Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Katherine Boo is a Pullitzer Prize winning journalist and this crushingly depressing book is her first. She is married to a native Indian, and she has embraced his country as her own.  We are lucky to have an American who can translate what she observed in the underbelly of Mumbai’s slums into language and images that we can understand.  But boy is it painful to read.

First there is the crushing poverty of the majority of the characters that inhabit the book.  Boo reports on the people who live in the Annawadi slum in Mumbai.  She followed—with the help of translators—some interconnected families there for over three years, and allows us to see what it is like to live in abject squalor (3,000 people live in 335 huts that are self-built without the benefit of an urban infrastructure and all of the risks of living more or less outside in poverty). 

Her storytelling is outstanding—she clearly knows, and mostly likes the people she is reporting on.  She allows them their dignity and she even teases them.  She doesn’t cheapen or disrespect them by feeling sorry for them.  We meet Abdul, who is a young adult ‘recycler’—which means that he collects garbage, sorts it, and sells what is reusable.  The definition of what is reusable in Mumbai is very broad, and while Abdul has limited formal education, he is an excellent sorter of garbage, and this both leads to his success and his vulnerability.  

In the Annawadi slum, those whose lives are modestly more stable than others are at risk for having their hard work and good luck sabotaged—she relates a story that happened to Abdul and his family in detail, which illustrates the state of India’s criminal justice system for the poorest of the poor.  Nothing about these stories is fair.  While I have reason to understand that, this book made me appreciate the scale on which I judge fairness is entirely different than Abdul’s.  He would not recognize the world that I live in, as I see his more akin to Dante’s ‘Inferno’ than life on earth.
So, this book is spectacularly interesting, but I recommend reading in one sitting—it is too painful to stretch out over several days.