Slumdog Millionaire was such a hit that everybody associated with it now earns an extra 17 zeros on the end of any paycheck they ever receive. Seriously – everyone’s box office value has increased exponentially.
Also their value in the black market slave trade slightly increased too. That’s why when some potential daughter-buyers recently offered the father of?Rubina Ali Qureshi $300,000 for his now somewhat famous daughter, he cut off a lock of Ali’s hair for his wife’s memory book and wished the child well in her new life cruising Nile river-ports.
Or something along those lines.
If you are anything like us, then when you walked out of Slumdog Millionaire with the sound of credits rolling in the background it was with the urgent need to Google all those child actors to see if any of them were being sold into reasonably-priced slavery. After all, it had been absolute months since anything we owned hummed us sad gospel tunes as it washed various things down in the river. Our electronic search ended in nought but disappointment.
Well we must have entered our search terms wrong because we failed to notice that one of those little actors was completely for sale – at least according to News of the World:
“In a bid to escape India’s real-life slums, Rafiq Qureshi put angel-faced darling of the Oscars Rubina up for adoption…Then, almost embarrassed to speak it out loud, he whispered to an accomplice the price tag he has put on his innocent young daughter: “It’s ?200,000!”That was an astonishing FOURFOLD increase on his opening demand. But Rafiq’s equally demanding brother Mohiuddin insisted: “The child is special now. This is NOT an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child!”
Upon hearing of the raised price, Madonna stormed right out of the room. Not really. Not yet.
It’s unknown if the actual would-be buyers had any sort of a down payment in mind or a dumb non-famous kid to trade in. What is known though, is that the people on the other end of the nine-year-old girl-purchase were under-cover News of the World reporters who exposed the whole alleged thing. When the father, Rafiq, found out he’d been had, he said this:
“In India you never say ‘no’ directly, least of all to guests. You try not to offend people by refusing to help.”
Really? Well in that case Rafiq, may we please take this over-sized colon we cut out of a decomposing elephant carcass and use it to hog tie your wife just before stuffing her into said elephant tantan style? If you like, we could do it while we’re there for tea. Also, can this guy spend a month with you? He only eats things he brought with him, if you catch our drift, so don’t worry about your severe poverty or anything. Plus if you treat him well enough he might even let you sell his partially-chewed penis tip. That’d probably net you several dozen rupies.
We thought so. You are a businessman, Rafiq – a shrewd one at that. Don’t let those stupid anti-child sellers tell you which of your children you can & can’t hawk into slavery or what-have-you. That’s a decision every man gets to make for himself whenever he feels like it.
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