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.