Behind the Beautiful Forevers: 50-75

What is your reaction to Manju? Does she remind you of anyone you know?  How is she like and unlike that person?  What are the principal characteristics of her identity?

Manju is a fascinating character because of her stubborn determination. A lot of people in the slum believe that their big break will come through from their children doing wonderfully in school and then getting high paying jobs to save their families. The lack of opportunities in Annawadi often brings that fantasy back down to the ground, but somehow, despite the odds, Manju manages it. Her days are tightly scheduled, as Boo describes, "[Her] obligations were fulfilled by sleeping only four hours a night..." (Boo 57). She goes to college, she teaches school, and still does household work on top of that. Through hard work, she has a chance of making it somewhere instead of being poor and living in the slums all her life. In the face of the grayed out and depressed slum, she stays hopeful.
I do not personally know anyone that Manju reminds me of, but she does have a nonconformity that is respectable, even if it is unlike other women that try not to conform. In the United States, nonconformity is doing what you want and dressing how you want, but in Annawadi, Manju refused to conform to the depression. Many Annawadians have accepted their fate as poor slumdwellers, yet Manju strains herself to the limit of human durability to try and get out of a poor life, without the corrupt methods that her mother, Asha, is using.
Manju's stubbornness is one characteristic of her identity, but it often leads to another: agitated outbursts. In the second chapter, she seems to intentionally create a bad tasting meal to get revenge against her mother for turning away a neighbor in need. She also yells at her brother, "'Rahul, not so much cream!'" because she wishes to try and make herself look good for a potential husband. Such a simple concern over skin lotion still set her off. The stubbornness and short temper equates her to any modern teenager, trying to rebel from her society, but it is different in Manju's case. Whereas a teenage rebel in the U.S. may want to forgo school, her rebellion is simply going to school and becoming what her mother could not. It is a strange contrast that she rebels using legal methods versus her mother's illegal ones when rebellion is usually using illegal methods to combat legal ones. Boo notes this by explaining, "...Manju's desire to be good was also rebellion - a way of chastising a mother who was said to have... advantages by behaving badly" (Boo 62).
Despite her fiery nature, Manju really does care for other people. On pages 63-65, she shows concern for and treats a wound on one of her students who was hit by a car, and then intervenes to prevent his mother from hurting him.