Just Because: 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers'

My brother gave me this book for some holiday, or maybe for my birthday. I can't remember. Either way, I finally started reading it during my recent vacation, and though I haven't finished it, I have to say that, like everything he has recommended, it's very good and extremely worthwhile. The subtitle is "Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," and it's by New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo. As a reporter, Boo spent a lot of time in India, and this book is what is called on the jacket "narrative nonfiction."

prologue: between roses

July 17, 2008—Mumbai

Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father. In a slum hut by the international airport, Abdul's parents came to a decision with an uncharacteristic economy of words. The father, a sick man, would wait inside the trash-strewn, tin-roofed shack where the family of eleven resided. He'd go quietly when arrested. Abdul, the household earner, was the one who had to flee.
   Abdul's opinion of the plan had not been solicited, typically. Already he was mule-brained with panic. He was sixteen years old, or maybe nineteen—his parents were hopeless with dates. Allah, in His impenetrable wisdom, had cut him small and
jumpy. A coward: Abdul said it of himself. He knew nothing about eluding policemen. What he knew about, mainly, was trash. For nearly all the waking hours of nearly all the years he could remember, he'd been buying and selling to recyclers the things that richer people threw away.
   Now Abdul grasped the need to disappear, but beyond that his imagination flagged. He took off running, then came back home. The only place he could think to hide was in his garbage. ...