Life, Death And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity!
I wanted to share an amazing, although sobering, book about a way of life you probably could never imagine – as the Author describes here:
“Abdul grabbed a fresh shirt and flew. Across the clearing, down a zigzag lane of huts, out onto a rubbled road. Garbage and Water Buffalo, slum-side. Glimmerglass Hyatt on the other. Fumbling with shirt buttons as he ran. After two hundred yards he gained the wide thoroughfare that led to the airport, which was bordered by blooming gardens, pretties of a city he barely knew.”
This “Wednesday Bookmobile” heads to India’s biggest city – with a powerful look at how people survive in this environment.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Katherine Boo takes you on a journey into one of the world’s largest slums – which is located just past Mumbai’s airport:
The book’s title references huge billboards that were put up along the side of the road leaving the airport – it read “The Beautiful Forevers”…and on the other side, hidden from visitor to Mumbai, was this:
“Behind The Beautiful Forevers!”
This 2012 book was the winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction – as the book’s website states:
“In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”
The website goes on to give more details on the intricate story that unfolds in the book:
“But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.”
Katherine Boo tells a compelling true story that plays out as a real-life thriller…there are magical places to visit in India, but this isn’t one of them – and Boo captures what daily life is like in Mumbai’s notorious slums…
I love travel books, even when they take you to the underbelly of a country, and Boo’s book is ultimately a call to action – and the government has tried to solve this issue in the past, but it continues to be a huge problem for India…but they aren’t alone:
Iconic Travel Writer Paul Theroux has written several books about his journeys to Africa, but his last trip was his most dangerous of all:
Theroux taks you to the slums of Capetown South Africa and beyond, as he looks at how aid to Africa has actually made things worse….you can see more about this powerful book here:
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Categories: Books / Media, Exotic Travel, Memoirs, Politics, Pop Culture, Real Estate, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Memoir
Great post. Looks like a good read about the sad facts of the world.
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Thanks for the comment. The Author lived there and captures a year in the life – fascinating how people adapt to the circumstances!
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It sure is!
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This is very tragic, John, especially as India has such a huge and growing population there is little home of it improving. Now with C-19 this will be much worse. The Cape Flats are very dangerous. Their are unruly gangs of drug pushing desperate criminals. Interestingly enough, the squatter camps in Cape Town have been very badly hit by C-19 compared to other cities in South Africa.
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Robbie, there are so many sad aspects to our world. Paul Theroux’s book I also highlighted begins in South africa and it was a bit of a troubling picture in some parts as well…but this exists everywhere, just in different forms….
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Oh yes, South Africa is full of poverty and crime. 58 murders a day and 114 rapes.
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Looks like a great read about a horrible scenario
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Not horrible, as much as the reality of a world we pretend isn’t there – they just put up a sign that said “Beautiful Forevers” and chose to ignore what was behind it…a country trying to modernize while failing to change conditions that exist…and honestly, every single country has this to some degree.
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Us, absolutely. I guess I meant horrible from the standpoint of it’s horrible that this is a reality. That is allowed to be.
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Agree with you, I just am trying to make sure that someone reding this doesn’t think I’m pointing a finger solely at India, as it exits around the world…your comment was insightful and always appreciated
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Good idea – things can be so easily misinterpreted
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This is a list of the Billionaires in India, (In USD, not rupees) not even bothering to list the Millionaires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_people_by_net_worth
I find it incomprehensible (and shameful) how a supposedly democratic and forward-thinking country can tolerate such poverty for a huge percentage of its population.
Well done to her for highlighting those conditions.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Pete, I pointed out to someone else that conditions like this exist in most countries in some way…not to this degree, but it’s a worldwide problem as much as an Indian one…that said, for a country of 1-billion to have 350-million living in poor conditions is sad…
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