Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

One of the things that happens as you continually witness poverty is that you been accustomed to seeing it, and start to ignore it. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo manages to re-sensitize us to the absolutely unlivable lives that the poor of India lead. It’s a touching work that follows the true stories of the inhabitants of one of Mumbai’s slums as they attempt to achieve their dreams. Some stories sometimes unconsciously romanticize the lives of others. There is no danger of that here.

Boo is able to write in such a way that the story could be carried forward through the strength of its narrative alone, and we believe that the novel is just that — fiction. We continually have to remind ourselves that this is in fact a work of investigative journalism, and that it is all real. This is the power that Behind the Beautiful Forevers has. We do not realize exactly how accurate the story is until it is too late, and by then it is too late to stop reading, and to stop caring.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers doesn’t mince words regarding the state of the slums. They are disgusting, unhygienic, and gruesome. Modern day Indian culture isn’t much better. Corruption and sexist traditions plague the country. Boo exposes these issues through her narrative, but does not linger on them. She does not pretend that they do not exist and neither does she attempt to justify or to explain their origins, but she also does not prescribe a cure. It is unfortunate that such a negative picture is an accurate representation.

The humans of the story are all incredibly flawed, but their situation is such that it is not their flaws that cause their downfall — they cannot be blamed for their misfortune. This helplessness is what causes the rage to build up. No matter how hard the slum-dwellers work (or how many shameful acts they might have to do), some chance event causes them to have to restart all over again. Their sisyphusian struggle is punctuated by drugs (eraz-ex).

But perhaps the most damning element of the story is the lack of empathy, or even acknowledgement by India’s elite and middle class. This is what makes the book so powerful. Perhaps if it had described ‘the secret world’ of India’s poor we could have ignored its message. When Boo writes so carefully about the interactions between the factions of society though, we cannot ignore it. Their world is our world, and their problems ours. India’s rise has given many people hope, but it is time to give people more than that — they need to be able to use that hope as well.