Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

In the 1950s, the comedian Eddie Lawrence invented the Old Philosopher, a character who recited imagined calamities and asked, “Is that what’s bothering you, Bunkie?” As I read about the misfortunes chronicled in "Behind the Beautiful Forevers," I found myself thinking, Is that what’s bothering you, Pallavi? Except these calamities are all too real. Katherine Boo writes very well. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and she’s won a MacArthur “Genius” grant. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is her anthropological-by-anecdote study of Annawadi, an “undercity” – a temporary colony in makeshift shelters – of 3,000 squatters under the flight path of the Mumbai airport. It sits in the shadows of the “Glimmerglass Hyatt” and other luxury hotels, symbols of India’s newfound prosperity. As Boo explains in an author’s note, "Every country has its myths, and one that successful Indians liked to indulge was a romance of instability and adaptation – the idea that India's rapid rise derived in part from the chaotic unpredictability of daily life." And nowhere is daily life more chaotic or less predictable than in Annawadi. This book is not an academic cost/benefit analysis of modernization or an examination of the plight of the “average” Indian. It is the story of a half-dozen families living unimaginably brutalizing existences. There are stories of both courage and cowardice, filled with the personal complexities that permeate people’s lives. It is a grim subject, which Boo handles admirably in a brilliantly composed and eminently readable book – one that packs as much literary power as a great work of fiction. Annawadi is a hard place. Neighborhoods like the South Side of Chicago or North Philly may define poverty for most Americans, but Annawadi is different in kind from those communities – as harsh as the Dickensian slums of 19th-century London. No matter how dire things appear when we first meet Boo’s subjects, their reality is worse. Boo uses lucid, sober and elegant prose, along with novel-like narrative arcs and character development, to tell their stories. Death, disease and alcoholism are everywhere. One woman walks aimlessly through Annawadi for weeks after her son’s suicide, asking everyone she passes if they could tell her why her son had taken his life. A man explains that because he has advanced TB, “Lately if I don’t drink, I don’t have the strength to lift anything.” Here’s Boo’s wonderful (and awful) take on monsoon season: “On the high grounds of the liquid city, rich people spoke of the romance of monsoon: the languorous sex, retail therapy, and hot jalebis that eased July into August. At Annawadi, the sewage lake crept forward like a living thing. Sick water buffalo nosed for food though mounds of wet, devalued garbage, s***ting out the consequences of bad choices with a velocity Annawadi water taps had never equaled. People, also sick, stomped the mud from their feet and said, ‘My stomach is on fire, my chest.’ ‘All up and down this leg, all night.’” And yet there is hope too. Indeed, much like Dickens’ urban subcultures, Annawadi is a complex social landscape, where residents jockey to improve their position. Many are captivated with the opportunities of modern India and are on the make (or hope to be). There is even a brothel, run from his hut by a Muslim man who considers his whores a pack of malingerers. There are also goats that belong to him and have the run of the place. And, of course, this being India, there is corruption. Boo does a great job of illustrating its pervasiveness. Even the Catholic orphanage is run by a crooked nun. When Westerners visit, she recruits kids to beg for rupees from the rich white women. She pockets some of the money and shares the rest with local politicians and underpaid police dependent on graft to make a living. One of the children Boo focuses on, Sunil, refused to play the game and was banished from the orphanage, where he had occasionally gotten food and shelter. Most Annawadi residents do menial jobs, are unemployed or do something imaginatively entrepreneurial to get by. At least one – a woman named Asha – has decided that governmental sleaze has created an opportunistic path to respect and relative affluence. Asha is an intelligent woman capable of penetrating insight into people. But she also has profound wounds from her upbringing in rural India, where the limits of caste, gender and destitution are even more unforgiving and unrelenting than they are in Annawadi. The resentment triggered by those memories enables her to act amorally, without remorse or empathy. In a discussion with her daughter about how a nonprofit trust she controlled could be used to steal money intended to educate unschooled children, she says, “Of course it’s corrupt. But is it my corruption? How can anyone say I am doing the wrong when the big people . . . say that it’s right?” Boo’s message is that notwithstanding the myth of economic growth through chaotic unpredictability, as the Indian economic miracle unsteadily lurches forward, it is accompanied by an ongoing search for solid ground on which citizens can seek the promised rewards. As Boo tells the story of Sunil – the boy banished from the orphanage – she notes that he had experimented with becoming a “road boy,” essentially a street urchin and thief. But he decided that was too risky; he would stick with being a scavenger who dumpster-dives for a living, seeking to recycle other people’s trash and providing one of Boo’s best metaphors: “Each evening, they returned down the slum road with gunny sacks of garbage on their backs, like a procession of broken-toothed, profit-minded Santas.” Sunil found his “territory” on a narrow ledge behind some dumpsters by the airport, where taxi drivers throw litter over fences adorned with repeated ads for floor tiles that promise to be “forever beautiful forever beautiful forever beautiful . . . .” From his precarious perch on the ledge behind the beautiful forevers, Sunil retrieves cans, bottles and whatever else he can salvage, providing Boo with another metaphor for the Indian economy, which she chooses to imbue with hope at the end of her tale. Then there’s Manju, Asha’s daughter, who is almost too perfectly emblematic of Boo’s vision of modern India. Manju is attending college – she wants to be a teacher – and no longer fits in anywhere. Her classmates think she’s peculiar because she’s from a slum, while her neighbors think it is weird that she is pursuing an education. She doesn’t understand why anybody would want to talk to her, and few do. But her biggest fear is that her mother will marry her off, in which case she “would die doing the things she was doing now: sweeping the dirt that had blown in from outside, mopping, then sweeping the new dirt that had blown in while she mopped.” Manju is nonetheless deferential to her mother, even agreeing to falsify documents as the secretary of her nonprofit trust. A recurring focus of the book is on the Husain family, especially their oldest son, Abdul. As Boo recounts their background and the details of their daily lives, we learn about Abdul’s expertise at evaluating scavengers’ rubbish, a vital skill that enables him to act as a middleman between scavengers and corporate recyclers. We also learn about the imprisonment, torture and trial of Abdul, his father and his sister on trumped-up charges of . . . well, they don’t know what exactly, but the allegations seem to have something to do with inciting their next-door neighbor to kill herself by self-immolation. The neighbor had an ongoing feud with various members of the Husain family over seemingly trivial matters; her dramatic suicide may have been triggered because a Husain home-improvement project financed by Abdul’s earnings caused rubble to fall into rice she was cooking for dinner. After being tortured and held in the local police station for months, Abdul was released to a juvenile facility (ironically because his mother was able to acquire false documentation that he was younger than he was). The trial of Abdul’s father and sister was held in a “high speed court” in Sewri, a South Mumbai neighborhood that is a one-hour bus-and-train ride from Annawadi, but it feels to the Husains as if it were another world, oceans away. I won’t reveal the outcome, but the fiasco illustrates the dictum laid down by Abdul’s father at the beginning of the first chapter: “Your little boat goes west and you congratulate yourself, ‘What a navigator I am!’ And then the wind blows you east.”

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is the most disturbing book I have read in a long time. Although it reads like a well-written novel, it is the non-fictional account of the lives of several families living in the Annawadi slum at the edge of the Mumbai airport. The slum is located behind a sign that advertises tile flooring with the motto: Beautiful Forever. That's where the title comes from. The author, Katherine Boo, is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist. She spent three years in Annawadi where she developed relationships with several families and followed their stories. She did extensive interviews and other research for the book which is subtitled "Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity." Residents of Annawadi are mostly refugees from rural areas who were unable to sustain themselves there and were drawn to the bustling, emergent economy of Mumbai. They literally live on the cast-aways of the more affluent as they pick through garbage daily looking for re-cyclables they can sell. Annawadi itself is likely to be recycled into middle class housing and other projects deemed more appropriate for the area around the international airport by city officials. The families Boo follows include the good, the corrupt, the selfish, the intelligent, the greedy, the disabled, the beautiful, and the despised. Although the caste system of India is breaking down as it evolves into a modern state, the barriers are still there. Corruption infects every aspect of their lives in ways that those of us blessed to live in America cannot begin to imagine. In her concluding chapter, Boo writes "Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional...It is easy from a safe distance, to overlook the fact that in under-cities governed by corruption where exhausted people vie on scant terrain for very little, it is blisteringly hard to be good. The astonishment is that some people are good and that many people try to be...." This is the message that is so disturbing that at one point in the narrative I set the book aside for a few days. Without providing a spoiler, I will only say that when I returned to finish the book I was relieved to find that my worst fears about the outcome of a tragic situation for one of the families was not realized and a small bit of hope revealed. Beyond the Beautiful Forevers reveals the hidden and marginalized society living beneath the glittering facade of the new Mumbai. By implication, similar "under-cities" exist wherever the global economy is emerging and changing traditional cultures. Boo concludes, "If the house is crooked and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything straight?" This is not a hopeful message, but it is enlightening and important.

Katherine Boo has written a remarkable book about Annawadi, a slum within the perimeters of the Mumbai airport and within view of the city's most luxurious hotels. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity is about the lives of the people who live in Annawadi - their hopes, despairs, and day-to-day lives. Written in the form of an ethnography, the author is not seen or heard. She is invisible as she documents the lives of others. The book takes place between November 2007 through March 2011. Though it is non-fiction, it reads like fiction, each page taut with action, emotions, and depth of character. "The slumdwellers I'd already come to know in India were neither mythic nor pathetic. They were certainly not passive. Across the country, in communities decidedly short on saviors, they were improvising, often ingeniously, in pursuit of the new economic possibilities of the twenty-first century." "Although I had no pretense that I could judge a whole by a sliver, I thought it would be useful to follow the inhabitants of a single, unexceptional slum over the course of several years to see who got ahead and who didn't, and why, as India prospered." In Annawadi "only six of the slum's three thousand residents had permanent jobs." All the names and events in this book are real and the author utilizes "written notes, video recordings, audiotapes, and photographs" to document the contents of this book. The first person we meet is Abdul. His age isn't clear but he's somewhere close to seventeen. He is a garbage recycler, spending his days in city dumps and selling and buying recyclables. For Annawadi, this is a good job. Many of his neighbors have to resort to eating rats and frogs found at the sewage dump for dinner. This makes Abdul feel like he is upwardly mobile. "It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they dodged. A decent life was the train that hadn't hit you, the slumlord you hadn't offended, the malaria you hadn't caught." Unfortunately for Abdul, he is unable to dodge the catastrophe that will change his life. Because of a series of disputes with his neighbor Fatima, 'the one leg' (because she was born with only one leg), Fatima sets herself on fire and blames Abdul and his family for the act. She states at some point that they set her on fire, and at other points that they drove her to do it. Neither of these allegations are true but Abdul and his family are charged with the crime and a court case is in the horizon. In Mumbai's slum, everything is about money and getting paid off. The police expect pay-offs, as do the mediators and the investigators. While Abdul's family has finally been able to get ahead, this court case takes all of their resources to fight it. Abdul's father and sister are incarcerated in a horrible jail and Abdul is in a youth facility where he is regularly beaten. "The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags." The children of Annawadi are resourceful, but not resourceful enough to avoid getting bitten by rats, having boils form from the rat bites and, in some cases, having worms emerge when the boils burst. Many of the children sleep on the floor of a hut if they are lucky enough to have any shelter. Sunil is a child we meet after he is thrown out of the orphanage where he'd been living. His mother died and his father is a drunk. Once back in Annawadi, he needs to transition: "reaccustoming himself to scavenging work, to rats that emerged from the woodpile to bite him as he slept, and to a state of almost constant hunger." He treated his hunger by eating discarded cigarettes or by lying down. His biggest fear was that his hunger was stunting his growth and he worried about this all the time. "To jumpstart his system, he saw he'd have to become a better scavenger. This entailed not dwelling on the obvious: that his profession could wreck a body in a very short time. Scrapes from dumpster-diving pocked and became infected. Where skin broke, maggots got in. Lice colonized hair, gangrene inched up fingers, calves swelled into tree trunks, and Abdul and his younger brothers kept a running wager about which of the scavengers would be the next to die." Many of the youth of Annawadi use Eraz-ex to get high. It's like white-out and is huffed. It is highly toxic to the liver and other organs and shortens the life span significantly. Others give up on life completely and there is a high suicide rate. The means of choice is usually rat poison. The residents of Annawadi are squatters as the land is owned by the airport. It was rumored that the airport was going to raze the slum and build high-rises, some intended for the inhabitants - 269 foot apartments, some to house up to eleven residents. "Annawadians understood that their settlement was widely perceived as a blight, and that their homes, like their work, were provisional." The slum is filled with hucksters and scam artists. One of the more interesting characters is Asha. She is determined to get ahead politically and raises money for many non-existent charities and schools. She gives a cut of the money to the funders and keeps part of it for herself. She is also involved in many of the financial transactions that occur in Annawadi. She offers to intervene with the police and court system for Abdul and his family for a price. There isn't much that goes on financially in Annawadi that Asha is not involved in. Interestingly, she has a daughter, Manju, who is a true idealist and will be the first female college graduate in Annawadi. One would think that the poor would unite together to try to get out of their situation. "Instead, powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked. Sometimes they tried to destroy one another. Sometimes, like Fatima, they destroyed themselves in the process. When they were fortunate, like Asha, they improved their lots by beggaring the life chances of other poor people". There is no cooperation in Annawadi. It is each for themselves and perhaps their families. "Poor people didn't unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional." This is an amazing book. It is filled with horror and despair but there are also elements of hope and humor. Katherine Boo catches the micro and macro elements of Annawadi and its inhabitants. She delves into the culture and provides the reader with an ethnographic story that is as mesmerizing as it is real. There is no putting this book down. It catches the reader and carries him away. I found that when I came up for air I had to shake my head a few times to be sure I wasn't in Annawadi and was in my home in the United States. The book is that real. I recommend it to anyone who likes to read about cultural differences and wants a book that is a real page-turner. It is intelligent, fascinating, and will raise as many questions as it answers. It is a book for our global era and economy. It is about the underbelly of globalization.

This is a tough book for me to review. I would not have touched it if it had not been "assigned" by my book club. But I did read it, so here is my take. On the positive side, it is an astonishingly closely reported story about a small number of people living illegally in a sprawling slum on the grounds of the Mumbai airport. The author took years to get her story, and the effort shows. Very serious, skillful, and worthy journalism. Kudos to an exceptionally skilled and motivated journalist. On the negative side, it is a devastating story of human suffering, official corruption, and a situation that makes it hard to imagine how either will ever end. All involved are acting in their self interest under the circumstances they face--probably doing what I would do under the same circumstances. They exist in a stable equilibrium. It is an up-close and personal account of a concrete instantiation of Malthus's view of the world--population will necessarily expand until it consumes all the resources available, leaving all of those still alive to survive, just barely, on the hard edge of starvation and desperation. I feel powerless to help do anything about it. If I can't help, why do I need to know about this suffering? As I slogged through my assigned reading, I tried to take heart in the persistent evidence of a hopeful human spirit ever striving for something better, something more in circumstances that I cannot imagine asking anyone to live in. But the further I got into this living hell, the more I became convinced that the people portrayed in the book live in false hope. And the limp-wristed way in which the book ends, I think, is meant to drive this message home, like a stake through the heart, just in case any reader is still confused. Human life will go on, the ending says, pretty much as it has gone on, even if all these families are forcibly expelled from their homes on the grounds of the Mumbai airport. If you can call this human life. If you seek a skillful update on life in hell, this book is for you.

This week, I finished Katherine Boo’s award-winning book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope. This book caused me to reflect once again on how I was stunned by India’s poverty. I lived at an international K-12 school campus that serviced the top tier of Indian society. These privileged students lived in a different world that had little direct contact with their less fortunate peers. Did my affluent students care about the inequalities of their society? I wondered, but never asked. As an award-winning writer and researcher living in Mumbai, Katherine was able to capture the day-to-day life in an Indian slum. Over 3+ years, she documented her experiences by keeping written notes, video recordings, audio tapes, and photographs and also delved into a plethora of government records. Writing in the third person, Katherine illustrated the hardships. Her compelling narrative provides an overview of life in Annawadi, a slum adjacent to the Mumbai airport. As a westerner who lived in India, I can relate to many aspects of her engaging story. Bits and pieces of her Mumbai experience add to what I observed in Bangalore. I saw first-hand that anyone who could afford a private education was clamoring for entrance into a reputable school. From acquaintances I learned that the public schools provided a low level education.It was common for teachers not to show up. One of the book’s characters, Sunil, realized the value of a quality education. However, Sunil also knew that this pathway was not open to him. “Sunil did want to be something, but it didn’t seem to him that a municipal school education gave Annawadi boys better opportunities. Those who finished seventh or eighth grade just ended up scavenging, doing roadwork, or boxing Fair and Lovely lotion in a factory. Only boys who went to a private school had a chance to finish high school and go to college.” (Page 158) I was told that public school teachers were not valued. Perhaps, there were good reasons. I was unaware of the mediocre standards for public school teacher training. “Nearly 60 percent of the state’s public school teachers hadn’t finished college, and many of the permanent teachers had paid large under-the-table sums to school officials to secure their positions.” (Page 63) Males outnumbered women wherever I went. Starting at the airport and later on the streets of Bangalore, I wondered where the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters were located. Later at the international school, I was surprised when I was handed a class roster that listed 12 boys and only 6 girls. Katherine reaffirmed the glaring fact that many Indians prefer male children. “Young girls in the slums died all the time under dubious circumstances, since most slum families couldn’t afford the sonograms that allowed the wealthier families to dispose of their female liabilities before birth. Sickly children of both sexes were sometimes done away with, because of ruinous costs of their care.” (Page 76) I encountered people who embraced a mindset that revolved around superstitious beliefs. Katherine includes characters who feared ghosts. “But if she dies while you give her water, the ghost will get inside you,” someone said. “Ghosts of women are the worst. Years go by and they don’t leave you be.” (Page 96) More troubling than these illogical beliefs was the deplorable prison system and an unfair criminal court system. Using the facts surrounding the accusations against the Husain family, Katherine exposed the deep-seated corruption that continues to fill the pockets of Indian bureaucrats. “As a matter of official record, the Husains had not been arrested, were not in custody. What happened in this office was off the books.” (Page 106) Without any records, the officials could do whatever they pleased. Katherine showcases the abusive behavior that the Husains received from corrupted officials and jealous neighbors. Katherine candidly remarked about the pervasive extortions and beatings. “The idea was to get terrified prisoners to pay everything that they had, and everything they could secure from a moneylender, to stop a false criminal charge from being recorded. Beatings, though outlawed in the human rights code, were practical, as they increased the price that detainees would pay for their release.” (Page 107) The shake down of the improperly accused could continue for years. “In normal courts five or eight or eleven years sometimes passed between the declaration of charges and the beginning of a trial.” (Page 200) Upon arrival in India, I had been warned to avoid the police since they were notoriously corrupt and ineffective. I wondered how they would respond to an emergency situation. It was hard to forget what happened in 2008. All eyes were on India when terrorists attacked Mumbai.One hundred sixty-four people were killed, including 6 Americans. Investigations after the massacre showed that “The crisis-response units of the Mumbai Police lacked arms. Officers in the train station didn’t know how to use their weapons, and ran and hid as two terrorist killed more than fifty travelers…By the time the commandos arrived in south Mumbai, the killings were all but over.” (Page 216) Has the Indian government taken any new steps to provide better security measures? I do not know. Oftentimes, I would walk past huts and shacks. I contemplated how people could live so primitively. How could they tolerate their condition? How did they relate to their neighbors who lived in apartments and houses? Katherine shares a wide variety of opinions. Through the eyes of Abdul, the reader becomes aware of the day-to-day challenges associated with survival. Abdul buys recyclables that others have scavenged and then resells it in bulk to local recycling plants. Abdul’s success as a junk reseller was marred by the unsubstantiated charges that almost ruined his life. During his incarceration, his family’s livelihood was severely affected. His dismal situation is mirrored in his thoughts. “He thought it better to start the day by acknowledging that it was going to be just as dull as the days preceding it. That way, you wouldn’t be disappointed.” (Page 126) He found consolation in looking at others. “The world seemed replete with people as bad off as himself, and this made him feel less alone.” (Page 130) Considering his predicament, it was easy to comprehend his pessimistic thoughts. Nevertheless, his life was not totally consumed by negativity. Interestingly, he shared his belief that life could be compared to ice and water. “Ice was distinct from-and in his view, better than- what it is made of. He wanted to be better than what he was made of.” (Page 218) While he had the desire to improve his lot, the pathway to a better life was uncertain due to the unpredictable nature of reselling garbage. For others, suicide became a viable means to escape the hardship. Katherine’s vivid accounts of young people who ended their lives abruptly made me shudder. On the other side of the spectrum were two individuals who had a distinct game plan. They were intent on removing themselves from the slum and joining the expanding middle class. Asha used corruption and solicitation whereas her daughter, Manju, saw a college education as the key. While Manju’s attempts to educate herself are laudable, the facts surrounding the criteria for an Indian college degree are disconcerting. Professors had students read abbreviate texts and openly provided the answers for end of the year papers and exams. How could these college graduates make a positive impact on India’s public education? On the surface, the plans to dismantle Annawadi and offer the displaced airport slum dwellers tiny apartments seemed noble and a step in the right direction. Corruption superseded the intended goals of the project. Non-slum dwellers became more likely to get a new apartment than the people who rightly deserved an upgraded status. It was just another example of someone trying to cheat someone else. Katherine revealed one scam artist after another. With so much discontent brewing from within the Indian slums, I am perplexed why the people do not band together to seek relief. This book provides one explanation for the complacency among the masses. “Poor people don’t unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of the society at large.” (Page 237) Sadly, cheating and swindling were an integral part of life in Annawadi. I thank Katherine for sharing her research about the inner workings of slum life. It is a story that many would prefer to sweep under the rug or dismiss as being too depressing. Bringing awareness to these issues will hopefully encourage relief to the people who struggle to survive each day. Will India be able to improve the lives of its impoverished? I hope so.

The more that these make-shift living arrangments for the poor in third world countries are exposed, hopefully, the more 'future leaders' will do something for these poverty stricken people who have no choice but to live in these slum shacks without a promise or a dream. These unfit home-built shelters with no amenities (but what is found or purchased in the vacinity) are called squallers. There are too many of these unfit city shelters existing in our world today. Even though India is now a democratic society, still their caste system remain in place: People at the bottom (eco/socio) are the poorest of the poor, and thus are treated as degenerates and nobodys. These people have no future due to the status they are born into. They are not protected by their government for modification standards regarding the all-around unhealthy home setting. By this I mean that these poverty stricken people living on top of their seweage have no say in the non-environmental laws which could change the clean up of the rampid sewage streets, their polluted rivers and streams, as well as the gargage dumps that welcome them to forage for material assets to be sold, to becoming a possible eatible 'something' that was thrown out from the city just a few miles away from their home. Yet this is how they make their living...within the garbage dumps...the best way to draw an income from any material...to be sold or traded for a family's daily meal. There is no hope for these people. That is because children can not afford to attend school. Children come from households by which they must help support the family income. It seems combatively impossible to believe that only a few miles from this slum nation thrives a place of commerce--a community of wealth all due to outsourcing from indurtrialized nations, giving upper class citizens all types of jobs and housing, shops, hotels and more. But, scrap metals, food and other raw material valuables, filter close at bay...to the front doors of this squaller. These finding are what makes a day's pay or put a meal on that day's table. The author identifies certain characters in this favala and studies family lives, as well as all aspects which they are exposed to. This book is written as a story of these people, as well as on a sociological and economical front, which brings the issues of these poor broken people to the surface--again just a few miles from a thriving modern city. I suggest this book to people who want to acquaint themselves with an unfortuate part of a society, which you are born into, because of your lineage. Rarely would a dream pan-out for anyone living in these conditions. I am glad that the author brought this society to the surface as there are so many... though hopefully... one day... will be no more.

The Author carefully researched this book, and spent years with the families that were the subject models of her "true to life" objective, and revealing look at the lives of refuse recyclers in the slums of Mumbai. The reason for spending so much time, was to get at the truth. The subjects were shy, and reluctant to share the truth about the harsh realities of their existence, and all I can say is that I was completely riveted. I was greatly inspired that such an enormous crush of people can live so closely together, seemingly in such a harmonious fashion. To me India, has always been the greatest enigma culturally, in that there is so little violence, amongst the crushing poverty. But in this book, the heartbreak of the truth of survival is revealed, and how corruption is rampant, at every level of the slum society, and yet how this way of life is accepted as normal by all of them, and no one holds it against anyone else. But the truth is that life is very hopeless, and suicide is the preferred method of violence in India. It's rampant, and totally swept under the carpet and the figures are lied about by all of the officials, that are connected with making any of the public records. Yea, I am an American who does feel that Americans are spoiled, and anyone who can't admit to it, needs to get a grip. They could start by taking a look around the world, and seeing how most of the rest of the world lives. Being born in America, has meant that we were born into a world of entitlement. Even the poorest of us, in this country, lives like a king, compared to those slum dwellers in Mumbai, who would switch places gladly, if he could hold a job in Harlem. He would find a way to make it work, and he would be grateful for the opportunity. American is still the land of opportunity for people around the globe, who are absolutely desperate. After I read this book, I made a conscious decision, that I would take time every day to be more grateful for the wonderful things in my life. And while I have never ever been one to resent outsourcing of jobs, this book, made me remember again, why. A whole lot of people that I know in this country feel it's beneath them to hold a minimum wage job; it's a waste of their time, especially young people feel this way, it seems. They don't seem to appreciate that working is a privilege, that when it's not available, there's great hardship and strife in the land. Hopelessness, and apathy and worse descend upon a society, in times of joblessness. And aside from all of that, America is bountiful. We live in such luxury. There are handouts everywhere. Few slip through the nets of watch groups. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. But at least here, it's not a way of life. Corruption isn't a way of life here. And if you read this book, I think you will certainly appreciate a different world view; about what REAL poverty is really about, and why American should be truly grateful, that our heritage, is bounty, and not THAT. But there's a lot more to get out this book. I admire the grace and dignity of these people that exist in these pitiable conditions. They manage to scrape together some hope out of the smallest of things. This book is a testament to the human Spirit, and how it will not be broken. It's really well written, and I recommend it highly to anyone. It gives a much needed insight. It tells a story, in a comprehensive way, so that they reader can have sympathy for all of the characters. All of these people are just in survival mode, and living in a way that has been done, long before they were born. No one knows how to break the cycle, so they just keep on stepping.

In the “Author’s Note” section of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, author Katherine Boo explains in detail the methods she used to write her incredible first book, which reads like a novel. Some novels have undoubtedly started with action from the middle of the story, but not many that I’ve read. Boo does just that in her prologue, where Abdul, my favorite person in the story, is hiding from the police. Tense and grabbing right away, this scene shows the squalor of trash-strewn Annawadi, an Indian slum. As readers will discover, though, amid all the grime and hardships, poetic moments exist. In the darkness of a shed as the prologue unfolds, Abdul attempts to be as quiet as possible, aiming to place himself far away from the door of the structure. He knows what to climb on within the trash heap and what not to climb on; some things clatter, but cardboard is soft and silent, and that’s where he steps. To get these minute details, which sound to me like the splendid particulars of a nail-biting novel, Boo obviously cross-examined Abdul—a boy of few words—relentlessly. Boo’s prologue is a captivating foretaste that takes place seven months ahead of the narrative’s true beginning in chapter one. What a bold and interesting start. Boo, an experienced journalist on the U.S. poverty beat, highlights the actions and savvy thoughts of several prominent characters: Abdul, Zehrunisa, Asha, Manju, Meena, Fatima, Kalu, and Sumil. In a fiction-like manner, she uses the legal drama that occurs between two angry neighbors as the central part of the story. Meanwhile, a good amount of surrounding action in Beautiful Forevers revolves around the aforementioned Annawadians, who must deal with corrupt politics, a dismal education system, a diminishing yet present caste system, mysterious murders, poverty, and joblessness. Such struggles aren’t as newsy as a trial, but they are a genuine part of the lives of these squatters, people who also have to grapple with the fact that their homes may be razed. Immersed in a faraway slum, U.S. readers feel the rise and fall of world markets and the commoditized hopes and dreams of people within a vast India that is rising economically—even immediately around them—but not landing directly. Boo intersperses factoids about the country and at times inserts her own viewpoint with lines such as, “It was the only real power they had,” referring to Annawadians. She sometimes moves briskly from character to character to portray the bleakness at a quick pace, devastating the senses. This shifting technique among characters from paragraph to paragraph does not feel like a novel. Grim events occur throughout. One day people pass by an injured and immobile scavenger, with Boo providing an on-the-spot timeline. The author herself may have been conflicted about helping this man, who eventually died. At one point, the philosophical Abdul—who is much smarter than he gives himself credit for—is watching TV with his family. His younger brother observes a beautiful, ornate building, very unlike an Annawadian structure. He edges close to the screen—a spontaneous action that doesn’t feel like fiction. Referring to the slum, Boo incisively writes that “every home looked a little like the family who made it.” We know, however, that Abdul’s younger brother was thinking this thought, because at the end of the paragraph Boo quotes words from the boy that refer to her above line: “Like a single mind made the place.” Boo’s writing contains an affecting sheen that makes all this heartbreak more bearable. She wanted to dissect an Indian slum beyond “poignant snapshots,” and she was successful. Her book has a modern, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction feel that makes it authentic. Things end happily in the sense that the Husains are off the hook for their alleged crimes, but a happy ending is relative in the real world, where everyone exists. We know this is nonfiction because life goes on—for now—as usual in Annawadia.

A story of hardships beyond all we could possibly imagine, it made me reassess my own perceived troubles and recognise my privileged life.. Not an easy read, but an important one.

<b>Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity</b> was a simply wonderful work of narrative non fiction and I am not the least bit surprised it won numerous awards. Author Katherine Boo is a Pulitzer Prize winner and it was evident she knew this topic intimately. Her Author's Note explains the amount of research undertaken in writing this book. Over the course of several years, from 2007 through until 2011, Katherine Boo (with the assistance of various translators) worked tirelessly gathering information in an effort to understand what it was to live in the Annawadi slums. She gathered photo's, audio and videotape footage, interviewed residents, obtained official records, listened and observed. In so doing she was able to capture the people of the slums incredibly well. Almost every sentence contained a nugget of information that pulled me up short causing me to mull over the meaning and to wonder at how these people survived their lives. Of course, as per the title, very many did not survive. As I was reading I struggled to reconcile the lives of these Indian slum dwellers against the lives of the Indian people I've worked alongside for many years. The inequality between the wealthy of India and the subjects of this book seems significant. It was, in part, this inequality that Katherine Boo set out to portray. Though the writing was smooth and flowed magnificently the content made for difficult reading. These were not fictitious characters but real people and many of their experiences ranged from horrible to downright incomprehensible to me. I was taken aback by the lying and the corruption and the way these things were simply accepted as a normal part of life. The indiscriminate justice system infuriated me yet this too seemed to be accepted amongst Annawadians. This book made me thankful for my own life. It opened my eyes to the significant difficulties of Indian slum life. It's a book I would recommend every person to read and though I've now read it I feel I'm very likely to return to these pages again and am confident Katherine Boo's words will linger in my mind for many years yet. For a short book it sure packed a punch.

Gostei bastante. Nos mostra uma realidade da qual muitas vezes não temos nenhuma ideia sobre.

I must confess I picked this book up with some trepidation. The subtitle - "Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum" - and the cover (of my copy), a young boy sprinting up steps into bright sunlight, made me think it might be another of those. You know, those. The post-Slumdog reportage. "Yes, conditions in Indian slums are appalling. But wait! Look at the way the children run and play! The sights, the smells! The way they can still laugh, in the face of such hardship. The way they just get on with the life they've got!" (What else are they supposed to do?) "So life-affirming!" The hope of it all! "Slumdog" is a good film. And a lot of the reportage is also good, and if it's not it's generally well-meaning. But I find it all a bit discomfiting. It's human to believe in hope, but it seems to me that, as Westerners, focussing on the small hopes that slum-dwellers have might be a convenient way of deflecting our own guilt that people have to live this way. (And the likes of Amitabh Bachchan castigating "Slumdog" for focussing on a small part of Indian life might be an Indian way of doing the same thing). I thought this book might be more of the same. It wasn't. Boo is no polemicist. She's a true journalist, and she tells this story with a journalistic dispassion, making it all the more affecting. (She has a novelist's eye, though; at times, the prose is breathtaking.) The stories are set in a small slum, rather than one of the giant cities-within-a-city like Dharavi; a wise choice, as she manages to paint a picture of a whole community, almost like a small village. There are a lot of characters to keep up with, and at times it's downright confusing. But even this makes sense. After all, urban India is a confusing place, teeming with people. Despite the wonderful writing, there were times when I felt I could not go on. When I read about the disease and the filth and children being bitten by rats as they slept. The fungus "like butterfly wings" that grows on feet in the monsoon season. The exploitation and corruption, the abuse of slum-dwellers by the authorities, the abuse of slum children by their own families. The unsolved murders and streets-sweepers left to die on the pavements, the infanticide and the many suicides. And the hope - what there is of it - is almost the worst. That a family, pursued by a rotten judicial system, might not go to prison for a crime they did not commit. That one slum-dweller might, just possibly, scramble over others and into a very slightly less hardscrabble life. I cried again and again. I became very angry. Occasionally, I laughed out loud. At times I was so scared for the characters that I felt ill with it. And when I had finished, I thought about them all for a long time, and wondered what they are doing now, the ones that survived. Because, of course, there's no story-book ending. Jamal does not win his millions. He doesn't get his Latika. The story might end, but life in the slum staggers and claws and bites and struggles on. The people of the slum do questionable things - sometimes terrible things - to survive. But I think there is hope. They also do good things. That people forced to live like this could ever be decent, live by any kind of moral code, gives one hope of a sort.

Having been to India and been able to immerse myself a bit (compared to the author) into the lives of people there, I can only say BRAVO for Katherine Boo. Her descriptions are painstakingly-rendered and truthful, her characters utterly real (because they are/were real!!!). Often times journalists who attempt to create a novel from real-life experiences, fail miserably. The book ends up being neither fact nor fiction. Katherine Boo has accomplished the difficult feat of presenting truth as truth, and in a captivating, engaging way. Her commitment to cultural sensitivity is most admirable.