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Zusammenfassung von Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Name: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Rating: 4.2 (22 reviews)
Author: Katherine Boo

Katherine Boo

Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

4.2 (22 Bewertungen)

16 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

In Katherine Boo's 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers', we are transported to the slums of Mumbai and introduced to the lives of several families striving to survive and succeed in a harsh environment of corruption, poverty, and inequality.

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Autobiografien Asiens Geschichte

Inhaltsübersicht

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
in 9 Kernaussagen verstehen

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Kernaussage 1 von 9

What’s in it for me? Take a walk in an Indian slum.

Have you seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire? These blinks dive into the same world: the slums of Mumbai.

These blinks will take you on a personal journey through Annawadi, a slum in one of the world’s biggest and most complicated cities. Its inhabitants dream of better lives, only to have those dreams shattered by the slightest twist of fate. You’ll read about indifference, suicide and corruption, and begin to wonder what you would be willing to do to escape if you found yourself living alongside the Annawadians.

In these blinks you’ll learn

why one child who lost his hand at work felt the need to apologize to his employer;
how hospitals sell slum dwellers the medicine they are supposed to provide for free; and
why slum dwellers take such pride in voting in elections.

In the slum of Annawadi, the smallest coincidence can thwart your attempt to make a better life for yourself.

All people have hopes and dreams for the future. This is true even for the inhabitants of the illegal settlement – or slum – of Annawadi, next to Mumbai’s international airport. But their dreams can be shattered by something as simple as a neighborhood disagreement.

Meet the Husain family, who are fairly well off by Annawadian standards, earning up to eleven dollars a day with their garbage business. Their dream is to buy a plot of land on a legal settlement and build a new home. In fact, they have already paid a deposit for a plot.

But then, one day as they are renovating their home, the Husains accidentally shake a brick wall that they share with a mentally unstable neighbor, Fatima. The only damage is some rubble falling into a pot of rice Fatima happens to be cooking, but since she is jealous of the Husains’ “wealth,” she claims her home has been destroyed and demands compensation.

The Husains’ refusal sends Fatima into such a rage that she sets herself on fire. At the hospital, she receives grossly inadequate treatment for her burns and subsequently dies.

The tragedy is further compounded when several members of the Husain household are arrested and falsely charged with the murder of their neighbor.

Now the Husains begin to see their meager savings disappear.

First, since the local justice system is wholly corrupt, they need to pay various bribes.

Second, the neighbors are also aware of the Husains’ supposed wealth, so they demand payment from them just to tell the police the truth about what happened.

Third, when the Husains are jailed before their trial, they lose their income because they can no longer work.

Fourth, they have to sell a part of their original hut to pay their lawyers, further hurting their garbage business.

And finally, since they cannot afford to buy the new plot of land for which they’d paid a deposit, it is sold to another family. The Husains are not reimbursed.

Diseases and health ailments plague the slum due to the unsanitary conditions.

Though the Husains are considered well off by their neighbors, they too suffer in the harsh living conditions prevalent in the slum, which spawn a variety of health problems for inhabitants.

Animals are allowed to roam around freely, feeding on what they want. For instance, when Abdul Husain, the family’s eldest son, is at work sorting garbage, goats will come up to him to lick the labels off discarded plastic bottles. But because the goats drink out of a nearby lake of sewage, they also suffer from diarrhea, which they then spread around the slum, infecting others.

People living in slums have few to no basic human rights.

Can you imagine living in a place where basic human rights mean nothing? For the slum dwellers of Annawadi, this affects every aspect of their life.

Workers are so scared of their employers that they might as well have no rights at all. For example, when one little boy loses his hand to a shredder at the garbage recycling plant where he works, he actually apologizes to the owner. He says: “Sa’ab, I’m sorry. I won’t cause you any problems by reporting this. You will have no trouble from me.” The boy does this because he knows that poor young workers are easily disposed of by plant owners if they threaten to be troublesome.

In the slum, corruption is rife and bribes are needed for everything.

In slums, corruption is omnipresent. Annawadians have to pay bribes all the time and are always likely to be taken advantage of.

One example is the way government funding and charitable donations get misused.

Even health care professionals extract bribes and provide inadequate medical treatment.

In the previous blink, you learned how slum dwellers face corruption in education and democracy. But this corruption also reaches into their health care system.

A prime example is the way doctors manage to charge patients for services that should be covered by the Indian state.

The slum is an especially dangerous place for children.

Life in the slum is dangerous and hard for everyone, but it’s even worse for children.

Something as simple as crossing the road outside the slum can be a life-threatening experience: children are frequently hit by cars on their way to school because many inexperienced drivers talk on their phones while driving and don’t pay attention to the road. And most of the time, when a child is hit, the driver won’t even stop.

Many slum dwellers either try to exploit others or ignore their plight.

Now that you know something about life in Annawadi, ask yourself: if you were living there, what would you be willing to do to survive and improve your situation? Would you lie, steal and take advantage of those worse off than you?

Many in the slum try to use whatever power and influence they have to extract money from others.

Many slum dwellers work hard to get some kind of education, but it often leads nowhere.

Those who live in slums like Annawadi don’t have many ways to get out, but an education is seen as one way to improve their lot.

This is why many children prioritize getting their schooling, despite the difficulties. Take Sonu, a young boy who enrolls in school every year even though he can’t attend due to his day job as a garbage collector. He works during the day and studies at night, so that once a year he can go and take the standardized final exams. He optimistically tells his friend: “Educate ourselves, and we’ll be making as much money as there is garbage!”

For some, suicide is the only way out of the misery of the slums.

In the previous blinks you learned how tough life is in the slums. Though Annawadians try their best not to lose hope, many still succumb to the everyday pressure and choose the only possible way out: suicide.

One reason for this drastic action is fear. Slum dwellers have almost no protection from criminals, so they know that simply witnessing a crime means they could soon be forcibly silenced.

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Worum geht es in Behind the Beautiful Forevers?

Behind the Beautiful Forevers describes life in the Annawadi slum in India, close to Mumbai’s international airport. These blinks tell the story of families who live in squalid conditions but still dream of a better life, even though the odds are overwhelmingly against them.

Bestes Zitat aus Behind the Beautiful Forevers

The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.

—Katherine Boo

Wer Behind the Beautiful Forevers lesen sollte

Anyone who wants to know about life in the slums of Mumbai
Anyone who liked the movie Slumdog Millionaire
Anyone who wants to understand the damage caused by corruption

Über den Autor

Katherine Boo is an investigative journalist who focuses on themes of social justice and poverty. In order to research Behind the Beautiful Forevers, she spent over three years in the Annawadi slum. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2000.

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