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

by Katherine Boo

The gate to Dongri detention center was a strangely small one—child-sized, Abdul supposed.

Being terrorized by living people seemed to have diminished his fear of the dead.

Abdul’s father considered it disrespectful to pray to Allah when you were dirty, so Abdul rarely did namaaz.

Under the care of men with such voices, he figured all lost children would be safe.

Getting fresh for a fresh day, in which something new might happen! 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.

Most of the other boys in his barrack were Muslim—across India, Muslims were overrepresented in the criminal justice system—and when they sat on the floor to eat, they laughed about the terrible food. They called the Children’s Home the chillar home, meaning small change, practically worthless.

Abdul wanted to go home so badly that he considered saying he’d beaten up Fatima before her suicide. He still found it strange to think of her as dead, because at Annawadi he hadn’t considered her fully alive.

Like many of his neighbors, he had assessed her damage, physical and emotional, and casually assigned her to a lesser plane of existence.

Being so poor that you had to work so young seemed like punishment enough.

Only in detention had it occurred to him that drudge labor in an urban armpit like Annawadi might be considered freedom. He was gratified that boys from other urban armpits agreed.

He had seen worse at Annawadi but hadn’t felt it, overwhelmed as he had been by his own work and worry.

In captivity, there was nothing to preserve—nothing to buy, sell, or sort. Later he realized it was the first long rest he’d ever had, and that during it, something had happened to his heart.

Abdul hadn’t previously thought of policemen as people with hearts and lungs who worried about money or their health. The world seemed replete with people as bad off as himself, and this made him feel less alone.

Their disgusted families would cease to visit them in jail, and when they were released as old, broken men, they would die on the pavement, unloved.

The Master cried for parents who beat their children instead of taking time to reason with them. Intriguingly, he also cried about his divorce, and how his wife had been a bitch to his mother, and how in the settlement he’d lost a big car. He cheered up when talking about his pretty new girlfriend.

An awkward, uneducated boy might still be capable of righteousness: He intended to remember this and every other truth The Master spoke.

Some Kunbis said that July was the month when the gods slept. Asha’s relatives hoped the gods had changed their schedules this year, and were also awake nights, worrying.

Ashamed and in debt, some farmers killed themselves—an old story, one of the Marathi-movie staples. But the movie reel was still playing.

At the end of a recent workday, one of Anil’s co-workers had set down his canister, climbed a tree at the edge of the farm, and hanged himself. His family received no government compensation for the loss.

At night, Anil had many imaginary conversations with the politician for whom he worked, in which he gently argued that more difficult labor be rewarded by slightly higher pay. A complaining worker was easily replaced, though. Anil kept his thoughts, including the suicidal ones, to himself.

Past some mud-and-dung houses painted a shade of green no longer known in the fields,

It sometimes disturbed her how strongly she wanted to be wanted; she felt very nearly ready for marriage, for sex.

The key, she told Manju, was “to study the first-class people. You see how they’re living, how they walk, what they do. And then you do the same.”

Similarly, you could pose as a member of the overcity, wait out the heckles, and become one.

It was another form of the by-hearting that Manju did at school.

said, “I am looking nice, and you are looking ugly, and your ugliness takes away from me, too.”

Sensing her mother suddenly treating her as an equal, Manju broached a new subject: that many first-class people married outside their own caste, to people they, not their parents, had chosen.

Asha believed a person seeking betterment should try as many schemes as possible, since it was hard to predict which one might work.

“They say, if I do this, how much will I make? In college, the girls talk like that, even when they’re talking about each other. ‘Why talk to that weird girl, Pallavi? What’s the profit? What’s the use?’ ”

Dirty children were sprawled on the floor. Notebooks were scattered about. It was a scene unbefitting the home of an almost-slumlord and aspiring elected official.

The bombers weren’t Maoists: Maoists were rural India’s problem.

He appreciated the sincere effort Manju put into being a victim.

She suspected, rightly, that at home, Manju’s tears were falling on a slice of chocolate cake. For years, Asha had hoped that her daughter wouldn’t guess about the men. Now she wished she had raised Manju to be worldly enough to understand. This wasn’t about lust or being modern, though she knew that many first-class people slept around. Nor was it just about feeling loved and beautiful. This was about money and power.

At twenty, she was a poor, uneducated refugee from the droughtlands whose husband had no appetite for work. Tonight, at forty, she was a kindergarten teacher and the most influential woman in her slum. A woman who had given her daughter a college education and soon, she hoped, a brilliant marriage.

Even the nightmares about dying of AIDS.

She should get the blood test done. She knew that. She should be watching Airport Road for ...

A white police van pulled up. For her. Asha slowly turned from the lights and the band and the celebration, as the back door of the van slid open.

Now Mr. Kamble saw nothing but his own bottomless grief, because he knew miracles were possible in the new India and that he couldn’t have one.

Unidentified body, the Sahar Police decided without looking for the scavenger’s family. Died of tuberculosis, the Cooper Hospital morgue pathologist concluded without an autopsy. Thokale, the police officer handling the case, wanted to move fast, for he had business with B. M. Patil Medical College in Bijapur. Its anatomy department required twenty-five unclaimed cadavers for dissection, and this one rounded out the order.

“You pretend you’ve hit me. I pretend I’m crying. You people who live on airport lands are familiar with this phony drama. Now the other party says it will be the one to stop the airport from destroying your homes. So why are they meeting in secret with the government and the developers?”

but of more immediate concern was the fact that his younger sister had grown another inch, increasing the height gap between them.

a look of let’s-work-together spreading over his face.

Imbibing water from the sewage lake gives you jaundice, he argued, against Sunil’s contention that teasing people with jaundice gives you jaundice.

Sonu objected with equal passion to Sunil’s fascination with Kalu, the garbage thief who acted out movies for the benefit of boys who could not afford to see them. “You stay up half the night listening to this Kalu, and I have to waste so much time trying to get you up the next morning,” Sonu complained. Sonu didn’t understand oversleeping. He pointed out, “Every morning, my eyes open on their own.” Sunil was unused to being worried over, and liked it.

Sonu thought Sunil should do the same. One morning he cocked his head as if to drain the deafness from his ear, and announced: “Educate ourselves, and we’ll be making as much money as there is garbage!” “You will, boss,” Sunil said, laughing. “And I’ll be the poor people, okay?”

Late in the afternoon, he sometimes joined Sunil on a warm pile of rubble at the far side of the sewage lake, where the slant of light before dusk made the shadows of both boys gigantic.

them. It was as if the huts had fallen out of the sky and gotten smushed upon landing.

Moreover, thieves like Kalu had status that garbage-pickers lacked, and with Kalu’s departure, Sunil would be more firmly fixed in his own identity as a scavenger, like Sonu the blinky boy—the kind of person other people allowed to suffer unaided and die alone on the road.

“Pick up the truth,” he repeated skeptically. As if truth were a coin on a footpath. He changed the subject.

A rich silence followed. Then he asked his mother about his garbage business.