Behind The Beautiful Forevers Essay

Set in the slums of India’s Mumbai district, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo guides readers into the undercity of Annawadi. Separated from the flourishing world city merely by “a coconut-tree-lined thoroughfare”(Boo 68) and billboards, illegally residing residents of Annawadi lives and stories are documented by Boo during her stay. As residents acclimate to her presence, they continue with their daily lives, and her work follows. From the female slumlord who dreams to hold power to the young boy with his head in the clouds, Behind displays the hopes that even the poorest and richest people have: to be better than their surroundings. But below these aspirations lies darker routes to success, including corruption. Forevers warns

Further explained by Boo, “the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained” ( 566). Boos uses a female resident at Annawadi to allow readers to sympathize those who use corruption to advance. When readers encounter Annawadi inhabitants, one of the first citizens, Asha, is described as the slumlord’s wife who yearns to be in a position of power. In her pursuit to establish money and power, Asha creates false schools and nonprofit organizations for government funding. However, Boo turns a normally despicable situation into one of piteous pursuit. Asha yearns to become better than her previous life in a farming village, where laborious work brought death upon the population and gave fruitless results, and will do anything to improve herself. Similar to how others “prospered”, many impoverished residents in India turn to nefarious acts for money, power and a higher status, at the expense of others in similar circumstances. Boo describes this as “...Powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked…[and] tr[y] to destroy each other” (3302). Boo allowed readers to identify with individuals who use fraud, bribery, and other elements of corruption to be liberated from the cycle of poverty. (226