Azhar Mohammed Ismail, the ten-year-old star of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, got his house knocked down by authorities this week. The boy and his family, who had been squatting "in a temporary makeshift shelter made up of plastic sheets over bamboo sticks, in a slum near Bandra East in Mumbai" that is government-owned land reportedly earmarked for a public garden, say that they first received news that they would have to seek accommodations elsewhere when the demolition crew arrived and woke them up. The police also reportedly pointed up their eviction notice with a whack upside the lad's head with a bamboo stick. An article in the New York Daily News painted a picture of the scene that even Danny Boyle might think was a little over the top: "The boy, who lost his pet kittens in the chaos, picked dolefully barefoot through the wreckage, looking for anything salvageable. 'Where is my chicken?' he asked. He managed to save a badly wrinkled movie poster for Slumdog Millionaire signed in black marker by the movie's director: 'Azhar, with love and thanks, Danny Boyle.'"

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