For Tuesday: Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Abdul’s younger brother tells him, “Everything around us is roses...And we’re the shit in between” (xii). According to the book, why does the government tolerate the illegal settlement of Annawadi? And why do people stay there if they’re treated like “shit” by the entire world? 

Q2: How does the Indian idea of privacy compare with what we read of China in One Person Means Alone? How might this lack of privacy—and the utter impossibility of being alone in a crowded city or slum—shape how their society views the world? Do you think the author realizes this, or wants us to be shocked by it?

Q3: According to the book, Annawadi is “one of the most stirring success narratives in the modern history of global market capitalism, a narrative still unfolding” (6). What do you think she means by this? How could a slum be a success story? And what does this say about its place in the world-wide web of capitalism (which implicates us as well)?

Q4: In one passage, Boo writes that “As group identities based on caste, ethnicity, and religion gradually attenuated, anger and hope were being privatized, like so much else in Mumbai” (90). While most people would applaud the removal of the old rules of caste and race, what has replaced them? Why might Boo suggest that even abstract things like anger and hope can be “privatized"?