Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

By February 2008, Abdul seems more anxious than ever after news of violence against northern migrants (like him and his family) increases. These riots are specifically orchestrated by politicians from parties like Shiv Sena. Karam and Zehrunisa tell their children that this will all pass and India will be stronger than ever, but Abdul is scared enough that he does not work for a week.

Sunil, a 12-year-old scavenger, is scared to see Abdul so changed. Sunil learned to read people while living at Sister Paulette’s orphanage and he enjoys finding the secret motives behind people’s actions. He wasn’t even angry when Sister Paulette told him to leave the orphanage because he knew that having boys older than eleven there would give the orphanage a bad image to foreign sponsors. Sunil and his younger sister Sunita now live in a cramped and filthy hut in Annawadi with their alcoholic father.

When Sunil was younger, he could beg for charity meals at dinner time, but he is now too old to take advantage of this food source. Sunil would rather not beg anyway, but he hates to think that the lack of food is stunting his growth. Sunita is now taller than him, a fact which bothers him. But scavenging is hard, dirty work that comes with the constant risk of disease. It is often all Sunil can do to keep himself from being the next scavenger to die, much less get enough trash to feed himself properly. The other garbage workers, like Abdul, have a running bet on who will be the next scavenger dead.

One day in February, Sunil walks down Airport Lane using his signature rich boy walk to avoid inviting contempt from foreigners. He passes a huge concrete wall pasted with ads for floor tiles that promise to be “beautiful forever.” This wall hides the Annawadi sprawl from the airport clientele. Sunil looks for trash on Airport Lane, trying to avoid women from the Matang caste who still believe that waste picking is their livelihood exclusively. Even worse, the airport itself now has a professional waste company that removes all the valuable recycling from the premises. Municipal garbage workers have also multiplied, now that Mumbai wants to change its reputation as a dirty city.

Sunil decides that he should explore new territory if he wants to make more than his usual 33 cents a day. He watches people who throw away trash, realizing that the airport taxi drivers sometimes throw their trash into the Mithi river on the other side of the airport. The wind and current tends to push the trash onto a narrow ledge where Sunil can balance and collect bags of trash where others are too scared to go. Sunil knows the risks of falling into the fast-moving Mithi, but he likes the idea that people think he is daring for going here.

By March, the riots are over, but their effect scared many north Indians away from Mumbai. Others were not able to work during the riots, like the Husain family’s tenants. Zehrunisa has no sympathy for this family, exaggerating her own family’s poverty. The migrant family leaves, and Abdul knows that new immigrants will come to take their place after this next monsoon season.

The airport has been privatized in recent years, now belonging to a management conglomerate called GVK that wants to raze Annawadi and take back the airport land. GVK highlights that developing the land could be both potentially lucrative and helpful to the sense of national pride; the Indian government is trying to show that Mumbai is a high-functioning, well-managed city that does not have a slum problem.

Annawadians know that the city hates their slum, but they are fiercely loyal to it. To the residents, Annawadi has three distinct sections: the Tamil Sai Nagar which is richer and has the public toilet, the poorer section built by Dalits (the “untouchable” lowest class of the old caste system), and the poorest section in which the scavengers do not even have huts so they sleep on their trash heaps. In this poorest section, thieves abound. They prey on the rich clientele of the airport and often get high on Eraz-ex, a type of white-out, to distract from their hunger.

Abdul warns Sunil not to get involved with Eraz-ex, feeling somewhat protective of the younger scavenger, but Sunil thinks the guys who get high are more fun than boring Abdul. The thieves even play video games at Annawadi’s first entertainment center. One of these thieves is a boy named Kalu, who uses Eraz-ex to give him the strength to scale barbed wire fences and steal aluminum sheets from the airport recycling bins. Sunil loves watching Kalu reenact Bollywood movies or imitate other people from Annawadi.

One night, Sunil overhears Kalu tell Abdul about a thieving operation that went wrong. Kalu found some iron bars at an industrial estate by the airport but was chased off by a security guard. Sunil offers to wake Kalu at 3 am so Kalu can go back and get the iron bars. Sunil tracks time by the moon, then wakes Kalu. Kalu explains that his usual partner is now too stoned and asks Sunil to come with him.

Kalu tells Sunil to bring his bedsheets and the two boys sprint down Airport Lane. Kalu leads Sunil past the reek of the Mithi river, then the two boys wade across. At the industrial estate, Sunil is spooked by the shadows of security guards, but Kalu assures Sunil that he has hidden the iron bars where no one will see them. Kalu is right, and the boys fill the bed sheets with three irons each. Fifteen minutes and one difficult swim later, they make it back to Annawadi. Abdul buys the irons and Sunil gets a third of the profit from Kalu.

With the first disposable income of his life, Sunil goes to see a movie. It’s an American film about a man who survives a plague in New York City. Sunil is traumatized when the man kills the dog that has been his only friend throughout the movie—he is unable to figure out why the man would do that. A few weeks later, Kalu asks Sunil to help him with another theft. Sunil refuses, unable to explain even to himself why he is turning down this lucrative offer. He knows it has something to do with the dog’s death and his fear of the police, but also his lack of respect for thieves.