I knew that India is not really like that pretty place I so wanted to go to when I was younger - full of vibrant colors, delicious food, and (what seemed like) magic - but I didn't fully grasp the fact that life there is so hard for so many people. Even those who are not living in slums are still subjected to widespread corruption, arranged marriages, and rigid gender-based restrictions on employment, dress, and simple every day actions These might include leaving your dwelling, to whom you may speak, and negative consequences for being seen with a person of the opposite gender. Ironically, slumdwelling affords slightly more opportunity for gender equality; when faced with the option to move to a village where her family could own some land, muslim Zehrunisa decided she would rather stay in the slum than move to a place where she might be forced back into a burqa.
Boo focuses on Annawadi, a slum made up of three-thousand people squatting on land owned by the Airports Authority of India. It was "settled" by members of the lowest castes and could be razed by airport authorities at any moment. Within the slum, there is tension based on family caste or religion, though "most young Annawadians... considered the caste obsession of their elders to be an irrelevant artifact" (66). The young seek opportunity, believing they can "move up" in the world (not possible in the old caste system). Boo writes, "As every slumdweller knew, there were three main ways out of poverty: finding an entrepreneurial niche, as the Husains found in garbage; politics and corruption in which Asha placed her hopes; and education" (62). With a choice between buying and sorting garbage to sell to recycling facilities, getting involved in political corruption, or going to school, education does seem like the best option. But this book dashes that hope for me too, revealing that many of the schools are "fraudulent; some, like Manju's, taught by unqualified teenagers." The university Manju attends teaches only by rote. And 60% of the state's public school teachers have not finished college and had to pay a large amount of money under the table to secure their positions. So the slumdwellers, seeking the best education possible, are also forced to pay for private schools that may be equally ill-equipped. This means that only a few of the children actually get the chance to go to school.
All of that is bad enough, but here are some quotes that convey the pure filth of Annawadi. It is hard to believe that anyone could get used to this way of life. It certainly made me shudder.
"It was orange blossoms compared with the rotting hotel food dumped nightly at Annawadi, which sustained three hundred shit-caked pigs." (7)
"The leaves of the tree were gray, like many things in Annawadi, on account of sand and gravel blowing in from a concrete plant nearby. You won't die to breathe it, old-timers assured red-eyed new arrivals... But people seemed to die of it all the time - untreated asthma, lung obstructions, tuburculosis." (14)
"[Being a garbage scavenger] could wreck a body in a very short time. Scrapes from dumpster-diving pocked and became infected. Where skin broke, maggots got in. Lice colonized hair, gangrene inched up fingers, calves swelled into tree trunks, and Abdul and his younger brothers kept a running wager about which of the scavengers would be the next to die." (35)
"Hut walls grew green and black with mold, the contents of the public toilet spewed out onto the maidan, and fungi protruded from feet like tiny sculptures... 'I'm going to die of these feet,' said a woman whose fungus fanned out like butterfly wings as she lined up in the rain for water." (117)."At Annawadi, the sewage lake crept forward like a living thing. Sick water buffalo nosed for food through mounds of wet, devalued gargbage, shitting out the consequences of bad choices with a velocity Annawadi water taps had never equaled. People, also sick, stamped the mud from their feet and said, 'My stomach is on fire, my chest.' 'All up and down this leg, all night.'" (117)
I'm waiting for some of the "hope" this book promises in its subtitle. I know we all need to know the truth, and that makes this story valuable. It also moves me to take action and make change, but the intricately woven problems of which it tells seem too huge to approach. Because I'm having a hard time getting through it, I wonder what it would be like for an adolescent reader. Will they be spurred on by the awful truths, or will they give up in sadness? We will see.
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