A Year Later, Little Change for Real-Life Slumdog Millionaire

In October 2011, Sushil Kumar, a poor government clerk, became a real-life Slumdog Millionaire when he won $1 million on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Today, not much has changed for Kumar—he bought a generator and a scooter, and he quit his $100 per month job. But he still wears the same clothes he did before winning and lives in a small house with his 11-person extended family, reports the BBC.

"I'm spending my money carefully," says Kumar, who says he has spent about $200,000 of his winnings so far. The biggest chunk has gone for a piece of land where a nine-bedroom house is now being built for Kumar and his family, each bedroom with its own bathroom. As an instant celebrity, Kumar says he was flooded by requests for money, but he's turned them all down. "A million is a lot of money but not enough if you start helping people, you'll lose it all in a day." (More India stories.)