Behind the Beautiful Forevers Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Katherine Boo
boarding passes and Bon Voyage! 12,000 rupees per couple, with champagne . The advertisements were printed on glossy paper, for which recyclers paid two rupees, or four U.S. cents, per kilo.
Rahul had been underwhelmed by the New Year’s rituals of the rich. “Moronic,” he had concluded. “Just people drinking and dancing and standing around acting stupid, like people here do every night.”
“The hotel people get strange when they drink,” he told his friends. “Last night at the end of the party, there was one hero—good-looking, stripes on his suit, expensive cloth. He was drunk, full tight, and he started stuffing bread into his pants pockets, jacket pockets. Then he put more rolls straight into his pants! Rolls fell on the floor and he was crawling under the table to get them. This one waiter was saying the guy must have been hungry, earlier—that whiskey brought back the memory. But when I get rich enough to be a guest at a big hotel, I’m not going to act like such a loser.”
Mirchi laughed, and asked the question that many were asking of themselves in Mumbai in 2008: “And what are you going to do, sirrrrrrrr , so that you get served at such a hotel?”
But Rahul was shoving off, his attention diverted to a green plastic kite snagged high in a peepal tree at Annawadi’s entrance. It appeared to be broken, but once the bones were pressed straight, he figured he could resell it for two rupees. He just needed to claim the kite before the idea occurred to some other money-minded boy.
Rahul had learned his serial entrepreneurship from his mother, Asha, a woman who scared Abdul’s parents a little. She was a stalwart in a political party, Shiv Sena, which was dominated by Hindus born in Maharashtra, Mumbai’s home state. As the population of GreaterMumbai pressed toward twenty million, competition for jobs and housing was ferocious, and Shiv Sena blamed migrants from other states for taking opportunities that rightfully belonged to the natives. (The party’s octogenarian founder, Bal Thackeray, retained a fondness for Hitler’s program of ethnic cleansing.) Shiv Sena’s current galvanizing cause was purging Mumbai of migrants from India’s poor northern states. The party’s animus toward the city’s Muslim minority was of longer, more violent standing. That made Abdul’s family, Muslims with roots in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, twice suspect.
The friendship of Rahul and Mirchi transcended ethnic and religious politics, though. Mirchi sometimes raised his fist and yelled the Shiv Sena greeting, “Jai Maharashtra!” just to make Rahul laugh. The two ninth graders had even started to look alike, having decided to let their bangs grow into long floppy forelocks, which they brushed out of their eyes like the film hero Ajay Devgan.
Abdul envied their closeness. His only sort-of friend was a homeless fifteen-year-old boy named Kalu, who robbed recycling bins in airport compounds. But Kalu worked nights, when Abdul slept, and they didn’t talk much anymore.
Abdul’s deepest affection was for his two-year-old brother, Lallu, a fact that had begun to concern him. Listening to Bollywood love songs, he could only conclude that his own heart had been made too small. He’d never longed with extravagance for a girl, and while he felt certain he loved his mother, the feeling didn’t come in any big gush. But he could get tearful just looking at Lallu, who was as fearless as Abdul was flinchy. All those swollen rat bites on his cheeks, on the back of his head.
What to do? When the storeroom grew too crowded, as it did in flush months like this one, garbage piled up in their hut, and rats came, too. But when Abdul left garbage outside, it got stolen by the scavengers, and he hated to buy the same garbage twice.
By 3 P.M. , Abdul was facing down the bottle caps, a major sorting nuisance. Some had plastic interior linings, which had to be stripped out before the caps could be assigned to the
Rahul had been underwhelmed by the New Year’s rituals of the rich. “Moronic,” he had concluded. “Just people drinking and dancing and standing around acting stupid, like people here do every night.”
“The hotel people get strange when they drink,” he told his friends. “Last night at the end of the party, there was one hero—good-looking, stripes on his suit, expensive cloth. He was drunk, full tight, and he started stuffing bread into his pants pockets, jacket pockets. Then he put more rolls straight into his pants! Rolls fell on the floor and he was crawling under the table to get them. This one waiter was saying the guy must have been hungry, earlier—that whiskey brought back the memory. But when I get rich enough to be a guest at a big hotel, I’m not going to act like such a loser.”
Mirchi laughed, and asked the question that many were asking of themselves in Mumbai in 2008: “And what are you going to do, sirrrrrrrr , so that you get served at such a hotel?”
But Rahul was shoving off, his attention diverted to a green plastic kite snagged high in a peepal tree at Annawadi’s entrance. It appeared to be broken, but once the bones were pressed straight, he figured he could resell it for two rupees. He just needed to claim the kite before the idea occurred to some other money-minded boy.
Rahul had learned his serial entrepreneurship from his mother, Asha, a woman who scared Abdul’s parents a little. She was a stalwart in a political party, Shiv Sena, which was dominated by Hindus born in Maharashtra, Mumbai’s home state. As the population of GreaterMumbai pressed toward twenty million, competition for jobs and housing was ferocious, and Shiv Sena blamed migrants from other states for taking opportunities that rightfully belonged to the natives. (The party’s octogenarian founder, Bal Thackeray, retained a fondness for Hitler’s program of ethnic cleansing.) Shiv Sena’s current galvanizing cause was purging Mumbai of migrants from India’s poor northern states. The party’s animus toward the city’s Muslim minority was of longer, more violent standing. That made Abdul’s family, Muslims with roots in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, twice suspect.
The friendship of Rahul and Mirchi transcended ethnic and religious politics, though. Mirchi sometimes raised his fist and yelled the Shiv Sena greeting, “Jai Maharashtra!” just to make Rahul laugh. The two ninth graders had even started to look alike, having decided to let their bangs grow into long floppy forelocks, which they brushed out of their eyes like the film hero Ajay Devgan.
Abdul envied their closeness. His only sort-of friend was a homeless fifteen-year-old boy named Kalu, who robbed recycling bins in airport compounds. But Kalu worked nights, when Abdul slept, and they didn’t talk much anymore.
Abdul’s deepest affection was for his two-year-old brother, Lallu, a fact that had begun to concern him. Listening to Bollywood love songs, he could only conclude that his own heart had been made too small. He’d never longed with extravagance for a girl, and while he felt certain he loved his mother, the feeling didn’t come in any big gush. But he could get tearful just looking at Lallu, who was as fearless as Abdul was flinchy. All those swollen rat bites on his cheeks, on the back of his head.
What to do? When the storeroom grew too crowded, as it did in flush months like this one, garbage piled up in their hut, and rats came, too. But when Abdul left garbage outside, it got stolen by the scavengers, and he hated to buy the same garbage twice.
By 3 P.M. , Abdul was facing down the bottle caps, a major sorting nuisance. Some had plastic interior linings, which had to be stripped out before the caps could be assigned to the