Some thoughts on the book - 'Behind the beautiful forevers'

After reading some glowing reviews of the book in New York Times three days ago, I felt very eager to read it. Thanks to Flipkart's fantastic delivery system, the book was in my hands yesterday. Once I started it, I couldn't put it down. Though the book reported real happenings with real names and facts, I was soon lost into the world of Annawadi, the scavenger kids who considered their work 'more boring than dirty', their inexhaustible enterprise and their ever-present long list of troubles that had to dodged, if possible, or dealt with, if not. The characters of Abdul, Sunil, Asha, Manju, Meena, the one-legged Fatima and the Sahar police officials pack together a narrative of gritty realistic intensity. The events which have been narrated without fuss and exaggeration but not without empathy, call for an incredible sense of insight and courage. That being an American and an outsider to the slum, Katherine Boo has achieved a triumph of a book in 'Behind the beautiful forevers' raised her respect in my mind and with just a few pages into the book, I got completely involved with the characters, having laid to rest any doubts on the quality of research and deep-heartedly appreciating the level of hard work that would've gone behind a book of such genuine portraits and disarming earnestness.

It is evident that the author has taken her time, observing and circling, just like the crows of Annawadi, before putting them down in the book in the elegant Electra typeface. As Dr. Amartya Sen says of the book, it is 'a beautiful account, told through real-life stories, of the sorrows and joys, the anxieties and stamina, in the lives of the precarious and powerless in urban India whom a booming country has failed to absorb and integrate. A brilliant book that simultaneously informs, agitates, angers, inspires, and instigates.'

The story after Fatima's death, written with an unusual economy of words which adds to the sheer effect of the event on the reader's mind, disturbs profoundly and stimulates equally. I couldn't help but pause to not get overwhelmed after the deaths of Kalu, Meena and Fatima. It was not a lavish style or a scholarly dictum that swept the reader but what was mind-boggling was the matter-of-fact tone in which the events were described. As if profound adjectives need not be pronounced to make the event tragic. As if the mere reporting of the facts would suffice. And it did. The author didn't intend to milk our tear ducts or offer solutions to the problems or address to our compassionate side. She has just narrated the facts. The cold, cruel, undisguised facts. Facts that cut right through our hearts. Facts that are a result of a clinical understanding of the whole picture and dissection of the various ground forces that hit the poor. And it has been one hell of a neat dissection!

Definitely do buy it and read... You'd be investing in not just a book but a vision that'd last you the rest of your life.