From the dirty, dingy environs of the slums that they live in, the two child actors of hit movie Slumdog millionaire are about to live a dream, by attending the glitzy Oscar awards ceremony in the USA.

The lives of these Mumbai slum children have taken a fairytale spin just like the story of Slumdog Millionaire, the film by director Danny Boyle that they famously star in and which has bagged 10 nominations at the 81st Academy Awards.
On Thursday, they will fly off to walk the red carpet and rub shoulders with the who’s who of Hollywood at the Oscars.
“I think we will win all the awards. We will win 10 out of 10,” Azharuddin, 10, who essayed the role of a young Salim, the protagonist’s brother, told a news channel.
Rubina, 9, who played young Latika, added: “I don’t know anything now. I will see what happens there.”
“I feel very very very very very very good,” 10-year-old Azharuddin Ismail said, sitting across from his home, a lean-to of tarps and blankets, according to an Associated Press story. He’d never been on a plane. He’d never traveled outside India. Neither had Rubina Ali, his 9-year-old co-star and neighbor.
The children learned Thursday that they had their visas; their passports were issued a day earlier. Rubina was traveling with her uncle, Mohideen Khan, and Azhar with his mother, Shameem Ismail, according to The AP.
How the two kids will handle the head-spinning culture clash — in the slums on Friday, at the Oscars on Sunday surrounded by jewels and lavish arrays of food and stars, then back to the slums next week — remains to be seen. In any case, making the film has left them better off than most in their neighborhood.
Their dreams have changed too. Rubina and Azharuddin now want to become actors even though they continue to live in their makeshift homes in a slum in the Bandra neighborhood. Thanks to the director, they are also going to a proper school and might move into better houses soon.

The filmmakers paid Rubina and Azhar for 30 days of acting work, gave the families a small monthly stipend and set up trust funds that the children can tap when they graduate from high school. Producer Christian Colson has described the trusts as substantial, but declined to reveal the amount