Behind the Beautiful Forevers Final Response

Poverty is all around us; it is inevitable that within a society there is both a high class and a low class.  However, what Katherine Boo did in her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers was something that went beyond the depth that I am accustomed to.  Within the pages of this book, one does not only learn the consequences of an impoverished (to put it lightly) society, but also is presented the opportunity to put faces with this crisis.

"Ashamed and in debt, some farmers killed themselves - an old story, one of the Marathi-movie staples.  But the movie reel was still playing.  In the new century, the government counted an average of a thousand farmer suicides a year in Vidarbha; activists counted many more.  Whatever the number, suicides had turned the region into international shorthand for the desperation of rural Indian poverty."  (second paragraph, page 137).

Throughout the book, death was regarded not as a serious, or even grievance-worthy issue, but more so as a part of life.  How ironic.  Still, this is probably the thing that struck me so deeply.  The lack of respect people, human bodies and souls, got can only be compared in my mind to those of the Holocaust.  Especially towards the end of the book, young boys called "thieves" steadily turned up dead, day after day.  But there was no sadness that spread throughout Annawadi.  Perhaps it was because the sadness had always been there; a depression that could not be lifted.  I felt that dejection, though.  From these pages it seemed tangible, as though I was there looking at the boy who showed up dead in the garden of flowers.

The concept of death is not universal; sadness does not always go hand in hand with the loss of a human life in some cultures.  This has been one of the harder to accept lessons for me, but I am glad to have shed light on the area of my misconceptions that were darkened and previously oblivious to me.  Katherine Boo has not just done something that shows a different culture, she has shown a different mindset of a people far away from me all together.  Although I walk away from this reading experience with, perhaps, more questions than answers, I am fortunate to even have the opportunity to question these topics (e.g., life, death, poverty, family and societal dynamics, etc.) in the first place.  This book will not be forgotten, but one I will recommend to anyone I can; it is truly beautiful, and a work of art in its own right.

Final Response

The most important thing I think that I learned from Behind The Beautiful Forevers is just knowledge of Indian culture itself. I tend to pride myself in knowing a good amount about most cultures. Before we started reading the book, it occurred to me that I didn’t know much about Indian culture at all. I learned a lot about the economy in India, and what kind of jobs the citizens obtain. I found it really interesting to see how jobs that a typical teenager would have in America were so different from India. However, the Indian teenagers didn’t seem to mind all that much, while American teenagers always complain about their jobs. I also had no idea what the surroundings would look like. I found it interesting that Annawadi was in the middle of luxury. Katherine Boo writes a quote from Mirchi in the prologue, "Everything around us is roses, and we're the shit in between."
(Prologue, p. xii).

In terms of the style the book was written, I think I learned a lot too. I learned how to take a non-fiction story and write in a way that is captivating for the reader. Katherine Boo takes facts, and arranges them to make a really gripping novel for the reader. Also, I learned to take myself out of the story. Boo writes strictly from the facts, and keeps her opinions isolated from the novel. There are times where she slips some of her own ideas in, but for the most part the story is unbiased. That is something I definitely struggle with as a writer, so I gained some great knowledge from Katherine Boo’s techniques.

Honestly, I feel that there was not much I would change about the book. I enjoyed the whole novel as well as the technique and style she wrote in. I am sure there are many people out there who have negative things to say about it, but I am not one of them. 

Jordyn

Behind the Beautiful Forevers End Response

From reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I became more familiar with India's culture and the life that they became accustomed to.  Learning about the culture was the most important thing to me because as I was reading about it, I also had some feelings toward it too.  Katherine Boo does an extravagant job of adding some of her the character's representation to help drive the story and some of her general research that helped me understand the culture in Annawadi.  Once I understood how they lived in this place, I could react to it.  For instance, in the book, Sunil cared for his sister and tried everything in his strength and power to support her because he felt like it was his responsibility.  When Boo wrote that, his sister was getting sick and bumps from the rat bites. I immediately reacted with a disgusted face but with an understanding one as well because their living conditions were very polluted and unsanitary.  I think Boo includes her own general research into the story because she has went on a journey herself to actually see the experience of India from her own eyes.  Her style is heavily influenced by descriptive language and imagery, and she also applies old to new information.  Her content is very surreal because I can imagine the things going on in Annawadi while I'm reading.  I also see her style as patient.  She doesn't rush into te next chapter.  She gives a beginning, middle, and end for each character's stories and she goes in depth to explain the situations they are living in.  She also doesn't remain stuck on one character because as I was reading, Boo also seemed aware of her surroundings and stayed alert on things that could be added to her story.  

End of the Book Response

From reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I learned about the Indian culture and how severe the caste system is. I didn’t realize it is kind of like America in a sense. We tend to ignore the poor people here on the streets or outside our windows, when they are right in front of us. It is like the gates and advertisements that blind the upper- and middle-class to their poor, except we don’t need ads or gates, we have programmed our own blinders into how we perceive everyday life (pg. 37). I have a friend working to get his medical degree over in India, and he described the way of life, but it is just kind of hard to believe. We were really close throughout high school, and he described arranged marriages, why he is going to India to study, what’s it like. I even get to Skype with him on occasion and I am surprised by how beautiful India is especially in contrast to how he describes how they live. People literally pee in public on the streets. It’s a rough time. Through this book, I kind of understood India more. I understand the corrupt police, and how women had to sacrifice themselves to move up in the world (pg.207). Asha had to pull her family out of the dust, by trying to gain power in the slums and suffering beatings from her husband. It is still like this in our society today, still, though people try to pretend like it isn’t. Women make less than men the majority of the time, there are double standards placed upon us. We have NY police and “cannibal cops” (Pg. 240) just as Abdul has the Sahar police who want people to confess guilt when they have done no such crime. Our society is just as corrupt as India’s, we can’t pretend as though we are so high and mighty, so different. We are just like the airport we just try to protect ourselves by caging in the lower class. We don’t have to see what they deal with. It’s survival of the fittest no matter where you are. 

End of Behind the Beautiful Forever's

              The most important thing I would have to say that I learned was how much different Abdul’s lifestyle was compared to the one I grew up in as well as the one’s my friends grew up in. I know that I live a very privileged life and what sucks is that I take a lot of what I have for granted. Learning about these families and how hard it is to get by was just scary and even uncomfortable for me because I haven’t lived like that and I don’t see that lifestyle here on campus. Katherine Boo did a great job with the sensory detail and explaining to the readers how different these people live and what they have to do to just get by every single day. Boo explains that Abdul has to work in recycling trash while his father just sits at home, sick and worthless, while Abdul provides for the family (14, 23-24). She shows us that we have so much to live for while others such as Abdul and his family really don’t have much at all.

                Sadly I will have to say that even though Katherine Boo’s book was very eye opening I thought it was fairly slow and dry at some points. I know it’s hard to take interviews and turn them into a chapter book but every once in a while I would get lost and eventually would get bored. I know that’s harsh to say but I honestly wouldn’t want to read the book again. Once I was done reading the book I didn’t want to have much to do with it again. 

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, written by Katherine Boo, has caused me to doubt and reevaluate my own ideas of right and wrong.  I have grown up surrounded by much different morals and ideals than the people of Annawadi, and my own seem completely normal and reasonable to me. However, reading about Meena and her brothers and how they “had once caught her on the phone and slapped her for it” upset me; to me, this is immoral (Boo 182). As we discussed in class, I had the impression that her brothers felt this was normal, and that is was their duty. If I had been raised in an environment in which abuse and violence toward women was a responsibility, it would seem normal to me as well. I wonder whether the ideas of right and wrong are merely relevant to specific environments, or if there is a universal right and wrong that should be followed.

Boo’s style initially took me by surprise; there are so many stories to follow and so much detail. For example, Boo describes what a typical day for Abdul looks like, and everything that he sees (Boo 4). This style submerges the reader in the culture, and really allows one to feel not only connected to the inhabitants of Annawadi, but do the environment itself.

While discussing the book, I noticed I was always referring to individuals as “characters”. It was hard to grasp that these were true accounts of a culture, but I felt much more connected to each person than I would have if it had been written in a more traditional manner.  However, it did cause me to wonder how she was able to understand how these individuals felt. For example, when Abdul and his father are being whipped, and she explains that Abdul “closed his eyes and tried to recall some key words from the last time he had prayed” (Boo 105). Was she able to witness each moment she writes about, or were these tales recounted to her? Overall, Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers has shown me a new way to approach culture, and it has given me quite a different experience of India. 

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

In reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I took out a unique sense of writing. Katherine Boo did a really nice job recreating the situations that these people found themselves in. It was really quite astonishing. As well, she incorporated a broader sense of what was going on in India’s culture at the time. It is hard to pinpoint her exact technique in accomplishing this, but the flow was effortless as a reader. That, I believe, is the key point in writing about actual events: to guide the interest on what’s important and still maintaining a narrative flow.

The most important theme I took out of the book was the overarching reality of our privileged culture in America. There is a tremendous difference between poor life here and poor life in Indian slums. It’s not as though we have cast the poor out of our sphere of importance, nor have we taken advantage of their situation as to step on them to get what the richer want. The rest of society in America still treats the poor like humans, not like garbage as India does. I couldn't find the specific page numbers where this would be exemplified, but there were multiple times throughout the book where Boo pointed out that boys like Sunil, Abdul, and Kalu were considered no more than garbage to the upper-societal members.

Otherwise, I really have no criticisms. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Boo’s book. It was insightful, entertaining, captivating, and knowledgeable. She did a great job pulling the reader in as well as explaining different aspects of the culture.

Haley Laurelle Martin

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

The most important thing that I learned from Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is that bad situations do not necessarily unite people. The content of the book shows that a majority of people living in Annawadi are poor, and make very little money each day. Despite this, they are not united together against the upper classes that would keep them poor and out of the way in the slums. Fatima, after burning herself to try and bring the Husain family down, says "…it is done now, and I will make them pay!" (Boo 99). She claims that they beat her and burned her after complaining of their construction in their home, but in reality, she was jealous that they were doing better than her, and annoyed that their construction was rattling her own house. Regardless of the fact that they are both poor families and should be angry at the higher classes and the corrupt government for leaving them this way, they fight each other, both trying to bring the other one down to further their own lot in life. It is a vicious cycle, and in the end, the poor class remains largely the same, with no miracles like in "Slumdog Millionaire" to help them. A common theme in American media is the unification of people through crisis, but I realize that a lot of the time, people will turn on each other sooner than they will unite, which warns people not to rely on those you do not know.The style of Boo's writing struck me throughout the book in her way of writing without including herself at all. She offers a deep world view of Annawadi, but there is no sign of her. It is as if she is writing a story, even though everything in it actually happened. For example, when a eunuch comes to Asha's gathering to support Subhash Sawant, Boo's description is very vivid: "Two women pushed forward to spin with the eunuch, becoming sinuous red-and-green blurs" (Boo 55). Though she likely did not witness the event herself, she pieced it together from talking to the people who were there, and recreated the image for people to experience in their minds. This kind of writing impressed me- I lost myself more than once in the story, and I had to keep reminding myself that it was happening in the real world, this was not just some deeply imaginative narrative, but a well researched retelling.The only thing I might criticize about the book would be the ending; the book ends very abruptly. Boo leaves us with a question: "If the house is… crumbling… is it possible to make anything lie straight?" The rhetorical question makes readers reflect on India's corrupt government and the poor people affected by it, but it offers no solution to Abdul's problem. He is still in limbo for his judgement, and his business is gone, and I can't help but wonder, how is his family doing now?

Delaney on Behind the Beautiful Forevers

In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, written by Katherine Boo relationships are tested, physically, mentally, and spiritually. The part that was most important to me was a confirmation that faith is a strong presence even when people have nothing. This was illustrated when Boo wrote about Abdul getting a beating in the jail. He did not want his mother to worry about him and so “he closed his eyes and tried to recall some key words from the last time he had prayed” (Boo 105). I have found from my own experience that faith is a huge factor in the lives of people, especially in poorer areas. I went to Nicaragua on a mission trip one summer and the people there also had strong faith.

Stylistically I learned to be more detail oriented and that incorporating quotations to go along with the detail makes the writing more powerful. An example of this is when we are reading about Meena’s death. Boo details the experience of her taking and throwing up the rat poison, all while adding dialogue between her, Manju, and Meena’s mother. (Pages 186 – 189)

Content wise, the beginning of the book was hard to grasp onto and follow. With so many characters I would get lost and several times have to start reading passages over. Stylistically, the book was not completely linear, which is not a bad thing to do, on the contrary it does add more to the book, it is just slightly more difficult to follow, when like I said earlier, it was slightly hard to follow to begin with. Other than that, I really enjoyed Boo’s novel and learned a lot about how to improve my own writing.

Due before class Thursday, Feb 28

What was most important to you about what you learned from reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers?  Please respond in terms of both the style and content of Katherine Boo's writing, and explain the importance to you.  Also, what criticisms of the book's style and content are you tempted to make and why?  Please cite specific passages and give their page numbers to support all your responses.  250-350 words.

Questions

1) How important is family to you personally and how important is family to your friends and those around you? What is your home life like? How many siblings do you have?

2) Is the concept of an arranged marriage something you look forward to, or something you are not so happy about? Do you think the rules of relationships and marriage have changed throughout time or have they stayed the same?

3) How do you define corruption? Are there specific examples and ideas that you think of when trying to define corruption?

4) How important is faith and religion to you?

5) When you think about the United States, is there one aspect that interests you about the country and the people who live there? Is there anything about the country that frightens you? When you think about your country, India, what excites you? What scares you about India?

 

Behind The Beautiful Forevers Final Blog Response

Hello!

My name is Jordyn and I am a freshman at Columbia College Chicago. I am 19 years old and female. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, but moved to Chicago, Illinois to attend college. I went to an all-girl catholic high school, so I understand the same gender schooling you are currently involved in. In my English course, we are reading a book that takes place in Annawadi. Our professor asked us to keep a list of questions we had about India in general during our reading. I am very excited to be able to communicate with you, and hopefully get some of my questions answered! My questions are as follows:

What is the government system like in India? In America, we have an election to pick a president. When we turn 18 years old, we are able to participate in that election to decide who will run the country. How is that system alike yours in India? How is it different?

What are some of the popular hobbies, pass-times, or activities you do in India? In America, it is very popular to watch or play sports such as baseball, football, and basketball. What are some of the things that you come together as a community to participate in?

What is schooling like in India? At what age do you start school? How long do you attend? In America, we begin school around the age of four years old. We go through pre-school, grade school, middle school, high school, and finally college. Is that similar to your schooling? How is your college degree the same and how is it different from colleges in America?

What are the equality rights like in India? An ongoing issue and debate we have in America is whether gay marriage should be legalized or not. Recently, the state of Illinois, where I attend school, legalized gay marriage. However, it is still not acceptable in most places. How does India react to issues such as gay marriage? Are there other rights that are being discussed in India?

Finally, I would like to ask a very generic question. What is it like to live in India? Could you tell me about how you grew up and what it’s like to live there? I have never visited, so the only visuals and ideas I have are through literature. I would love to hear from you what it is like growing up and living in India today.

Thank you so much for taking time out to answer these questions of mine! I really appreciate it! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about America! I would love to answer your questions after you were so generous to answer mine.

Thanks,

Jordyn Hunter

1. Is the caste still prevalent in New Delhi? Do they still determine your future or is one able to move up in the caste system through hard work?
2. What is the family dynamic? What is expected from each member of the family?
3. What is dating like over there? Are you allowed to chose who you are in a relationship or is that chosen by your parents?
4. When you are not at school what are you doing? Do you have extracurriculars or jobs?

Questions

1.Is prostitution a common occupation among lower-income women that you know of in India? 

          If it is, is it a controlled business with set regulations?

2. What are the views of Eunuch community in modern India?  

          Are people afraid?  

          Are the Eunuchs worshiped?

3. Is there a wide spread belief in magic and curses?  

          Especially curses of the dead or curses from the poor.

4. What do you know about the gods (if you are religious or practice a religion)? 

          Do you have a specific god/deity?

          If so, what are is the deity controlling, like God of: agriculture, life, rain, fire, etc.?