35 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine BooBehind the Beautiful Forevers
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part Four: Up and Out
Chapter 15 Summary: “Ice”
Abdul and his family hold on to their recyclables as long as possible, waiting for the market to improve, but they finally have to sell the recycling at a loss. As long as Abdul is sorting his garbage on the maidan, the Husains must pay daily bribes to the police, so Abdul has to rethink his business. Mirchi has grown up fast since the Husains’ troubles began and has taken some temp jobs at businesses near the airport, although his employers have cheated him out of some of his earnings.
While the Husains are waiting for the verdict in Karam and Kehkashan’s trial, the rest of Mumbai watches the trial of the surviving terrorist from the Mumbai attacks. The Husains’ judge is reassigned, and a new judge takes over their case. Again, the special executive officer approaches the Husains to extort money, saying she can make Fatima’s husband retract his testimony. Again, the Husains refuse.
Abdul continues his thrice-weekly visits to Dongri, although the time commitment means he cannot earn money on those days. On one visit he takes a detour to Haji Ali, a Muslim gathering place, and is horrified to find disabled beggars—No Legs and One Legs—lining the streets. Disgusted and uncomfortable, he returns to Annawadi resolving to be like ice, a transcendent form of Mumbai’s dirty water.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Black and White”
Asha has been repeatedly disappointed in her attempts to get out of Annawadi. Recently, Mr. Kamble’s widow took one of Asha’s most useful male companions, and the Corporator has finally been found guilty of not being low-caste. Asha’s plans for an advantageous marriage for Manju have gone nowhere. People in the slum begin turning against Asha after she arranges the sale of some huts in Annawadi, effectively turning their occupants out onto the street.
But Asha finally finds her way out through funding for a bogus nonprofit. Asha only has to sign paperwork that attests to the fact that she has been running 24 kindergartens, and she receives a check for $10,000. The money is then distributed to various other people who are supposedly helping out with the schools—teachers, custodians, etc.—leaving Asha some of the money for herself, although at the expense of children who are not educated. Asha enlists Manju’s help to pull off this scheme, and Manju becomes her new secretary and cosigner.
The parliamentary elections that hold such promise for the slumdwellers of Annawadi are approaching. Concrete sewer covers are installed to get votes from Annawadi, then removed to be installed in another slum, to get the favor of those residents. One night a group of hijras comes to Asha’s door. The hijras are a frequently disenfranchised group, but Asha is no longer in the business of helping her neighbors. Without answering their questions, she dresses in a black-and-white sari and heads out into the night to meet one of her men.
Chapter 17 Summary: “A School, a Hospital, a Cricket Field”
The elections make no significant difference in life in Annawadi; the incumbents are reelected and the promised reforms are forgotten. The government finally proceeds with its plans to demolish the slums around the airport, and bulldozers begin to cover the sewage lake, unearthing recyclables from an earlier period.
Annawadi makes the news in May, when an illegal horse race goes bad and two of Robert the Zebra Man’s horses fall off a bridge onto the pavement below. Animal rights groups come out in full force, covering the deplorable conditions of the horses in Annawadi. Ironically, “the forces of justice had finally come to Annawadi” (236)—for Robert’s horses. The road boys do not understand these charges of animal abuse, since Robert’s horses are “the luckiest and most lovingly tended creatures in the slum” (236).
In June the new judge finds Karam and Kehkashan not guilty. Now only Abdul’s case in juvenile court remains, but nothing happens with his case over the next year and a half, leaving Abdul in state of limbo between guilt and innocence.
The Husains’ fortunes turned for the worse with Abdul’s imprisonment and the economic crisis, but with all available children working to support the family, their fortunes are slowly reversing again. The family is hopeful that they will qualify for one of the 269-square-foot apartments for relocated slumdwellers when Annawadi is finally demolished. To increase his profits, Abdul begins hauling recycling farther and farther from Annawadi.
Sunil visits Abdul to tell him he has stopped stealing and is hopeful about his future. When Annawadi is demolished, Sunil wants to move somewhere where there are trees and flowers, although Abdul believes it is more likely that Sunil will end up sleeping on the city pavement. In the book’s final scene, Sunil heads to the narrow ledge of pavement above the Mithi River, where he will find a cache of cans and bottles ripe for the picking.
Chapters 15-17 Analysis
Hope comes to Annawadi in a strange way—not by the promised reforms during an election cycle, but by stability gradually returning to the Husains’ lives. With Karam and Kehkashan found innocent and the justice system in no hurry to deal with Abdul’s case, the Husains once again achieve a measure of prosperity. The burden of Fatima’s death finally seems to have lifted from their lives.
For Asha, hope comes through corruption. The system she has been trying to work from a variety of angles and through a variety of schemes finally rewards her. By being a fake kindergarten teacher and by establishing a false nonprofit, Asha is finally in a position to receive kickbacks. All she has to do is launder money through her kindergarten business. Manju finally seems to be coming around to her mother’s way of thinking. Being decent, honorable, and modest has not gotten Manju anywhere, after all. By being her mother’s secretary, Manju is complicit in the nonprofit fraud.
The book ends with Sunil—who embodies all the “road boys”—doing what he must to survive. He has found a tiny niche (literally, a narrow ledge) on which to base his survival, one small corner of the world that he can claim as his own.
As the book ends, Annawadi is slowly being torn down to make way for progress. All the Annawadians will need to go somewhere—to other slums, before they are torn down, or to rural villages where there is no work, or to the city streets, or to one of the 269-square-foot apartments, an elusive Holy Grail to the slumdwellers of Annawadi.
