Dev Patel struck by 'how happy people are in the slums'

Dev Patel, who has earned much acclaim for his stellar performance in Danny Boyle's rags-to-riches saga Slumdog Millionaire, feels the "most striking thing" about slum-dwellers is their optimism.
    
"The most striking thing is how happy people are in the slums. They don't seem depressed. They don't pity themselves. They are communities that flourish on their own," the lanky 18-year-old said in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph.
    
"They elect their own head of the slum. Such a sense of community, all working together to make their slum a better slum," said Patel, who has been nominated for the best actor in Bafta award and is pitted against actors like Brad Pitt.
    
Patel, who plays the role of Jamal, the protagonist of the film, attributed his being cast to pure luck.
    
He said Danny Boyle's daughter happened to be a fan of Skins, in which he had acted, and suggested his name. Until that point Boyle had been looking at Indian actors, who were proving too muscular, the wrong physical shape.
    
"Danny was looking for someone like me who looks like they grew up in a slum, someone lanky and skinny and not particularly handsome," he told the paper in Mumbai.

After having been acting in the slums of Mumbai for five months, Patel says he has fallen love with the city. "I love this place. I would love to come back here and film something. I've fallen in love with Mumbai. It is magical," he said.

Patel thinks it unfair to criticise Slumdog for being unrealistic. "It has never claimed to be a documentary. It is a movie. It is entertainment."

The film has caught energy and pace of Mumbai, he felt. "As soon as I stepped off the plane I felt I was thrown into it. The intense wall of heat. The Noise. The colours. The air smells different. Saffron and sewers. You do get used to it. And you do get numbed to the poverty."

About the film, he said "it is the generic underdog story, I think Jamal, my character, has come from nothing. and everyone loves an underdog. But it also has that rare combination of being able to make you laugh and cry and feel good and feel shocked at the same time."

To a question on the Mumbai attacks, Patel said "I was out here for five months and I couldn't believe it when I saw the Victoria station on the news being attacked by terrorists. The heart of it was destroyed. But I got a real sense working here that it is a place of optimism and that it will always bounce back. Things move a million miles an hour."
    
Before filming began, Patel did not know much about India. He had first visited the country as a ten-year-old attending a wedding in Gujarat, and wasn't impressed.

"I was bitten by mosquitoes, got the runs, the toilets were holes in the ground. I hated it. But going out eight years later, I really appreciated it."

Patel is 6ft 1in and has a black belt in Tae Kwon do. "I'm harmless. Wouldn't hurt a fly. But they do still call me nicknames, now I'm known as Slumdog."