What I Learned from Living in India Essay

And I also remember the day, when my parents informed me that we were moving. The plan was to move out from the clustered city of New York, and shift into the suburban setting of New Jersey. As a young child, I was startled and not sure if I was ready to be able to commit and abstained the thought. The thought of leaving my friends and the place where I grew up in all my life, irked me emotionally. With a new city, came a new house and a new environment.

Despite the many attempts to eliminate poverty, the problem has never been solved. Even though these efforts have helped lower the numbers of people becoming poverty-stricken every year it the numbers still seems to progress. In the novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers Author, Katherine Boo brings a different perspective. Boo takes the reader into the Annawadi slum of Mumbai, India. The Slum was presented a jumbled, filthy and impoverished area hidden from the view of westerners and better-off Indian citizens beyond the concrete wall. Her Novel Serves as a snapshot into the lives of the impoverished people of Annawadi and a great comparison to poverty lines in America. In this essay, I will compare the way that Katherine Boo has presented the miserable lives of those in the slums and the poverty-stricken in America today.

Paige Raibmon’s book “Authentic Indians” take a closer look at the concept of authenticity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Focusing on the culturally diverse Aboriginal people of the Northwest Coast, Raibmon examines how both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people constructed and used the idea of the authentic Indian to achieve their goals. Drawing examples from three ‘episodes’ or stories about Aboriginal people of the Northwest Coast, Raibmon argues that authenticity is not a set marker that we can use to measure the distance between what an Aboriginal culture looks like today and what “real” Aboriginal culture looks like. Instead, Raibmon says that authenticity is an important and changing set of ideas that were used

The streets roared with loud car horns as my parents and I walked down the polluted sidewalks. It did not matter how far I walked or what part of the city I was in, I’d always see homeless men, women, and children were all around. Those who were not already passed out from starvation held their hands out to us, to me, in desperation. The looks in their eyes told stories of pain and loss. Yet they lived on, clinging to life, waiting patiently for the next rupee. “Don’t stare at them,” my mother commanded. “But why? We have change, let's give them some!” I demanded. “If we give to one person, all the others will come, and we don’t have enough for everyone,” she responded. Her brutally honest words lingered as I helplessly walked past the crowds. This experience not only taught me how fortunate I was, but it also made me want to fight harder. To fight for all the people who could not fight and to one day give them a voice-a chance in our unfair hierarchical society so that they too could be self-sufficient and pursue their own endeavors. I was determined to make a sustainable

Katherine Boo’s book, Behind The Beautiful Forevers, portrays the “new life” the people in India live as capitalism and globalism ventures into their lives. These two systems look to promise new and improved social opportunities for all classes, not just the wealthy. However, although this makes it seem like the government of India in the 21st century is progressing towards a more fairer society for all its citizens, the reality is, they are really not progressing at all. Of course, while capitalism and globalization initially gave all citizens, especially the lower classes, hope that more opportunities would be available to them, it seems it has prevaricated it all as these opportunities have been more transformative to the elite and privileged classes than it has for the poor.

At some point of our lives, we have all felt that feeling of what to do next, and mine would have to be the time I had to move from different cities. I was born and raised in McAllen, Texas. Throughout the years I was able to create and cherish many memories. Everyone around the neighborhood knew me as the shy, sweet, and kind Emily. My life was made in the valley until I got the announcement from my parents that we were moving to a new city named “Laredo.” At that moment my world had paused, so many questions were running through my head. What am I going to do? Where will I live? , and how will I adapt to this new town? So many mixed emotions were created, but I tried to hide them.

The differences between the rich and poor in India are like the opposite sides of a coin. The poor of India are mistreated and abused. Their homes are surrounded by trash and sewage and are very likely to be flooded, deathly hot and severely polluted. Nearly 25% of the population in India is under the poverty line. The families in the slums of India only care about surviving and marriage. Balram describes their relationship with the rich as “The rich are always one step ahead of us-aren’t they?” (Adiga 230). Balram means that he felt that the rich were always taking advantage of him and his family’s ability to work and he wanted to get ahead of the rich. The rich are blissfully unaware of the

Moving is very stressful on anybody, especially for children. When my mother made the decision to move to Piedmont, I was in shock. I have been in the same school district for seven years with the same friends that I loved and was very comfortable around. Moving to a new town freaked me out. I have never heard of Piedmont, and did not realize that it was 30 minutes from where I lived. My uncle-in-law graduated from Piedmont. Both of my cousins also graduated from Piedmont, the Cornman’s. I had a new life ahead of me, and did not know what to expect.

Moving happens frequently, about fourteen percent of Americans move each year. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is about 46,778,674 American citizens, that’s each year alone. If it hasn’t happened consider yourself lucky. If you’ve never personally moved, chances are probably know someone who has. The struggles that come along with moving can start off calm and fine but the reality of what is being left behind sets in and just realizing that everything has changed. I’ve moved three times, each time to completely new locations, new places I’ve never seen, and new faces I hadn’t met. The first time I moved it was life-changing. I was moving from the suburbs of Coppell, Texas to Albany, Georgia.

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

Every time we move it’s as if we gain or lose something.I remember moving a lot.Before our move to Davis we lived in a house an actual place we called home it had a joyful pool it was near Sherwood a well known elementary school.Before that was a apartment near Somerset Middle School that was quite cramped.There’s six of us now which means we’ve moved about six times as well.

Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.

Packing up your life and belongings is a difficult task to do. My family lived in Apple Valley, MN, until the week before my 7th birthday. My parents told my younger brother and I that we were moving to Hastings, MN. I had no idea where that was as a child. I was excited about this new experience. I have always been interested in travelling. When we arrived in Hastings, it was nothing like my old town. I knew nobody, all I knew was that I lived in the middle of the woods. Moving to a different town isn’t just about the new house, it is also about making new friends at a new school, and living a different lifestyle.

Maybe it is a new job, or the promise of seeing old friends. Moving is a perfect example of how pain and change can equal gain. Although difficult to accept, sometimes embracing the odd variation can be rewarding.

India is a country in central Asia with a population of over 1.22 billion people making it the second most populous country in the world. Its high population is one of the factors that results in India having such a high poverty rate. In India today over 37% of the population live below the poverty line. The reality of such a statistic means that these people live in conditions unimaginable to people of the western world. In the film Slumdog Millionaire by director Danny Boyle deeper ideas associated with this poverty are developed including destiny, loyalty and how poverty frees us. These deeper ideas are developed through visual techniques