Behind The Beautiful Forevers Chapter Summaries

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Prologue Contrast

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers seeks to describe the sharp contrast between the lives of the inhabitants of Annawadi and the surrounding reflection of India’s thriving economy. Essentially, Boo’s documentation of the social, political and economic factors that shape daily choices in Annawadi, a slum and conflation of a variety of cultures and religions, creates an accurate depiction of life beyond the misleading exterior of Mumbai. Abdul’s expertise in trash sifting transforms his family’s fortune, their new standing beyond “subsistence” evoking jealousy in neighbors. The family of eleven inhabits one of the huts in the “squatter settlements” located between “elegant modernities”

that inhibit the over-city, engaged in solely its capitalistic glory. Trapped in a slum with “contentions, new and ancient” and part of a religious minority in the Hindu dominated Annawadi slum, Abdul fears his neighbors and is noticeably affected by the consistent religious conflict. The surrounding milieu of Annawadi consists of “five extravagant hotels” and the international airport.

Evidently, the descriptive nature of the two divergent environments mirrors the persistent social inequality and unequal distribution of India’s novel wealth. Boo’s prologue fundamentally gives an insight into the social injustice at hand responsible for Abdul’s elusion of the police. Abdul, his father and sister are accused of burning One Leg, a woman named by the Annawadians appropriate to her disability. Once Abdul’s father is arrested, Abdul aspires to escape the slum during the concealing darkness of nighttime. Much to his own dismay, Abdul falls asleep and is instructed to turn himself into the police to protect his ill father the following morning. The inhabitants of the slum represent a form of urban poverty, visibly hidden amid a facade of economic might and superiority. As one of the marginalized groups in Indian society, Annawadians are faced with economic obstacles on the pathway to social equality. Even in India’s moment economic resurgence, the layer of poverty is even further suppressed by the system; struggling to rise above and into the over-city. Yet, Boo describes the aspirations of the youth of Annawadi who seek to work as waiters in the surrounding hotels, acquire a college education or simply climb the

social ladder by primarily seizing Annawadi itself. As Abdul’s insightful younger brother states, “Everything around us is roses … And we’re the shit in between.” According to Mirchi’s metaphor, the roses rely on fertiliser, excrement, to thrive. Clearly this reflects not only the awareness of the unfair distribution of opportunity in India, but precisely the great extent to which the upper class relies on the lower class. Daily life in the slum of Annawadi, midst the “sewage lake” and stench of public restrooms, trash and numerous wild animals roaming about, drives young Annawadians into unrealistic aspirations of reaching up to the high buildings towering above.