Every Man a Millionaire

By

Momodou Sabally

Now pause a second if you think I am writing about our darling under seventeen scorpions who have been made millionaires overnight for their sterling performance in the recently concluded African Under seventeen soccer championship. No, I am writing about something even more dramatic. Yet the lesson I am trying to convey in the following story could as well be gleaned from the spectacular story of our millionaire scorpions.

It was an inspiring night watching the multiple-oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. Growing up in the slums of Mumbai Jamal (the slumdog) goes through every imaginable form of human poverty that would answer to the proverbial “wallowing in squalor”. From his making of a living by renting out toilet facilities to occasional users, to his kidnapping and enslavement as a potential blind singer, he goes through the most traumatic life any child can live. The slumdog, then participates in a quiz “who wants to be a millionaire”. This competition turns out to be the exlir for the transformation of all his past hard experiences into the wonderful blessing that would make him a millionaire.

Surpassing the expectations of host and audience the slumdog answers every question he is asked, gradually increasing the prize money into millions of rupees. Illiterate and unexposed to any form of formal schooling or normal urban life, his only knowledge of the questions asked come through the bitter experiences he went through growing up as an orphaned child in the slums of Mumbai. For example his ability to answer the question about the name of the author of a famous poem came from his experience as a kidnapped kid being trained to sing that song to earn money for his captives under the most grueling initiation process. And so does all his traumatic experiences feed into the answers to the questions he has to tackle to become a millionaire.

The big lesson I got from this thrilling movie is the age-old wisdom that every adversity has the seeds of an equivalent advantage for those who have a positive mental attitude. Through thin and thick Jamal never gave up on life but strove for bare survival and had the faith that even though an illiterate slumdog, there was a possibility of him being a millionaire through a quiz, hence the big step of getting into the competition. And as is wont to happen for those who have the faith and persistence he emerged the triumphant millionaire that no one thought would make it.

In his book The Secret of the Ages, Robert Collier writes “Success in any field is never a walkover. It is the man who wins in spite of adverse conditions, the man who wins when other people say he cannot, the man who does the impossible’, the man who rides over obstacles, who gets on in this world. And why? Because the very struggle to overcome the obstacles in his way develops the power that carries him step by step to his goal. “

In the Slumdog Millionaire is a lesson for every man and woman no matter how dire your circumstances may be. And the topic of this article should not turn off anyone who has ambitions other than the accumulation of money. You can be a dalasi millionaire if you are a money-loving Sarahuleh (courtesy of my social license :am from badibu) or a millionaire in terms of the many souls you can bring closer to God if your inclination is spiritual. But whatever angle you take, I say that everyone can be a millionaire. If you have a good head start in life with everything working for you, then praise God and keep rowing your boat, but I speak mainly to you who may think that you have everything going against you and that you have been too disadvantaged in life to make it.  The story of the Slumdog Millionaire should make you to be grateful for your circumstances and learn to move forward starting right now with a shifting of your mental attitude toward the faith that even the worst of circumstances could turn out to be of advantage to you in time.

In the Quran is told the story of Prophet Moses and a learned man who does things Moses sees as bizarre. For instance the learned man’s scuttling of a ship is seen as great injustice to its owners, and yet, as the sage was to explain to Moses later, the immobilization of that ship was what saved its owners the loss of their beautiful ship which would have been impounded by a cruel king if their journey was not delayed by his tampering of that ship. My mystical friend, the Wizard of Bijilo, tells me that “when God is creating good things, the process does sometimes come across as destruction when the end result would definitely turn out to be good”. My personal observation of the lives of great people corroborates the mystic’s assertion.

Watching Slumdog Millionaire I said to myself that we are all potential millionaires if we would but learn to make the most out of our experiences. As Russell Conwell once taught, you could be standing in your own acres of diamond right now, if you only knew.  Just  to make things clearer for those people from Kiang who may take things too literarily, you do not have to become a slumdog to be a millionaire, just be yourself and make the most out of your personal experiences.

Momodou Sabally

Author: “Instant Success”