Slumbog Millionaire

Now that everyone has officially seen the movie, it is time for me to watch it. And I did... A good movie about a boy growing up in the Indian slums who eventually ends up on the show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". His journey is not without adventures. He runs into a cast of characters who would rather mutilate his body to increase their child-begging take. At about the same time, he also falls for a slum girl Latika. Both end up on separate paths after escaping from the child-begging-mutilation ring. The story ends up with Jamal, the Slumdog Millionaire, going on the show and finding Latika, who had been kidnapped by Indian gangstars.

I liked the movie; a good story about over coming all odds. Although it had an Indian cast, the American "dream" undertone was not easily missed. The only difference is that it wasn't Jamal's hard work that got him the million dollars - it was chance!

This leads me to the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, Gladwell reviews the success of the smart and famous. He doesn't outline some kind of genetic predominance. His book is all about, guess what, CHANCE! Seems to me that Gladwell's book and Slumdog have something in common: it isn't what you do, it is your circumstance that can impact your destiny...

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