Another thing. The 20 million rupee prize converts to about $400,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But how far would that go in India?
Depends on where you live. In Bombay, you could get a nice flat in the suburbs, especially the exurbs, but not in South Bombay or rich pockets of the suburbs. After that, assuming a comfortable but not lavish upper-middle-class lifestyle i.e. a single car, no annual holidays abroad…etc, you could live out 20-25 years.
Minus of course about Rs. 10,000 to hire some other slumdogs to kick the gameshow host’s ass.
Rs. 10,000? In Bombay you can get a murder done for less! (According to newspaper reports–I have no personal knowledge etc.)
Well, yeah the characters in low-budget mass produced Bollywood films are sometimes like that. But there are plenty of Bollywood films that have deeply emotional love stories. I still cry my eyes out every time I watch Devdas, which is drippy and sentimental in true Bollywood fashion but manages to be a thousand times the better movie.
The major theme in Romeo and Juliet is not “this is the greatest love ever,” but rather “infatuated teenagers do dumb shit.”