Boo, Catherine. Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Hamish Hamilton (imprint of Penguin), New Delhi, 2012 (Pages 254, Hardback)

Rating: 8.5/10

Catherine Boo’s book with a strange sounding title is a serious journalistic accomplishment. She has focussed on one small Bombay slum located close to the airport. Over a period of four years she documented the experiences of its residents with written notes, video recordings, audiotapes and photographs. A Pulitzer winning New Yorker journalist, Ms Boo took great pains to establish an accurate factual account of the stories unfolding in the little slum. The account of Fatima’s self immolation, one of the key subplots, is based on repeated interviews of 168 people and records from the police department, the hospital, the morgue and the courts.

As a Bombay resident who has witnessed the birth of slums in this city, I thought it is difficult for a book telling real life slum stories to shock me. But this book does that. The details of scavenging, petty thievery, corruption as a way of life made me feel frustrated and helpless. If this is what goes on a few miles from my house, I truly feel depressed and ashamed about my city, my country and life in general.

Every person in the Annawadi slum is struggling for survival. The thievery and corruption stem from economics rather than morality. Ms Boo has not changed any names. One can go and meet the characters any day. Indeed one of our friends immediately went to the slum. He said it was small enough not to be found easily. But once there, he could identify the locations in the book and meet the key persona. Most of them would never be able to read this book, but the slum dwellers enthusiastically talked about Ms Boo (Katrina to them) and her able assistant (Unnati Tripathi).

In an otherwise neutral reporting style, Ms Boo employs subtle sarcasm that adds spice to the well written book. Enjoying is not the right term for reading this book, but it is pacy despite being an outright non-fiction.

‘Beautiful forevers’ is a lavish billboard advertising Italian tiles. Annawadi, the slum described in the book, is located behind that advertising. Hence the title.

Some people have compared this book to the Oscar winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ Having consumed both the products, I resent such comparison. Slumdog, for me, was a dishonest film – made with an eye on the Oscar – whereas Ms Boo’s book is extremely honest, reporting everything exactly as it happened, and not prescribing any remedy or policy. It may not win any awards, but it disturbs and breaks readers’ hearts.

Verdict: Worth buying and reading despite the depression such reading is likely to cause.