'Slumdog' Celebrations Fill Mumbai's Crowded Slums

Children of the slum where "Slumdog Millionaire" actor Rubina Ali lives sing the Oscar winning song...

Children of the slum where "Slumdog Millionaire" actor Rubina Ali lives sing the Oscar winning song "Jai Ho" from the film in Mumbai, India, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. Rubina Ali, who is attending the Oscar Awards ceremony, played the youngest version of Latika, in the film which won eight Oscars. (AP Photo/Gautam Singh)

(AP)

In the narrow lanes behind the Mumbai train tracks, the slum's first Oscar party turned into a raucous celebration of two hometown heroes, complete with Bollywood dance moves and squeals of joy from old friends.

Every time the big-eyed girl who calls this slum home appeared on TV, her friends gawked, beamed, shouted — and danced.

Rubina Ali, 9, was plucked from the tin roof shack she shares with her parents and six siblings in this squalid Mumbai slum to star in "Slumdog Millionaire," the darling of this year's Academy Awards.

Her friend and neighbor, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, was also chosen for the film, and both were flown to Los Angeles to watch "Slumdog" nab eight Academy Awards, including the Oscars' highest honor for best film.

Crowds gathered around the few television sets in the slum and it took barely a minute for word of each award to spread through the slum's winding lanes.

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"It seems like happiness is falling from the sky," said Sohail Qureshi, a neighbor who said he had watched Rubina grow up.

The Bandra slum could not be farther from the Hollywood glitz, stretch limousines and designer dresses of the Oscars.

Azhar lives in a lean-to made of plastic tarpaulins and moldy blankets. Rubina's home is perched above an ocean of trash. Dirty train tracks and a clogged highway form the slum's borders.

Hordes of journalists descended on the neighborhood Monday. TV tripods straddled the thin stream of sewage outside Rubina's home while rows of satellite trucks idled outside a usually sleepy tea stall.

"Normally, no one talks to us and no one comes here, but now everyone is here," Mohammed Ismail, Azhar's father, said before a bouquet of flashing bulbs.

If the Oscar excitement brought a sheen of glamour to the community, it vanished Monday shortly after the final award was announced.

The journalists left, the dancing stopped and life pressed on as always. The sweatshop men hunched over humming sewing machines. Squatting children relieved themselves by the train tracks. Mothers washed their dishes in murky water.