(Xinhuanet) — The ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ child star Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and his mother moved from slum shanty into their new apartment in Mumbai, according to media reports Wednesday.
‘I was shocked when I saw this house,’ Azharuddin, 11, said Tuesday. ‘I want to thank Danny Boyle for giving us this flat.’
Boyle, the director of the film, and producer Christian Colson, will transfer the apartment to Azharuddin’s name when he turns 18, provided he finishes school.
Officials from the trust — set up by the filmmakers to secure an education, housing and a living allowance for Azhar and his co-star Rubina Ali, 9 — are actively searching for a new home for Rubina as well.
The 50,000 U.S. dollars one-bedroom apartment is on the ground floor of a seven story brown concrete apartment building called ‘Harmony,’ which sits on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Santa Cruz West section of Mumbai.
‘God has given me so much,’ Azharuddin’s mother Shameem Ismail said. ‘We will sleep very well tonight. There is no water leaking, no bad environment, no quarreling.’
She and Azhar will share the main room, while Azharuddin’s brother Irfan Ismail Sheikh, 22, and his wife will sleep on a mattress in the kitchen, she said.
Azharuddin’s mother said she doesn’t want her husband in the new house because he does drugs, but she pledged to return to Garib Nagar, one of Mumbai’s more wretched slums where they used to live, for visits.
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