Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Manju struggles to understand Mrs. Dalloway, the latest novel for her college English course. She blames it on the weather, hoping she hasn’t caught malaria or dengue fever again. Her mother, Asha, is also looking stressed these days, as Corporator Subhash Sawant has been accused of electoral fraud for impersonating a low-caste person to win the latest election. He is now touring the slums of his ward, hoping that public approval will somehow erase his legal fraud. It’s Annawadi’s turn next and Asha has been ordered to assemble the residents to pray for the case to be dismissed.

Asha painstakingly cajoles the Annawadian parents to come to the meeting and leave their children, who are supposed to be studying for school exams, for the night. Subhash himself appears at sundown and approves of the food and decorations that Asha has planned for the victory rally. Subhash leaves, telling Asha that he will return after dinner to speak to the Annawadians at the small temple in Annawadi. At 8 pm, Asha rings the temple bell and a crowd of genuinely low-caste people assemble. Most of the Annawadians know that Subhash has lied about his caste, but they respect him anyway because Subhash takes the time to personally come to Annawadi and fund public improvements for the slum.

The Annawadians wait in the temple for an hour, giving up precious time they could be using to clean or wait in line for water. At 11 pm, Subhash still hasn’t arrived. Asha tells Manju to give the people the food they had prepared. Most Annawadians eat and go home. Asha is terrified that Subhash will arrive to find an empty temple and question Asha’s influence in Annawadi.

While Asha stews about the lack of a crowd, a young eunuch named Suraj arrives outside the temple and starts to dance. Manju is fascinated by the sight of this sexually ambiguous person, though popular superstition says that eunuchs bring horrible luck. Usually eunuchs must be paid to leave, but this eunuch seems to dance for the sheer joy of it. A crowd forms to watch the dancing, then Suraj invites them to ask him questions so the goddess inside him can give them advice. The Annawadians ask about the future of their slum, not even caring that Suraj only answers in gibberish.

In the Husain house, Mirchi is annoyed at all the noise the crowd is making in the street as he tries to study for his ninth-grade exams. A 21-year-old named Prakash is also disturbed by this ruckus on the eve of his college graduation exams. But Asha is overjoyed at the noise when Subhash finally calls to say he won’t be coming and he thinks that the din is all in praise of him.

Manju spends most of her time doing things for others, such as running a small public school in the afternoons and cooking and cleaning for her family. She specifically cultivates gentle behavior, hoping to distance herself from her mother. The afternoon after Subhash’s failed rally, she complains to Rahul about all the work she has to do, but Rahul is too distracted by his own worries about work. He is trying to cultivate the perfect demeanor for a waiter at a high-class hotel, but he embarrassed himself at the last party he worked by dancing to the music.

Manju leaves her brother to watch TV and turns to her English literature reading. The book is The Way of the World, but Manju is not expected to read the original text—she is only supposed to memorize the approved summary and rewrite that summary on the test. Usually Manju is good at “by-hearting” these books, but The Way of the World is proving tricky. She can’t make sense of what the phrase “Love is subordinated” is supposed to mean.

Manju wishes she had an English-Marathi dictionary. She doesn’t harbor the same resentment of this colonial language that her mother does. To Manju, learning English is just another sign that India is becoming more global. Her skills in this language are rather poor, but in Annawadi they are second only to the top student Prakash. Manju thinks about asking Prakash what “subordinated” means, but she knows that she cannot be seen talking to a young man unchaperoned.

Manju whispers the plot summary of The Way of the World while she cleans the family hut. She can’t identify with the heroine of this novel, who complains about having to arrange her own marriage. Manju lives in fear of being married to a village boy who will not let her leave the house. Manju thinks about one of the themes of The Way of the World: money is more important than love. That is obviously her mother’s opinion, but Manju herself believes that virtue is the most important. This desire to be good comes partly from fear—Manju’s mother hit her with an axe the one and only time Manju stole—and partly from rebellion against her mother’s corruption.

Years ago, Asha got a government grant to open a school in Annawadi and she uses this endeavor to prove that she is a good person. But Manju actually runs the school while her mother focuses on Shiv Sena political commitments. Asha wishes Manju would only run school when the supervisors came to check, but Manju wants to give the other slum children a real education and a fighting chance of getting out of poverty. Her school is much better than the public schools, which let the children play all day.

The students come rushing into Manju’s hut in a frenzy because one of the young boys has been hit by a taxi. Manju dumps turmeric on the open wound on the boy’s head. The boy’s mother comes in and begins to beat the boy for going into the street and putting himself in danger. Manju desperately tries to get the woman to stop, or at least avoid the boy’s already injured head. She knows that the violence comes from the parents’ fear that their children are slipping away in the new Mumbai.

Manju finally patches up the injured boy and enjoys a few minutes of gossip while she rounds up her students. On the way to the classroom, Manju surveys her group of young girls; most are painfully thin and unlikely to get any other education but Manju’s school. One of Manju’s secret students is her friend Meena, a teenager whose family believes that education ruins a girl’s marriage prospects. On this particular day, Meena has to stay home because she spoke back to her parents.

Manju gets the students to the classroom and starts a round of “Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toe” to get out the children’s energy before an English vocabulary lesson. Sunil, the scavenger, no longer comes because he considers Manju’s class meaningless when he could be working. Abdul listens from the street, wondering how anyone could pretend to be superior to Manju, the “most-everything” girl in Annawadi. Even Abdul can’t guess what future waits for Sunil.