‘Slumdog’ kids in poverty again

Re “ ‘Slumdog’ Home Destroyed,” QuickTakes, May 21: Oh, Danny Boy(le), the pipes are calling, where have you gone? Why have you abandoned the children on whose backs your project amassed over $326 million?

You tore them from their nightmare to live a pleasant dream, but only for a moment -- at least until they’d exhausted their usefulness, to then be cast aside. They graciously were then allowed to fall back into poverty, wakened from a stupor so sweet it served only to harden the bitterness of their reality.

Azhar Mohammed Ismail and Rubina Ali are the slumdogs now they were before, their memory of grace is fading and now even their shanties have been taken -- that boiling mud on which they’re sleeping so very different from the satin sheets gently caressing Mr. Boyle.

Michael E. White

Burbank