Scraps for the slumdogs

The rubbish lies thick and festering outside the entrance to Rubina Ali's new home, little islands of it poking through pools of foul-smelling stagnant water.

Someone has tried to improvise a precarious path across the oozing mud with a few concrete slabs and pieces of broken pipe, but it is a losing battle. A large rat emerges from under a discarded sack and scuttles away through the driving monsoon rain.

This is not what the young actress dreamed of when she flew back to India from Hollywood after celebrating the success of the movie Slumdog Millionaire at the Oscars three years ago. Back then, she and her little co-star, Azhar Ismail, believed they stood on the threshold of a new life, away from the slums of Mumbai from which they had been plucked by director Danny Boyle to play the young stars of a movie which went on to earn more than HK$1.5 billion at the box office.

Now, Rubina sits with her back to the graffitied wall of the tiny new apartment that she has moved into with her family. There is one living room, about 15 feet by 10 feet, which doubles as a bedroom for the 14-year-old and her mother, father and two sisters. Her two brothers sleep on the floor of the small kitchen. There is a toilet cubicle and a shower room - and that is all.

"When we came back from the Oscars we were so happy. We had all these dreams about what we were going to do and how our lives were going to change," Rubina says. "People promised us many things and we believed them. But my dreams have not come true."

She and Azhar sat transfixed in front of their televisions as Boyle's dazzling Olympics opening ceremony was beamed around the world from London this summer, marvelling at the spectacle, gasping at the fireworks, delighted at the success of the man they still affectionately refer to as "Danny Uncle".

But it was hard for them not to reflect on how far their lives had diverged. While Boyle has gone from strength to strength, his young protégés have lurched from crisis to crisis.