Trivia: Salim Malik's Ringtone From Slumdog Millionaire, Plus Slumdog Soundtrack On Sale Today For $5

[The following post contains minor spoilers for Slumdog Millionaire]

When I watch movies and television shows, I'm almost always drawn to their soundtracks, especially when I feel they enhance the film. But for some reason, more than just the songs that play underneath the dialogue catch my attention; I also find myself obsessed with the little tiny bits of music that you would never find on a film soundtrack. In general, these obsessions lead to a certain degree of insanity, as the music often can't be tracked down, and when it finally is, it usually can't be purchased.

One such piece of music played about 2/3rds of the way through Slumdog Millionaire. In the following clip, Salim Malik gets a phone call from his boss:

For reasons passing understanding, I needed to know what that ringtone was (especially because that phone and that ringtone specifically return later on in the film). So the other day, I sent out a Twitter request to see if anybody knew what it was. To my pleasant surprise, I got replies from several different people, explaining that the song was from the Indian film Swades.

Swades is a 2004 film written, produced, and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker and starring Shahrukh Khan. The film follows the epic journey of Mohan Ghargava, a NASA scientist, who returns to India to help his childhood nanny move to the U.S. However, the more he learns about the village that she lives in, the more it changes him and his attitudes towards his home country.

The film won a hefty number of awards and is critically well-regarded; BBC Shropshire claimed it was one of the best films of the year and Slashfilm podcast listener, John, wrote in to say that "This is seriously one of the best movies I have ever seen, Hollywood or Bollywood, and like Slumdog Millionaire, it is set in the backdrop of eye-opening visuals of the 'real' India, with an extremely, extremely uplifting message."

Originally I had rented this film from Netflix to watch it in preparation for writing this article, but the film's 3.5 hour runtime was too daunting for me this week. I still plan on watching it, but it will take awhile. In the meantime, have any of you seen Swades? If so, let me know what you thought in the comments.

Here's a clip from the soundtrack of Swades composed by A.R. Rahman, who also did the Slumdog soundtrack. I guess he put his own Swades theme as the ringtone in Slumdog as an in-joke/reference:

I know a lot of you were on the edge of your seat about this question, so now you can be at peace with this knowledge (plus, you can also use Salim Malik's ringtone as your own, if you want!).

For the rest of you who don't care about any of that, you should probably be aware that Amazon MP3 has as one of their Friday deals the now-Golden-Globe-award-winning Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack on sale for the insane price of $5 (go here for my mini-review).

If you liked any of the music you heard during the movie, I can pretty much guarantee that this is worth the purchase, especially for $5. I'm pretty sure the sale only lasts through the end of today, so don't miss your chance. Thanks to all the readers who sent this in!

You can reach David Chen at Davechensemail(at)gmail.com, where you can send in esoteric requests and cool finds for obscure soundtrack knowledge. You can also follow him on Twitter or on Tumblr.