final Boo entry

And so we reach the conclusion of Behind The Beautiful Forevers-or, at least, Katherine Boo’s conclusion. The lives of the slum dwellers profiled in Boo’s nonfiction work continue on, something I will be thinking about long after I have read this very unsatisfactory ending. Abdul’s family (for the most part) is given the verdict of not guilty in their trial, but how has their life changed in any way? They are all forced to go right back to a life of struggling for work, trying to get by and feed themselves, and a new terror-the destruction of the slums-looms before them, something the reader can only guess at. In this last section, Abdul puts his thinking into words: he would rather be like ice than the dirty water of Annawadi. He wants to be better, still under the influence of the mysterious Master. But a mere chapter after that, while listening to Sunil, he feels old, “sitting next to someone who still had ideas,” insinuating that all his original thought had been dried up in the process of trying to find normalcy again. Indeed, no one seems to get what they want: Asha is faced with one disappointment after another, ultimately seeming to give up on the idea of being a slumlord, while none of the so called “witnesses” testifying against the Husains find any way to better their life from a tragedy of others. The sheer irony of the horse incident is appalling: faced with the pitiable slum life, the news clings on to malnourished animals instead, turning their backs on the wretches before them that are of the same species. And yet, this is what we are given. Our own look behind the Beautiful Forever wall, a despairingly small piece of justice for the people of Annawadi.