but there will be no baby mother attached to my name but mad respect to all those that make it work and honor their children), so I have no children but I would never dare bring to this world a child that looks like me and has my blood coursing through his/her veins to live without me.  I am too much of a man for that.  I hope this inspires some to pick up the phone and make their paternal presence known.  Peace and love ya’ll.

The father of Rubina, the star of Slumdog Millionaire is in the news for the past couple of days for trying to sell his daughter.

According to various news reports (most of them conflicting with each other), he has been meeting people from the Middle East who want to “adopt” his daughter.

This is so sad and disheartening to read. We all know what is actually going on here. I just don’t believe that the man is so naive that he actually think it is for her own good.

I am not even sure whether to take a judgment call on this. It is technically very easy for me having lived a fairly comfortable life to condemn the man without knowing his circumstances. But reading and worse seeing the photos in this article really made me sick !

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1171857/Pictured-Family-catfight-allegations-Slumdog-Millionaire-stars-father-tried-sell-200-000.html

Following a sting operation that showed the nine-year-old’s father demanding a whopping Rs 1.8 crore to give her up for adoption, relatives from Rubina breaks down as squabble continues all over turned up, seeking ‘a share of the pie’

Following a sting operation by a British tabloid, nine-year-old angel-faced Rubina Ali, who starred in Slumdog Millionaire, has been caught in the midst of a tug-of-war.

Since the news broke that Rubina’s father Rafique Qureshi was allegedly trying to sell his daughter to a Saudi Sheikh for a whopping Rs 1.8 crore, every relative, no matter how distant, entered the fray.

Blog: Why fret over ‘sale’ of ‘Slumdog’ kid?

A direct fallout is that the girl’s biological mother, Khurshid, who separated from her husband eight years ago, laid fresh claim to the girl on Sunday and even approached the police.

At the same time, scores of relatives stood by Rafique, ensuring he did not part with Rubina.

Blog: Morality and Rubina’s world

In the afternoon, Khurshid arrived at Bandra’s Gharib Nagar slums where Rubina lives, and abused everyone.
She tried to attack Rubina’s stepmum Munni, but others intervened. She then approached the Nirmal Nagar police to lodge a complaint and take custody of Rubina.

Meanwhile, Rafique’s relatives arrived and tried to convince the media how loving a father Rafique was and why Rubina should live only with him. A relative said, “Allegations against Rafique are false. Why will he sell her? She is going to earn so much more. Bhala dudh dene wali gai ko koi bechta hai kya? (Does anyone sell a cow that can still be milked?)”

The police, who witnessed the drama, merely recorded statements of Khurshid, Rafique and Rubina without lodging a complaint.

An officer said, “They are fighting over the girl now that she has turned into a goose that lays golden eggs. Everybody wants a share of the pie. Khurshid had come to us seeking custody of the girl even when the film first made headlines. But the girl says she wants to live with her father.”

PI Prakash Salunkhe of Nirmal Nagar police said, “We recorded statements and will investigate allegations of illegal adoption. No complaint has been lodged.”

Meanwhile, following the denial of the sting by Rafique, The News of the World released a statement saying: “The News of the World thoroughly investigated information that the father of Rubina was seeking to sell his daughter for adoption. We are entirely satisfied that our report is fair, true and accurate.”

WHAT HAPPENED

The drama unfolded when News of the World reported that as Slumdog Millionaire did not fetch Rubina’s family a fortune, her father was even prepared to “sell” her for a tidy sum. The tabloid ran a sting operation video on its Web site, where Rafique is seen negotiating a price for Rubina’s illegal adoption. The reporters posed as a wealthy Sheikh family from Saudi Arabia, offering to adopt the girl. They called Rafique to Leela Kempinski on Friday along with Rubina. There, Rafique allegedly demanded Rs 1.8 crore for the adoption.

WHAT RAFIQUE SAYS

Rafique denies trying to sell the girl. He said there was no talk of money even though he is clearly heard asking for money in the video. He said, “They contacted me saying they were moved by our poverty and the Sheikh wanted to meet the girl. When we met, they spoke of adoption. But I refused. Why should I sell my girl? The voice (asking for money) in the video is not mine. It is a conspiracy to take my girl from me. My former wife Khurshid is involved.”

WHAT RUBINA SAYS

Rafique’s statement, however, does not tally with that of his daughter. While on camera Rubina maintained what her father said was true, off camera she said, “I don’t know what happened. While returning my father asked me if I would like to go to Saudi Arabia. I said yes. They also spoke of getting passports for themselves.”

Source: Siasat News

Kabar Sweeru – Rantauget

media Inggris, News of the World, Minggu (19/4), Rafiq mencoba menjual Rubina kepada orang kaya dengan harga jutaan rupee atau setara dengan 200.000 poundsterling (Rp 3,1 miliar).

Tawaran itu justru diberikan kepada wartawan News of the World (notw) yang menyaru sebagai keluarga kaya dari Dubai, Uni Emirat Arab, saat menyambangi rumah keluarga Rafiq di perkampungan kumuh Kota Mumbai, India.

Alasan Rafiq demi memberikan masa depan yang lebih baik bagi putrinya. Rafiq juga menyalahkan bos Hollywood yang telah memaksa dia untuk menjual anaknya. “Saya harus memikirkan apa yang baik bagi saya, keluarga, dan masa depan Rubina,” ujarnya.

Dia mengaku keluarganya tidak mendapat apa-apa kendati Rubina mendapat Piala Oscar dan bisa jalan-jalan ke Hollywood atas tanggungan sutradara film, Danny Boyle. “Kami tidak mendapatkan keuntungan apa-apa dari film ini,” tambahnya.

Informasi yang didapat dari informan News of the World terungkap bahwa  keluarga Rubina didekati salah satu keluarga kaya dari Timur Tengah yang tertarik untuk mengadopsi Rubina setelah melihat aktingnya pada film Slumdog Millionaire. Setelah itu Rafiq membisikkan syekh gadungan harga yang harus dibayar untuk bisa “mengadopsi” putrinya, 200.000 poundsterling.

Harga itu empat kali lebih mahal dari penawaran awal. Nilainya meningkat setelah Rafiq diprovokasi oleh saudaranya, Mohiuddin. “Anak ini sekarang istimewa. Ini bukan anak biasa. Dia adalah anak Oscar!”

News of the World edisi Minggu (19/4) menurunkan laporan khusus investigasi perdagangan anak di India. Namun, mereka tak menyangka bila salah satu kasus itu ternyata juga melibatkan keluarga aktris cilik pemenang Oscar.

“Seperti Madonna, keluarga Timur Tengah itu juga ingin mengadopsi Rubina dan memberikan masa depan yang lebih baik lagi. Namun, Rafiq menjadi serakah dan akan menawarkan putrinya kepada penawar tertinggi,” terang informan itu.

Dengan menyamar sebagai seorang syekh, reporter News of the World menghubungi Rafiq untuk menyelidiki penjualan anak. “Kita bisa membicarakan perjanjian ini ketika bertemu. Banyak yang menyatakan berminat dengan Rubina,” ujarnya kepada reporter News of the World. Pertemuan di Hotel Leela Kempinski ini membuat kagum Rubina. “Rumah kami hanya sebesar toilet di kamar ini. Kami tinggal di Gharib Nagar,” ujarnya polos.

“Kami memerlukan dua atau tiga bulan lagi. Sebelum kita menyepakati harganya, kami akan datang ke Dubai. Rubina bisa datang dan pergi,” ujar Rajan, juru bicara  keluarga Rubina. Jerat kemiskinan telah membutakan mata ayah Rubina yang rela menjual putrinya.

Mereka tidak mengkhawatirkan penjualan anak-anak India yang sedang marak ke Timur Tengah. Di Timur Tengah mereka akan dipekejakan sebagai joki unta dan mendapat pelecehan seksual. Transaksi semacam ini masih jauh dari luar biasa dalam sebuah negara miskin di mana kehidupan manusia dihargai murah dan anak-anak seringkali dianggap sebagai sebuah komoditas.

Informan tersebut mengatakan, “Rubina merupakan keluarga yang hebat. Meskipun ia bermain dengan baik di film itu dan telah menjelma menjadi putri cantik yang terkenal, mereka masih hidup dalam kondisi seperti itu sebelum bermain di film tersebut. “Kehidupan Rubina masih menyedihkan dan dia tinggal di sini dengan ibu tiri. Ia banyak menghabiskan waktunya dengan saya karena dia tidak senang tinggal di rumah orangtuanya,” ujar Rajan.

Kehidupan Rubina dan keluarganya memang tak seberuntung film Slumdog yang dibintanginya yang sukses mencetak pundi keuntungan. Film garapan sutradara muda Inggris Danny Boyle itu mencetak 200 juta dollar AS atau Rp 2,4 triliun di seantero dunia.

Film Slumdog Millionaire mengisahkan hidup anak yatim piatu yang berhadapan dengan kemiskinan, pengkhianatan, penyiksaan polisi, dan kuis ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ versi India. Semua dilakoninya demi bertemu kembali dengan cinta masa kecilnya. Bintang-bintang film ini bukan artis terkenal, seperti  Rubina Ali, Dev Patel. dan Freida Pinto, hingga anak-anak yang dipungut Danny Boyle, sang sutradara, dari kawasan kumuh Mumbai, India.

sumber berita :KOmpas

MENURUT media Inggris, News of the World, Minggu (19/4), Rafiq mencoba menjual Rubina kepada orang kaya dengan harga jutaan rupee atau setara dengan 200.000 poundsterling (Rp 3,1 miliar).

Tawaran itu justru diberikan kepada wartawan News of the World (notw) yang menyaru sebagai keluarga kaya dari Dubai, Uni Emirat Arab, saat menyambangi rumah keluarga Rafiq di perkampungan kumuh Kota Mumbai, India.

Alasan Rafiq demi memberikan masa depan yang lebih baik bagi putrinya. Rafiq juga menyalahkan bos Hollywood yang telah memaksa dia untuk menjual anaknya. “Saya harus memikirkan apa yang baik bagi saya, keluarga, dan masa depan Rubina,” ujarnya.

Dia mengaku keluarganya tidak mendapat apa-apa kendati Rubina mendapat Piala Oscar dan bisa jalan-jalan ke Hollywood atas tanggungan sutradara film, Danny Boyle. “Kami tidak mendapatkan keuntungan apa-apa dari film ini,” tambahnya.

Informasi yang didapat dari informan News of the World terungkap bahwa keluarga Rubina didekati salah satu keluarga kaya dari Timur Tengah yang tertarik untuk mengadopsi Rubina setelah melihat aktingnya pada film Slumdog Millionaire. Setelah itu Rafiq membisikkan syekh gadungan harga yang harus dibayar untuk bisa “mengadopsi” putrinya, 200.000 poundsterling.

Harga itu empat kali lebih mahal dari penawaran awal. Nilainya meningkat setelah Rafiq diprovokasi oleh saudaranya, Mohiuddin. “Anak ini sekarang istimewa. Ini bukan anak biasa. Dia adalah anak Oscar!”

News of the World edisi Minggu (19/4) menurunkan laporan khusus investigasi perdagangan anak di India. Namun, mereka tak menyangka bila salah satu kasus itu ternyata juga melibatkan keluarga aktris cilik pemenang Oscar.

“Seperti Madonna, keluarga Timur Tengah itu juga ingin mengadopsi Rubina dan memberikan masa depan yang lebih baik lagi. Namun, Rafiq menjadi serakah dan akan menawarkan putrinya kepada penawar tertinggi,” terang informan itu.

Dengan menyamar sebagai seorang syekh, reporter News of the World menghubungi Rafiq untuk menyelidiki penjualan anak. “Kita bisa membicarakan perjanjian ini ketika bertemu. Banyak yang menyatakan berminat dengan Rubina,” ujarnya kepada reporter News of the World. Pertemuan di Hotel Leela Kempinski ini membuat kagum Rubina. “Rumah kami hanya sebesar toilet di kamar ini. Kami tinggal di Gharib Nagar,” ujarnya polos.

“Kami memerlukan dua atau tiga bulan lagi. Sebelum kita menyepakati harganya, kami akan datang ke Dubai. Rubina bisa datang dan pergi,” ujar Rajan, juru bicara keluarga Rubina. Jerat kemiskinan telah membutakan mata ayah Rubina yang rela menjual putrinya.

Mereka tidak mengkhawatirkan penjualan anak-anak India yang sedang marak ke Timur Tengah. Di Timur Tengah mereka akan dipekejakan sebagai joki unta dan mendapat pelecehan seksual. Transaksi semacam ini masih jauh dari luar biasa dalam sebuah negara miskin di mana kehidupan manusia dihargai murah dan anak-anak seringkali dianggap sebagai sebuah komoditas.

Informan tersebut mengatakan, “Rubina merupakan keluarga yang hebat. Meskipun ia bermain dengan baik di film itu dan telah menjelma menjadi putri cantik yang terkenal, mereka masih hidup dalam kondisi seperti itu sebelum bermain di film tersebut. “Kehidupan Rubina masih menyedihkan dan dia tinggal di sini dengan ibu tiri. Ia banyak menghabiskan waktunya dengan saya karena dia tidak senang tinggal di rumah orangtuanya,” ujar Rajan.

Kehidupan Rubina dan keluarganya memang tak seberuntung film Slumdog yang dibintanginya yang sukses mencetak pundi keuntungan. Film garapan sutradara muda Inggris Danny Boyle itu mencetak 200 juta dollar AS atau Rp 2,4 triliun di seantero dunia.

Film Slumdog Millionaire mengisahkan hidup anak yatim piatu yang berhadapan dengan kemiskinan, pengkhianatan, penyiksaan polisi, dan kuis ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ versi India. Semua dilakoninya demi bertemu kembali dengan cinta masa kecilnya. Bintang-bintang film ini bukan artis terkenal, seperti Rubina Ali, Dev Patel. dan Freida Pinto, hingga anak-anak yang dipungut Danny Boyle, sang sutradara, dari kawasan kumuh Mumbai, India. (notb/dri)

The father of Rubina, the kid that starred in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, has been accused by the media for trying to sell his daughter. This was published by an English daily in the United Kingdom. The daily had also deputed two of its reporters in disguise as Arab Sheiks to bargain the deal. The reporters met Rubina’s father and her relatives in a five-star hotel in Mumbai to discuss the deal. However, Rubina’s relatives kept increasing her rate, it is said.

The whole meeting was said to have been filmed by the reporters. The newspaper has also published photographs of the meeting in its edition. Rubina’s father Rakeeq denied the allegations stating that it was the disguised couple who approached them with the request to illegally adopt Rubina.

There were ugly scenes outside the home of one of the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire today when Rubina Ali’s mother demanded that the young actress be removed from the care of her father.

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• Slumdog Millionaire’s Boyle offers homes for child actors (pastemagazine.com)
• Slumdog makers pledge Mumbai cash (news.bbc.co.uk)
• ‘Slumdog’ kids live Hollywood dream (cnn.com)
• In pictures (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Slumdog’s young stars promised better housing (cbc.ca)
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• Parents: ‘Slumdog’ Child Stars’ Slum Life (abcnews.go.com)

Nicole Kidman and Rubina Ali

Don’t know whether the film (Slumdog Millionaire) is making
any difference in the lives of slum kids, but it actually making
difference to the kid actors of the film. As we earlier posted Rubina
Ali and Azharuddin Mohammed has recently lend a small role in a
Bollywood flick. However actor Rubina Ali is continued her form, as she
is done a commercial with Australian actress Nicole Kidman.

The ad is for a beverage company which also stars Bollywood actor
Arjun Rampal. Shoot of the ad was recently done in Udaipur, India.

Rafiq Ali (Rubina’s father) is very happy with her daughter’s
progress as he believes that her rising profile could lead to a better
life for the family.

He later added, “We are very proud of her and hope she continues to
become a big star. Maybe then we will be able to live in a proper
house. She was paid more for the ad than the movie.”

Earlier, the Congress wanted to take political mileage out of Gandhiji’s memorabilia and now, it wants to take advantage from a Hindi flick. It is all set to take political gain from Slumdog Millionaire’s child artistes and take credit for the success of the film. This is not the first time the Congress is using popular films to its gain. Last year, it used “Chak De” song and now they have altered the “Jai Ho” song to “Aam aadmi ke badhte kadam, har kadam par Bharat buland… Jai ho… Jai ho…”

Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire's child actors Rubina Ali and Azharuddin showcasing the creation of designer Ashima Leena at the Wills Life Style Fashion week in New Delhi

Azharuddin and Rubina with designers Ashima, left, and Leena Singh, after walking the ramp during the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, Autumn Winter 2009, in New Delhi

The Congress during its several decades of rule created lakhs of slums so that they can be banked upon as vote-banks. The dwellers have been continuously kept in abject poverty and lured with money, liquor and clothes during elections. It is these politicians who created slums and slumdogs!

Child actors Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubina Ali prepare to enter Indian Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi's residence along with designer Leena Singh in New Delhi

Slumdog child actors Azhar and Rubina sang “Jai Ho” for the Congress rally, besides personally meeting party chief Sonia Gandhi. They were given Sonia’s pictures to be displayed during the election campaign. Is it not an offence to use child artistes for election rallies?

The wrong images projected by filmmakers, based on a half truth, are exploited by our politicians and others. Some have exaggerated India’s social problems like caste system, poverty, child marriage, widow system, sati and now, slums! Some organisations encash showing these films to the West and our politicians try to garner votes for their parties.

Stardom of any kind cannot change the lives of these slum children. They go back to their normal lives once the limelight is not on them. The Congress or any other party for that matter should try to rehabilitate these less fortunate kids. They should make sure that they finish school and graduate. Rehabilitate their parents and guardians so that the kids are not under the pressure to work. Make India a slumless country.

MUMBAI, India, Mar. 7 (TOTI) –

Azharuddin Ismail, known as Azhar, and Rubina Ali, the child actors from the slums of Mumbai who rose to international stardom in “Slumdog Millionaire,” are back to their old life, despite their brush with fame. Just a few short weeks ago, the two were on the red carpet as Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars. Now the two kids have returned to familiar surroundings.

Rubina Ali lives in a 10 foot by 10 foot concrete floored shack.

“We lived in beautiful hotels,” the 8 year old told People, discussing her trip to the United States. “They gave me lots of gifts. I have got used to this fame and this kind of life.”

When Slumdog Millionaire won the Best Picture Oscar, Rubin and Azhar got to spend the night partying with celebrities at Four Seasons. Now they’re suffering like the rest of M…

See the full post at Slumdog Millionaire Child Stars Azhar And Rubina Back In India

Azharuddin

Rubina

Via BBC News

Two child actors from the film Slumdog Millionaire will be moved from slums to new houses by Indian authorities.

Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, who played young versions of two main characters, were discovered by casting agents in Mumbai’s Garib Nagar slum.

There was an outcry when it was found they were still living there after the success of the Oscar-winning film.

An official said the children had “brought laurels to the country” and deserved to be rewarded.

Local housing association chairman Amarjeet Singh Manhas added: “Since the children have made the nation proud, they must be given free houses.

“The chief minister of the state has approved this.”

The housing will come from a small allocation which local politicians are allowed to distribute as they see fit.

Rubina, nine, is currently living with her family in a one room shack while 10-year-old Azharuddin’s family home, located under a tarpaulin by a busy road, was recently demolished.

Continue Reading….

I am happy for the children and their families, but what about the thousands of other children currently living in the slums of Mumbai?

Will they now have to become fortunate enough to have appeared in an Oscar winning film, to then be awarded a free house for them and their families???