Final answer.

All I ever write about is love anymore. So maybe, for the sake of diversity, I'll try to write about something different. Something entirely different ...

How about money? Yeah, money. I can write about that.

So ... I watched "Slumdog Millionaire" for the first time tonight, and I have to admit -- I balled my eyes out. I'm a girl, so I'm allowed to do things like that. Cry, that is. Not watch movies. Everyone watches movies ... or at least they should.

It was amazing. And the part that amazed me the most wasn't that people actually live like that. I've read enough books and heard enough stories and Googled enough countries to know slums like that do exist. The amazing part was how drinking out of the same river where people go to the bathroom doesn't automatically kill your soul. Dash your hopes. And make you not want to live another day.

Slums -- not like downtown Atlanta slums. Or Ponce de Leon slums. Or even the big-time slums of New York City can touch the slums of Mumbai. They are the definition of hopelessness. Where 50 rupees would make you sell an autographed picture of your brother's all-time favorite hero. One that he would literally swim through waste to get.

Those kind of places are where money is not a means to an end. It's an ideal. A way out. An escape from the writhing pain and fear everyone lives in. Or at least that's how I imagine it has to be like.

Then again, I've never been without shoes. Or water. Or food. I can't remember not having a car or a bike or a church or a family. And I'm not sure I could live without my dignity. I think I would rather die. I think.

That is the great thing about the human spirit. It is true what they say, or what someone once said, that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It may even numb you for awhile, but it doesn't kill you.

At the risk of going back to my favorite subject, the one thing they couldn't live without was love. Even when their mother was gone, they had to have one or the other -- love or money -- to even have a reason to live. One went one way, one went the other. And, as you see, love conquers all. Even when a million rupees hangs in the balance.