Analysis : Bombay Lost And Found By Suketu Mehta

The city of Mumbai has seen much growth in the past years. A string of elegant hotels have been set up for travelers and high-class business men. An ever growing, top of the line airport has been built for those coming in and out of the country. From the outside, Mumbai seems to have taken a liking to being internationally integrated with the rest of world, otherwise known as globalization. This is not the case, however; as seen in Katherine Boo’s novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This novel is set in a slum right next to the Mumbai International Airport called

In Katherine Boo’s “Opening Night: The scene from the airport slums,” we see the continual contrast in Mumbai between the extremely poor and the rich. She describes the effects of extreme poverty. The juxtapositions highlight the social disruption, economic disadvantages can cause. We also learn that movie’s depiction of slums is glamorized and unrealistic. Most shocking the author focuses on several characters, mostly young people (like Sunil), and describes the environment they live in. We see the overwhelming effects of extreme poverty in every aspect of their lives and realize they will not be able to escape and rise out of the slums. The lack of education and jobs are preventing these people from progressing. We realize how the rich

In the introduction of the book, he goes through his own life and what he has gone through to get where he is in the present. He is a journalist turned novelist, and met many people and challenges on his way. The introduction is very technical with not much of a storyline like most fiction novels. In many instances, he alludes to the face of India as being happy and prosperous in opposition to the normal lives that most Indian people lead.

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.

While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.

The narrator of Hari Kunzuru’s short story, “Raj Bohemian” faces an existential crisis when he is introduced to a scheming manipulator. The story revolves around an urban

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a non-fiction book. Boo got to know the people there during the course of three years in India, and she wrote about the daily stresses and problems. The book describes a long story of life, death, and hope. It takes place near an international airport in a Mumbai undercity that is separated from the normal world by the “beautiful forever” wall. Boo describes how every resident of Annawadi in Mumbai is involved in the strife of day-to-day living and how each has plans to improve their situation. Annawadi is a society that subsists on the leftovers and castoffs from the affluent, and a society where corruption runs rampant. Boo has shown us how our lives and the people’s lives in Mumbai are different.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Poverty and oppression is a serious condition that is prevalent even in today’s modern society. Women and children are exposed to poverty and subjected to a life of injustice. One of the countries where such problems still occur is in India. Despite the country’s modernization, there lies an undercity where the disparity of wealth is transparent. These social problems are thoroughly described in movies and literature such as Slumdog Millionaire and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Catherine Boo, the author describes slum life for a set of individuals and the hardship that their social conditions confined them to. Another movie that gave insight to slum life in India is Slumdog Millionaire

Much has been said about the development patterns that are found throughout towns and cities in North America. In the New York Times, a post authored by Vishaan Chakrabarti discuses the trends facing American cities in the article “America’s Urban Future (Chakrabarti).” This article talks about the ways in which American cities are seeing resurgence in their urban areas, and new population segments are moving into once blighted areas. In order to convey the changes occurring throughout our communities, Chakrabarti relies on ethos and logos to provide a foundation for the information, and effectively uses pathos to convince the audience that they should care about the subject in question.

“Cities are not approached simply as forums for economic and political confrontations but as places rich with meaning and value for those who live, work, and play in and near them” (Borer 2006). People assign characteristics and personality to cities. These traits are assumed to be as permanent and concrete as the physical city (Borer 2010). However, like the characteristics of a person’s identity may change over time, the identity of places is fluid and dynamic (Borer

As you enter the city of Toronto, enclosed by skyscrapers towering over you overflowing with culture, where time passes swiftly as people dash by you; it makes you feel trivial in the metropolitan area. The city of shadows that cast a never ending gloom, only to be broken up by the narrow gap in-between buildings. A substantial lake embedded with Silurian rocks on the edge, surrounding the downtown business district, keeping the city steadily in place. Toronto is the younger sibling of New York and Chicago, hesitant of the spotlight these other districts possess, but not shy enough to be known worldwide. A city of roads that disperse in many directions, paving the way of people’s futures and success; unknown as to where you will end up. Many

Before the Partition of India, in 1947, India was considered a country with a reasonably peaceful history. However, during and after the Partition, sexual violence, both towards men and women, escalated, resulting in the rape and abduction of over 80,000 women. Cracking India, by Bapsi Sidhwa, tells a story that highlights these violent acts by both Muslims and Hindus, through the eyes of a disabled young Parsi girl named Lenny, who witnesses first hand the violence of Partition when she mistakenly participates in the abduction of her ayah, Shanta. Throughout Cracking India, Lenny observes as the religions involved in Partition become increasingly violent towards both men and women, within their own religions and against others.

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.