I'm going to start a new series of blog posts in which I review books that I am planning to read this summer. Some of them are fiction and some are nonfiction so I hope I can help spark some interest for you guys to get some good reading in this summer too! I have about 10 or so books that I plan on reading and reviewing throughout the course of these next couple months. I hope you like it and I hope you can provide me with some feedback on some other books I should read this year!
Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a book I had to read very slowly, and I even took notes about it to keep track of everything that was going on. The book focuses on the Annawadi slum in Mumbai, India. Annawadi is shadowed by luxury hotels and the Mumbai airport. While reading this book, I felt a lot of things. It made me laugh, but more of the time I was pretty sad or angry. As India starts to prosper, the people of the Annawadi slum start to have hope as well. Hope that they'll be able to have good lives and good times that they call "the full enjoy". But this book shows the harsh reality that is true in a lot of places today: it shows the less fortunate people treated unfairly and unequally. It tells stories of trials and failures, and very few triumphs.
So first, I'll set up what this book is basically about. A vast majority of Annawadi residents make their living by rummaging through trash and then making a profit from reselling it. The book follows several different people and their families, documenting their daily lives and the challenges they face. Asha is the only woman hopeful and powerful enough to become a slum boss. She is very smart and, although she often does not get much respect from the residents of the slum, she still manages to hold a high position of power. Asha is the mother to the beautiful teenage Manju. Manju is a teacher and she hopes to be the first from Annawadi to graduate college. Sunil is a young 12 year old boy that is very small but he makes a big discovery of an area next to the airport where he finds more valuable garbage to sell. There are the Husains, a family of eleven, headed by mother Zehrunisa and father Karam. Their son Abdul is level-headed and determined to make a living. There are many other interesting people featured in this book. There are plenty of tragedies that left me speechless and nearly crying, and there are some happier stories with a better ending. One of my favorite parts of this book was feeling like I was personally getting to know these real people, not characters, and the lives that they live. I had to keep reminding myself that they were real, and every bit of their lives and the trials they face were also real.
The first thing I started noticing while reading the book is how corrupt the world is. I am not just talking about the wealthy people, but also those less fortunate. And I'm not just talking about this book either. While reading about Annawadi, though, I noticed that people in this slum were just as unfair to each other as the rest of the world was. It made me sad that so much corruption causes people to turn against each other quicker than the flip of a switch. A woman in the book, nicknamed One Leg, was a woman of severe corruption. She had a rough past, as most of the Annawadians did, but she also had a very short fuse. She was a person who prostituted herself despite having a husband, and she was known to be a liar. Boo talks about a fight she had with some of her more level-headed and self-sufficient neighbors the large Husain family, where the result of the fight caused her to light herself on fire, leading to her death. There was a large portion of the book that talks about the accusations made against the Husain family, and the trial they subsequently went through because of the lies told about them. This leads me to my next set of thoughts: the inequality the people in Mumbai face.
The Husains are going through this trial because of some accusations against them saying that their words, not their actions, caused this emotionally unstable woman to light herself on fire. Now I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem right to me that Karam Husain was being kept, beaten, and put on trial for false accusations about words that he didn't say, that apparently made this crazy woman take her own life. That seems so unfair to me. At this point in my reading, I was so frustrated and angry at the people who were wrongly accusing him, and that the police that accepted bribes from the accusers. It all seems so wrong, and it seems wrong that it is normal in the Annawadi society.
I guess I shouldn't be making generalizations about India, or even Mumbai, and I'm trying not to here. I realize that this book was written about a very select few people in one slum of India, and it is not necessarily a reflection of India or any other part of the world. The people in Annawadi are actually better off than a lot of the people in other slums around the world. A lot of them are considered to be above the poverty line. Although I did see clear corruption in the book, it is much more complicated than that. The people featured in this book are victims of circumstance. Some of them are more fortunate than others, and some of them are just lucky. There is so much that goes in to each of their stories and back stories that would probably take much more than a 200 page book to describe. A lot of the book just does not make sense because of all of the complications that go in to it. There is so much complication with government, police, and all of the other organizations. Because of this fact, it is hard to assume or make other generalizations about slums or India in general. (Although it is hard not to think that way, because we as humans are wired this way.)
For my last thought, I'm going to share a little bit from the book that I thought was interesting.
"Every country has its myths, and one that successful Indians liked to indulge was a romance of instability and adaptation- the idea that their country's rapid rise derived in part from the chaotic unpredictability of daily life. In America and Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers.
I found this statement very thought-provoking and profound. I have never been uncertain about turning on the tap and having water come out. I have never been uncertain about how I am going to get by from day to day. I have never been uncertain that when I come home from work or church or college my house will still be there. There are so many things that, yes, I am aware and thankful for, but I have never doubted that they will be there each time.Among the poor, there was no doubt that instability fostered ingenuity, but over time the lack of a link between effort and result could become debilitating. 'We try so many things,' as one Annawadi girl put it, 'but the world doesn't move in our favor.'" (page 219).
This book was extremely well-written and interesting, but it was extremely complicated and frustrating at the same time. I guess it can be hard understanding the lives of others when the entire way that they live is nothing like what I'm used to. I do have to say that this intrigues me, also. I love learning about how people live and make it day by day in different places in the world. Our world is so diverse. Although I may never be able to travel to some of these places, I'm glad there are books and stories and movies about them so I can try to understand, and hopefully become more cultured that way.
So for each book I read this summer, I am going to give it a rating, just based on what I think about it. And I'll also say if I would suggest you guys to read it too. I will try to ask a couple questions at the end for you to be able to participate as well. I hope you enjoy this!
I would give Behind the Beautiful Forevers a 3.5 out of 5. This book was excellent and very thought-provoking. The whole time I was reading it I was completely engrossed in the world of Annawadi and the lives of the people in the community. The part I did not like about this book is that it made me sad and disappointed. But I can't complain because sometimes that's just the way the world is, it doesn't always have a happy ending. I would recommend this book if you are ready for a book that's not going to be all about happy people and a happy and triumphant story. This book is hard to get through because of all the negatives and bad things that happen in it. If you're interested in culture and the way people live, I would definitely recommend it. Don't be put off by the fact it's nonfiction if that's not what you're used to, because it is written like a novel would be. This book was truly amazing and I think the people of Annawadi deserve to have their story be heard.
Have you read this book? What did you think? What's another book that has made you think? Let me know!
Thanks,
Madeline
