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
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.”
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.
This documentary style story of the Mumbai slum Annawadi was a great
catalyst for our club’s thoughts on everything to do with poverty, corruption,
cultural diversity and India’s caste system. Everyone was appalled by the life
these people were forced to live, but a few commented on the lack of passion
invoked by the writing style. This we all put down to the author’s documentary
experience and believe she was able to give an honest, thought provoking
account that was not swayed by, or biased with, personal emotion.
Ours is a well read group but we were all still amazed by the degree of
corruption within India’s official systems. And although we are all aware, to a
certain degree that this went on, Boo was able to give us a clear and heart-wrenching
picture of what such fraud does to these poor communities.
Through our discussion we were able to come to some realisations though.
The cultural and religious boundaries are deeply set and the complex caste
system quite outside of our own understanding. So taking these and our own
country’s faux pas in certain cultural areas into consideration, we felt that
the book was an educational, informative and at times humorous look at
a society replete with desperation but also hope.
