Behind the Beautiful Forevers

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Last week I picked up a book at Barnes & Noble and it turns out it is one of those life-changing books.

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cover art from the book

I still haven't finished the book. It is a book I feel the need to reflect on after each chapter. I have read two chapters but already know this book will change my life. It has already changed my perspective. It is one thing to hear people say "At least you are not starving like some people in other countries" and another thing to actually read about the lives of people living in slums written by a journalist that studied their lives.

The amazing thing about "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is that Katherine Boo makes it read like fiction although it is completely non-fiction. Her talent as a writer makes the book compelling, making me eager to turn the page. I have never gotten such an up-close, intimate look at people's lives that are so much different.

This book made even me, a disabled home-bound, poor person feel grateful.

The first chapter follows Abdul a child living in a Mumbai undercity. The area surrounding the slums is having an economical uprise caused by the airport and hotels which makes the trash-picking more lucrative and opens up other doors for people in these slums. As you may know, the caste system in India is serious. The people living in the slums never interact with the people outside of the slums and if they work for them they are instructed to look at the floors and tables and avoid eye contact.

Abdul only went to school until the age of 6 which was in a very poor school at that point his parents told him to start working and ever since he has been picking garbage. They live in shacks build up from rubble. It was considered a big upgrade when they were able to collect bricks and build a make shift wall with stacked bricks on one side of their shack. I used to build shacks like this as a kid in Los Angeles with my friends and I can hardly imagine actually living in it.

**Here is a summary of the book snagged from wikipedia:

"Annawadi is a slum created on land belonging to the Mumbai Airport. It was settled initially by migrant workers who had come to work on the airport in 1991 and stayed behind. The workers reclaimed a piece of airport land that was marshy and otherwise unusable. It quickly grew into a sprawling, densely inhabited zone of makeshift shacks, filled primarily with recent migrants to Mumbai from all over India and Pakistan. Ethnically, it is a mixture of many different groups and languages. Boo got to know the people there during the course of three years and in this work writes about the daily stresses and problems that inhabitants must contend with, such as poverty, hunger, disease, dirt, ethnic strife, violence, the constant fear that the airport authority will bulldoze their homes since they are technically there illegally, corruption, fatigue, weather, and the interpersonal conflicts that are augmented by being forced to live in close quarters with many others. She focuses on people such as Sunil, a stunted orphan who is a garbage picker; Abdul, a second generation garbage picker; Fatima, an emotionally troubled woman with one leg who dreams of a different life; Manju, who is trying to become the first female resident of Annawadi to graduate from college, and her mother, Asha, who is trying to attain the role of "slumlord", giving her access to power, money, and respect, but at the price of becoming part of the corruption around her. One of the central dramas around which the book centers is the self-immolation of Fatima, who then makes a false statement to the police that it was the fault of Abdul, his sister, and his father."

How often do you really think about people living in places like these?

Personally, I am a bleeding heart and give this stuff a lot of thought but before I didn't read books so much as articles. I also saw some documentaries about sex trafficking in Bangladesh. Never though did I read accounts of people living lives struggling with poverty in 3rd world countries quite like the ones written by Boo. As I sit down to read chapter 3 of this book I do so with the knowledge that this book will be one to stick with me forever. It will shed light on something that used to be in the dark for me. Something that I will never be able to shake.

While it is heart-breaking and fills me with the desire to be able to help which I can't currently fulfill it also makes me grateful for everything I have currently. These people would probably want to snag a life living in comfort even if it involved a painful bladder diseases. Many of these people do suffer from chronic pain and illness while also starving and living in piles of garbage.

I will have more to save about this book when I finish it for sure but already I highly recommend it.