WHAT LIES AHEAD: Rubina strikes a pose outside her home, (above) a still from Salaam Bombay, and (below) Azharuddin Ismail

Rubina Qureshi has a list of things to do in Los Angeles. She will buy a toy for her kid brother and eat some burgers. After all, the girl who played little Latika in Slumdog Millionaire has already had her taste of what she calls London-wala khaana. The rest of the crew on the sets of the film — nominated for a slate of Oscar awards this year — were happy with their Indian food, but Rubina wanted to eat all that was different.

Rubina is already there in the United States, ready for the Sunday ceremony, and possibly chomping on a Big Mac. Her uncle, Moihuddin, is with her. On Friday night, Moihuddin threw a party for the guests who came to their tiny room in a Mumbai slum to celebrate the success of the film before they left for LA.

Life has clearly changed for the nine-year-old. Their room was recently fitted with a 32-inch LCD screen and a spanking new gas stove. And Rubina can’t have enough of the pink dress that has been bought for her for Oscar night. “We must have been visited by a very lucky person to have been blessed with such good luck,” says Moihuddin, who earns Rs 200 a day from his paan-bidi stall in Garib Nagar, in Bandra East.

Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s modern-day fairy tale, has made Rubina a celebrity. Young boys in the neighbourhood eagerly guide journalists down dirt alleys to her shanty. Rubina, who does not know her birthday, has already learnt to handle her star status. When she walks through the slums with her carpenter father, hand in hand, in make-up and new clothes, she looks straight ahead, oblivious to an army of flashbulbs. “Slum kids have a chutzpah that is easy to harness,” says Sanjoy Roy, founder trustee of Salaam Balak Trust, Delhi.

Roy knows what he’s talking about, because it’s a story that he knows well. After Mira Nair’s 1988 film Salaam Bombay — which had a cast of 27 street children — hit the headlines, the film’s children were feted while the arc lights were on them. But none of the 27 went to school. Most took to petty crime, though there were a few success stories as well. Raju Barnard, who played Keera in Salaam Bombay, is a cameraman in Los Angeles. Hansa Vitthal, the only girl in the group of street boys, told Dinaz Stafford, the film’s assistant director, that she was torn between marriage and education. Today, she lives in Bhayendar, a western suburb of Mumbai, with “the man she loves,” says Stafford, another trustee of the Salaam Balak trust, set up in the late Eighties to rehabilitate the film’s actors.

“Most of the street children who acted in Salaam Bombay were not able to cope with life after fame on 70MM,” says Roy. “But then life after fame would be difficult to deal with for anyone,” he adds.

In Garib Nagar, the story so far has been so good. Both Rubina and 10-year-old Azharuddin Ismail, the youngest Salim in the film, have been going to school. A large amount of money — nobody will say how much — has been put in a trust for them, to be used after they finish school.

Ashutosh Lobo, who played the adolescent Salim in Slumdog, marvels at the way Rubina and Azharuddin, or Azhar, have adapted to their new-found fame. At a five-star hotel in Mumbai, where the actors were put up for a day, the first thing they learnt was how to use the bathtub. “After half an hour, it seemed they belonged there,” says Lobo.

Raj Acharya, the film’s first assistant director who helped groom Azharuddin, says the boy would “hang around” with him. “He’d sometimes pick up my file and look at it as though he were reading. Sometimes, he’d even scribble.”

Rubina reveals a fine hand when she signs her name in a notebook. But when asked to write a few words, she demurs — preferring instead to trace the outlines of her palm, embellishing the wrist with an intricate henna design.

It’s not easy in the slums to keep children in school. Many have to earn, and there are enough diversions to keep them busy at home. On Friday, a group of little boys who live near Azharuddin’s tarpaulin-covered shanty say they’ve bunked school because it’s the day of namaaz. Rubina’s celebrity status has also affected her attendance. Her stepmother, Munni — who married Rubina’s father two months ago — says the principal of her earlier municipal school told her that if Rubina wanted to continue to study there, she’d have to stop meeting the press.

Clearly, rehabilitating street or slum kids is no mean task. “Street kids find the discipline off the streets hard to take. It is not as exciting as life in the street, where they have friends and enjoy chicken tandoori at will,” says Roy.

Salaam Bombay’s cast found it difficult to cope with normal life after the glitz and glamour of the film. Roy points out that the lead actor, Shafique, who is now trying to make it as a minor entrepreneur in Bangalore, couldn’t settle down for long. He changed jobs rapidly, and would threaten to jump off buildings. He also mislaid the certificate that he had won for a national award as the best actor.

Two of the cast died — one from AIDS related symptoms, and the other in a motorcycle accident. “Money also brings relatives out of the woodwork,” adds Roy.

Everybody, evidently, wants a share of the celebrity pie. After one of Rubina’s photo shoots, her biological mother, Khurshid, emerges from a distance. “Can anybody get me a role in a film,” she says, laughingly biting her tongue when nobody responds.

Khurshid, 26, had walked out on her husband when Rubina was four. “My children are afraid to meet me. Their father once got violent when I tried to talk to them,” she says. But Khurshid stresses that she is happy to see Rubina’s success. “Usually, it’s always the rich who get recognition. But a lotus blooms in the mud,” she says.

If rumours are to be believed, neither Rubina nor Azharuddin will be living in their mud hovels for long. A neighbour says they are going to move out soon. Azhar’s house was razed by the civic authorities four months ago. His father, Mohammed Ismail, who was recently discharged from Mumbai’s TB Hospital, says he sold wood at Rs 2 a kilo to be used for cooking wedding feasts.

Like most men in the slum, Ismail’s staple is a bottle of country liquor and cigarettes that he bums off visiting journalists, whom he will not entertain without a tip. He is 45, but looks older by decades. And he answers questions by abusing profusely. “Everybody abuses here — even the women and children,” he says.

Azhar’s former friends — kids in the neighbourhood — say they wish Azhar did not swear as much. “I wish Azhar would play with us like before,” says another little girl. “Now he acts like a hero. His mother shoos us off if we stand near their house.”

Azhar, they stress, has changed. These days, he orders in from neighbouring restaurants that serve Mughlai food. “Even if batate ki kadi (potato curry) is cooked at home, Azhar will still order biryani,” says one puzzled child.

But, at the end of the day, the most important factor for these children, is mera ghar, mera family — the home and family, says Dinaz Stafford. “Salaam Bombay’s kids all went back to their families.”

In Garib Nagar, the story is just unfolding.