Vikas Swaroop is a good storyteller. This is an excellent story, very well written in elegant language with a touch of sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek humor. For an ivory tower diplomat enmeshed in endless cocktail parties, despite having lived most of his life abroad, author has surprisingly good knowledge & feel of real India! A young poor bartender working in a seedy nightclub, having no formal education, with an unusual name of Ram Mohammed Thomas wins a KBC kind of TV quiz show to claim Rs. 1 Billion by answering all the 12 questions correctly, and gets arrested next day suspected of foul play. Everyone, including the show sponsors, TV Channel, Police, and the readers as well want to know, how can an uneducated poor bar boy answer all the questions correctly? There starts a very interesting story. A Good Samaritan lawyer bails him out and wants to know the truth. RMT starts telling the truth by taking us down his life story right from the time his mother abandoned him as an infant in front of a Church in Paharganj-Delhi and up to his appearance at the quiz show. The story presented in a flash back mode has very interesting format; every question asked in the quiz show takes RMT to one chapter of his life and unveils how that particular chapter of his life lead him to correctly answer the question! RMT takes us through various stages of his life which is full of tumultuous, hard struggle, yet is a fantastic journey full of variety, depth and plethora of experiences. RMT in his 19 years of age has learnt & experienced much more than what others would not even in 100 years! It is a great story full of sharply etched, distinctive, memorable collection of interesting characters ( a-la Sholay)some of them so loveable. I have been having domestic servants for over 20 years and have seen those poor, uneducated boys& girls from remote villages from all corners of India , adapting themselves to the Delhi kind of Metro life so fast, assimilating & imbibing information at lightening speeds and some of them becoming Computer savvy in addition to operating all the gadgets at home. It is fascinating to see the innate potential and latent talent which can blossom if only they get right kind of breaks like RMT does in the book .I am adding this paragraph only to attest to the fact that the way RMT learns & imbibes knowledge and absorbs information, may appear incredulous, but I have personally seen it happening. The book has one shortcoming though; entire story is narrated by RMT in first person, the articulation, sophisticated language, usage of technical jargon etc. is clearly incredulous. Apart from this, it is a beautiful story, so touching and so well written like a screen play. It must be made into movie. I have already made casting decisions if someone would like to consult me. I end this review with an invitation to the readers to write back, who would they like ( from Bollywood) to play which character if this book were to be made into a movie?
I am glad that the book finally got made into a movie, " slumdog millionnaire" and won umpteen hearts as well as awards. Inspite of superb work by Danny Boyle and the cast & crew of the film, I did not like the change of the story. I liked the book a lot more!