Q & A

One Saturday on June 17, Ram is walking in Mumbai and accidentally bumps into Salim, whom he hasn’t seen in five years. He just arrived in Mumbai from Agra three months ago. Ram is nervous about whether their friendship will be the same, and at first things are awkward, but eventually they start to talk. Salim is now about 16 and has become handsome. He still loves Hindi films, except of course those with Armaan Ali. Salim says that the famous producer Abbas Rizvi has been paying money for Salim to get acting lessons so that Salim can be the hero of his next film after Salim turns 18.

Salim begins to tell the story in his own words to Ram. After Ram leaves the chawl, Salim continues to live there for four more years, collecting and delivering tiffins (lunchboxes). On one occasion, he learns he is delivering a tiffin to Mukesh Rawal, who works in films part-time as a junior artist. When Salim starts excitedly asking Mukesh about film, Mukesh says Salim is probably too young to be a hero, but he promises to refer Salim for bit parts as a schoolboy or street urchin. Salim leaves excited.

One day, while Salim is walking the streets, he runs into none other than Maman. Maman recognizes him at once and tries to catch him, but Salim manages to take a bus to get away. But the bus drives straight into a riot where a mob of people stopped its progress. The people in the mob claim that Muslims burned a Hindu temple, so now they are going to make Muslim passengers stay on the bus while the Hindus are allowed to leave.

When Salim is interrogated about his name, which is clearly Muslim, he struggles to come up with a good fake name, and the mob immediately accuses him of being Muslim. Another man on the bus stands up for Salim, saying his own name is Ahmed Khan and anyone who wants to hurt Salim will have to go through him first. They aren’t impressed until Ahmed Khan pulls out a revolver. At that, the men in the mob run away from the bus.

With the mob gone, Ahmed Khan and Salim start talking and getting to know each other. Ahmed is in the import­–export business. Ahmed offers Salim a job cooking and cleaning his home, which is large, and Salim accepts. Soon after, Salim gets his first film offer, as a small background role in an Abbas Rizvi-produced film. Although Salim has bigger dreams, he is happy with this initial progress.

Over the next six months, Salim learns more about Ahmed, whose two main interests in life seem to be eating food and watching TV, writing down cricket statistics in a diary and committing many to heart. Salim comes to learn that Ahmed keeps this data to improve his odds at satta, illegal betting on cricket that is generally run by underground crime syndicates. When Salim learns how much Ahmed has won on certain bets, he is astounded.

Salim is never allowed to touch Ahmed’s mail, but he notices that Ahmed keeps receiving big yellow envelopes. One day, he accidentally spills tea on an envelope and decides to look inside to make sure nothing was damaged. All Salim sees inside is a man’s name, Vithalbhai Ghorpade, along with his age and address. Salim assumes it is just a business contact. But two weeks later, while Ahmed is watching Mumbai Crime Watch, a man on TV announced that Vithalbhai Ghorpade has been murdered in his home. To Salim’s surprise, Ahmed laughs at the man’s death.

A month later, Ahmed receives a new yellow envelope. Salim memorized the name and photo and again, one week later, he hears news of the man’s death. After the next yellow envelope arrives, Salim tracks Ahmed that day and learns that Ahmed is in fact a contract killer pretending to be a businessman.

For two months, Salim lives a double life, keeping Ahmed’s secret to himself. Then one day during a cricket match, Ahmed bets big on cricketer Salvin Malvankar making his 37th Test century and loses it all when Salvin fails to do so. Ahmed starts muttering to himself about how he wants to kill another cricket player whose misplay cost Ahmed the century. That same afternoon, a yellow envelope comes. Salim checks, fearing it will contain the cricket player, but instead it has a photo of Abbas Rizvi. Fearing for his own life if he does anything, Ram nevertheless decides to go warn Abbas Rizvi, taking the yellow packet with him as evidence. Rizvi is very grateful and decides to go lay low in Dubai, promising to pay for Salim’s acting lessons and to make him a hero in movies.

When Ram hears all this, he is amazed by Salim’s whole story. He asks if Ahmed got suspicious when Rizvi ran away. Salim says he made sure Ahmed did have a packet with a picture that day—of Maman. Ahmed apparently killed Maman. Not long after, he was killed in a shoot-out with police.

In the present, Smita approves of Salim’s cleverness. She asks if Salim knows anything about Ram’s win on Who Wants To Win A Billion?, but Ram didn’t have a chance to tell him. They press play on the DVD. Prem Kumar asks Ram how many Test centuries Sachin Malvankar scored. Ram correctly guesses 36.