Summary
"Are you nervous?" Jamal asks the host, laughing, before the host hands over to Jamal a check and tells him he is richer than his bosses will ever be.
In a flashback, we see Jamal wandering into a construction site, a half-built high rise where he is meeting Salim. Salim greets him warmly, and for a moment Jamal fantasizes about throwing him over the side of the building, but instead just punches him. Salim makes excuses for why he did not keep in touch with Jamal, but Jamal yells at him and tells Salim that he will never forgive him.
We see them sitting on the edge of the high rise later, looking out over the city. Salim says that business is taking over India and that the country is at the center of the world. "And I am at the center of the center," brags Salim, telling Jamal that he works for the gangster from the slum they grew up in. Salim gets a call and tells Jamal to go to his place to stay. "Where is Latika?" Jamal asks his friend, to which Salim responds, "She's long gone."
Jamal goes to sleep at Salim's house. That night, Salim receives a call in the middle of the night and prepares to head out into the city with a revolver. Before he goes, he prays, as Jamal watches, unseen, from the staircase. In the morning, Jamal follows Salim's car from a distance in a cab, all the way to Javed's housing complex. There, he leans through the gate and thinks he sees Latika. He lies to a guard that he is the new dishwasher who has been hired by the household, and the guard lets him in.
Inside Javed's house, Jamal sees Latika and the two embrace, instantly recognizing each other. "I've found you," he says, clutching her, when suddenly she walks away, worried. As she walks away, Jamal notices that she has a bruise on her eye. She emotionally disengages as he notices Who Wants to be a Millionaire? on the television nearby. "Why does everyone love this program?" he asks, to which she responds, "The show is to escape, isn't it? Walk into another life."
Suddenly Javed arrives at the house and Latika puts an apron on Jamal, telling him that Javed will kill him. Javed comes in and scolds Latika, yelling at her and ordering her to make him a sandwich. As Javed walks away, she makes a sandwich and Jamal helps. As they make it, he whispers to her to run away with him. "Salim will help us," Jamal tells her, but Latika no longer believes in Salim. Latika then tells Jamal that she'll be leaving the city soon anyway.
Javed is disgusted with the sandwich and yells at Jamal to get out. Latika escorts him out and tells him to forget about her. Jamal will not accept this, however, and tells her that he will wait outside the train station every day at five until she comes to him. She shakes her head and says, "So what? It's too late, Jamal," before closing the door.
Back on the game show, the host asks Jamal "Which cricketer has scored the most first-class centuries in history?" We flash back to see Jamal riding a train into a station, looking for Latika. She is not there, but he waits anyway, eventually giving up. Just at the moment when he believes she isn't coming, Jamal sees her on the platform below and calls to her. She smiles up at him, when suddenly Jamal sees Salim and some others running towards her. He calls to warn her, and she is captured by Salim and some other gang members who drag her away and put her in a car before Jamal can save her. He runs to the car to save her just as one of the gang members cuts her face with a knife and the car drives away.
The scene shifts back to the show, just as it goes into a commercial break. In the bathroom, the host tells Jamal that the only other person who has done what Jamal is doing—come from the slums and then win the show—is himself. "I know what you've been through," he says, but Jamal insists that he's not going to become a millionaire and he doesn't know the answer. The host persuades him to keep trying, suggesting that his victory is "written." "Trust me Jamal, you're gonna win," he says, leaving the bathroom.
As the show starts again, the host whispers to Jamal that he has to keep playing if he wants to be as famous and rich as him, that it is his destiny. The show starts again and Jamal must answer the question about cricketer, using the 50/50 lifeline, leaving two potential answers. Jamal sees an image of a "B" and picks "D" instead, which is correct. The crowd erupts into cheers as Jamal wins 10 million rupees.
As the host goes to ask the final question of the game, a sound signals that the show is over and they must take a break for the night. Later, in the hall, the host calls Jamal over and urges him to be there on time the next day, before opening a door where the two policemen throw a blanket over his head and throw him in a truck. "He's a cheat," says the host, telling his assistant that he doesn't like how much Jamal is winning.
Thus, we arrive back in the present, in the policeman's office. "This is so bizarrely plausible," says the policeman, and Jamal responds, "And yet, because I am a slumdog, a chaiwala, I am a liar, right?" The policeman dismisses Jamal, determining that he has been telling the truth.
Analysis
In this section of the film, Jamal becomes even more of a hero, searching to save and profess his love to his beloved Latika. Now he is of an age at which they are no longer childhood sweethearts; now they have the potential to be real lovers, and he searches for her with a singleness of purpose that is at times foolish. This foolishness, the fact that he lies his way into the evil gangster Javed Khan's house, makes his heroism that much more compelling. He is an unlikely hero, an ordinary boy driven to great acts of bravery by his singleminded pursuit of his great love.
When Jamal finds Latika at Javed's house, the innocence of her childhood has been replaced with a bitter and sorrowful cynicism. While Latika embraces Jamal at first, clutching him with love and affection, she soon emotionally disengages, and tells him that she has accepted her fate as an abused housewife. In this moment, we see that the scars of poverty and abuse have caught up with the bright-eyed Latika, that she is no longer as hopeful as she once was.
It is thus up to Jamal to maintain a sense of hope about their love, and he exhibits his same steadfast belief in the inevitability of their connection. When Latika tells him to forget about her, he insists that he will wait at a specific spot every day for her until she comes to him. His faith in their ability to be together trumps everything, and it is the thing that most organizes his desires and his life.
Part of what heightens the suspense of the narrative is the sense that Jamal is accomplishing the unthinkable. The fact that he is a young chaiwala who grew up in the slums and is now, on the quiz show, on the brink of becoming a very wealthy man, raises the stakes to a great extent. Because he has suffered so much, there is a sense that Jamal deserves victory more than anything, and this idea is amplified by the host who, during a commercial break, tells Jamal that he too is from the slums.
The host, who in the moment during the commercial break seems like an ally, a paternal figure that Jamal has never had, winds up being a traitor when he hands Jamal over to the police. While he has encouraged Jamal, he in fact is threatened by the young upstart's success on the show and tells his assistant, "It's my show!" as Jamal is carted away to be interrogated. Jamal's success story, as good as it is for the show, is unacceptable to the host, who sees the victory as a threat to his supremacy and sense of superiority.
