Boo 125 - 175

There’s a lot covered in this section, and you really get a chance to see the changing of the characters and the overall mood of Annawadi during these 50 pages. It starts with Abdul having something of an epiphany from “the Master” at Dongri prison, who’s in-depth speech makes Abdul strive to behave, despite his previously placid behavior, turning him now into something of a meek zombie. He, his father and sister are released from prison until their trial can potentially convict them, and the focus then shifts to Asha’s clash with Manju’s forward thinking sensibilities. We learn of just how much Manju is really the odd duck within the culture of Annawadi, yet still can’t stand up to her mother despite her own strength, Asha’s now revealed weakness that the reason she’s so powerful is due to her elicit outings with the male politicians of Mumbai. And lastly we check back on Sunil and Kalu, now partners and working with a third boy, Sonu. You learn of their upward rise in the garbage-collecting campaign, and then Sunil and Kalu’s turn to thievery, thanks to influence from the latter, which ends up utterly spooking Sunil after Kalu’s untimely death. Things are really starting to come undone, and the examples Boo gives, from the teary-eyed sermon of the Master, to Asha’s disappearance on the night of her 40^th birthday, the dying man in the street none of the characters bother to help, and ultimately the death of Kalu, really help to deliver the sense of emotion and disparity between the lives and issues of each of these followed Annawadi inhabitants.  It shows just how much a life we make think is hectic enough can become even more unraveled, and that the issues we may face here are paltry compared to theirs, instilling that hard-hitting sympathy that Boo so elegantly manages to pull out of us.