Swarup’s pang at being left out of 'Slumdog'

Vikas Swarup, who is admittedly besotted by the runaway success of his book Q&A, felt a writer’s pang at being left out of Slumdog Millionaire.  Swarup said he came to understand that the world of films functioned under a different lens, altogether.

Comparing Danny Boyle’s screen adaptation of his book to the original work, he said, “While Q and A is iconic, Slumdog Millionaire is evocative.”

“When I met Simon Beaufoy at the London launch of the book, he promised to stick to the soul of the book, which made me sure that the body would be mangled,” he joked.

The screenplay’s first draft was drastically different from the book itself, but the screenwriter incorporated some of his suggestions later, Swarup said. “But, then I realised that the screenplay is the bible for the filmmaker and the writer did not matter once it was finalised,” Swarup told author and moderator William Dalrymple at the Jaipur literature festival.

“So when I watched the film, I was not shocked despite the fact that the filmmakers had taken a lot of liberty, changing the name of the hero from Ram Mohammad Thomas to Jamal Malik.”

Swarup said he wrote the book in a bout of unexpected madness, in contrast to his working as a diplomat. Inspiration came from a news piece about a major in the British army being accused of cheating in the British version of the game show.

He insisted, “There is nothing diplomatic about this book,” when Dalrymple referred to the portrayal of India even when he had written the book as a diplomat. All stories about the country should be told to the world, he said.  “India is so large and multifarious, a single book cannot represent the whole reality,” he said.