A Diplomat’s Unlikely Rise to ‘Slumdog’ Acclaim

It’s an impossible story, really, how a modest fellow from a family of lawyers becomes a back-office diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, writes his first novel in a feverish two months, finds a clientless agent over the Internet and has a British director turn his mid-list book into a movie that wins the best-picture Academy award and seven other Oscars.

The filmmakers changed the three-dimensional name of the lead character from Ram Mohammad Thomas to Jamal Malik. They cut out the gay, tattooed, cocaine-snorting priest with a leather fetish who dies in a murder-suicide with another priest. They changed a lot. What changes bothered you the most?

The name of Ram Mohammad Thomas is a unique name and I would have loved to have it in the movie. They also were interested in this heavy-duty love story. The opera scene in Agra in the movie still makes no sense to me. These are some of the issues, and I’d love to have a detailed conversation with Danny about it one day.