behind the beautiful forevers

If there was ever a book that I could rate 10 stars of 5, this would be it.
I did not want to read it at first, because I thought it would be yet another foreigner with their western understanding of India or their lack of it offering a tale set in the Mumbai slums.

Instead I find this horrifying, heart breaking, non fiction set in the Annawadi slums teaching me a lot more than I ever did of heart or the lack of it behind poverty in India.

My father was a Tamil migrant himself to Mumbai in the 1970s given the lack of economic opportunities in the South back then. He had the fortune of education thankfully and brought us up in a lap of comfort, not luxury. He used to tell me stories of the harassment in Mumbai as the Marathis decried loss of jobs to the migrants. He spoke of needing to be circumspect back then.

When I read this book I understood it better and hurt at the apathy, corruption. abject poverty and disillusioning hope of living in a slum in Mumbai - the very slums I would look at every time I landed at Mumbai airport and thought - God! How dirty and cramped these are!

Researching this book and writing it from 2007 to 2011, Katherine Boo has done a brilliant job. She has written the unflinching truth of poverty, corruption, and the apathy towards human lives. To everyone who derides India for it - most countries face problems similar yet different as well. Maybe its the hopelessness of poverty, maybe its civil wars that tear at human lives in the name of religion, oil or diamonds. Maybe its in policemen gunning down civilians because of their colour. The truth is there is lot of injustice and hopelessness in every bit of the world. We need to discover our own humanity in it.

I loved this book. I could read it a million times. What I don't love is that it makes me question if there really is a god. How can there be?

The Siege: The Attack on the Taj

** spoiler alert ** This book is a horrifying true tale of what happened in Mumbai on that dreadful 26th of November,2008. The book told me what I already knew. The corruption, the bumbling bureaucracy, the ineptitude that besieges politics and governance. What this book does tell me what I did not know was in graphic detail of how it paralyzed Mumbai that night. Reading of how long it took for the Black Cats to reach and rescue the day, how the hotels ignored advice given, how India ignored the warnings of the naval attack, how US allowed a terrorist double agent to continue operating because of the information he passed in return,how politicians choose to wash over the entire episode was horrible. The simple acts of courage of the chefs of Taj,the marine guest, a doctor guest, the waiters at Taj and of the police force trapped inside are heartening. Disheartening is how media's soundbites and peoples' live updates to their friends and family on twitter/facebook/ photos/calls lead to not just the handlers' knowing what was happening and giving the feedback and further action plans to the terrorists but also the terrorists inside hearing where people were to gun them down. Terrible ...terrible.. terrible.. how cheap to us human life is.

While I praise the book for the detail it gets into, the book also appears quite biased. It sullies the characters of people who are too dead to defend it. It joins the bandwagon of blame and quotes people who may project the instances that happened the way they would like the world to see it.

On the whole, well written, reasonably well investigated account.