Summary
We see giant trash heaps as Latika climbs on top of one and spies a yellow van approaching. She calls to Jamal as two men get out of the van and walk towards a small tent in which Salim and Jamal are sleeping. The men greet the boys and one of them hands them each bottles of Coca-Cola, which the boys drink.
The three children ride in the back of the van with the men, eventually arriving at what seems like a school, filled with other children. As they eat a meal, Salim says to Jamal, "The way he's taking care of us, he must be a good man." That night the man lines up several of the children and has them sing. Salim has a very bad voice, and the children laugh at him. When Latika laughs at him, Salim attacks her, then one of the men.
The school is in fact a training program in which the man who found them—Maman, a gangster—trains children to beg for money. The next day, Maman sends Salim to steal a baby from a girl, because "babies earn double." Salim order Latika to take the baby, even though Latika does not want to, and coerces her into holding it by threatening to drop it on the ground.
That night, Latika and Jamal take hot dried peppers and use them to play a prank on Salim. Standing over him while he sleeps, she curshes some of the pepper on his penis, and he wakes up screaming. The other children laugh as he sprays water on his genitals and threatens to get back at Latika.
On another night, a boy sings for Maman, who deems him "ready." Menacingly, another man puts some anesthetic on a cloth and renders the boy unconscious. They then blind the child, as Salim watches, horrified, vomiting on the ground. Suddenly, Maman instructs Salim to get Jamal and bring him over. Salim stares at Maman, and Maman says to him, "You want the life of a slumdog or the life of a man?...Your destiny is in your hands."
Salim agrees and goes to get Jamal. Jamal is sitting on some steps talking to Latika, telling her that he just has to get Maman to like his singing, and they can become wealthy and live in a big house on Harbour Road. As he dances for Latika, Salim approaches and calls to him. They walk towards Maman's post, and Salim subtly indicates to him that they will have to make a run for it.
When Salim presents Jamal to Maman, Maman asks him to sing, but Jamal requests 50 rupees. Latika watches from a balcony and laughs as Maman hands over the money. Jamal begins to sing and one of the men tells Salim to put the anesthetic over his face to knock him out, but Salim throws it at one of the men instead, and he and Jamal make a run for it. As the men chase them, Jamal, Salim, and Latika run through the forest in the dark, eventually arriving at a train, which they manage to hop onto. Jamal and Salim make it onto the train, but as Latika grabs Salim's hand, he lets go suddenly, revenge for her prank. Latika is brought back to Maman's camp.
On the train, the boys fight, and Salim tells Jamal that they were about to blind him. "Don't worry about her, she'll be fine, she always is," Salim says of Latika, as Jamal looks around at the men who are sleeping on the train car.
Back in the present, Jamal gets the question correct on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and the crowd cheers as he wins 250,000 rupees.
Next we see Jamal and Salim's train arriving in a city. Salim comforts Jamal about the loss of Latika, and the boys begin selling things on the train in order to make money. There is a montage of them traveling across the country, through the mountains and other locations, selling goods along the way to eat. After a struggle with one of the passengers, both Jamal and Salim fall off the train, down a dusty hill, left behind. "Is this heaven?" Jamal asks, looking up at the Taj Mahal.
They go to the Taj Mahal and walk inside, marveling at the giant scale and watching as tourists explore. As people have taken off their shoes to explore the landmark, Jamal and Salim steal shoes and sit down on a bench nearby. German tourists approach Jamal and ask for a tour, as he is sitting right beside a sign for tours, and when they hand him cash, he pretends to be a tour guide, leading them around the Taj Mahal and spouting lies about the palace. They look confused as Jamal makes up facts.
As Jamal tells more and more lies, the tourists go along with him, even though they are confused. Another montage begins and we see Jamal and Salim stealing yet more shoes and finding other ways of earning money at the Taj Mahal. They sell the shoes in the city, and take pictures of tourists for money in front of the palace. They even steal a tourist couple's tires while Jamal gives them a tour of the slums. When the tourists' driver beats Jamal up for exploiting them, the tourists, guilt-ridden Americans, give Jamal cash.
Jamal climb up the bleacher seats at an outdoor performance of an opera, stealing unsuspecting patrons' wallets.
Analysis
Just when it seems that the orphaned children have been saved, brought to a kind of utopian school where there is more than enough food and kids play outside, Jamal, Latika, and Salim's lives take another bad turn. The school is not a school at all, but a training ground for child beggars. Maman, the gangster, uses innocent children, sometimes going to horrible lengths to exploit them as a way of making money.
The film depicts a society so impoverished that people are not above committing horrible acts of violence in order to get a little extra money. Resources are stretched so thin for those who live in the slums that an inviting adult is not above blinding an innocent child if it will bring him more money as a begger. What has seemed like a new home for Salim and Jamal is in fact a nightmare, a place where children are not safe from the amoral schemes of gangsters. After the blinding of the young boy, Salim sees that he and Jamal must escape.
According to the logic of the adults in the film, someone from the slums must choose either a life of poverty or the "life of a man," the price of which is a horrible and ruthless violence. There is no simple way towards self-improvement or deliverance from poverty in Slumdog Millionaire, no hope for a young boy to improve his lot in life if he is not willing to make some unthinkable sacrifices. Such are the desperate circumstances in which Jamal, Salim, and Latika grow up.
In this section of the film, the plot picks up momentum. While the stakes have been high from the start, Jamal and Salim's escape from the camp marks a coming-of-age, as they must leave behind their friend Latika and strike out on their own. Having seen the lengths to which exploitative adults will go, they can no longer trust anyone to take care of them, and must rely on their own wits to get by. With independence comes a great deal of disillusionment, and the boys' carefree and adventuresome smiles are replaced by looks of worry as they embark on the next leg of their journey.
Much of the pleasure of the film comes from Jamal and Salim's confidence and plucky resourcefulness, even in scenarios in which they have no reason to be confident, and their methods are somewhat unethical. For instance, when they arrive at the Taj Mahal, they each steal tourists' shoes, and Jamal leads an unsuspecting European couple on a completely improvised tour of the palace. The boys' ability to deceive and trick their way into some cash to get by makes them charming, and the viewer is aligned with their trickery, amused by their ability to spin a situation to their advantage.
