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Only in detention had it occurred to him that drudge labor in an urban armpit like Annawadi might be considered freedom. He was gratified that boys from other urban armpits agreed.

As Abdul was singing the national anthem one morning, a young Tamil woman left her two-year-old son outside the warden’s office because she couldn’t afford to keep him. Abdul could hardly bear to look at her—the way that grief bagged her face. It was unlike him to be sympathetic. He had seen worse at Annawadi but hadn’t felt it, overwhelmed as he had been by his own work and worry.

When he was little, the family hut had collapsed, injuring everyone but Abdul. His mother always said that his selfishness had saved him. She’d fried a fleshy leaf for dinner, and when his father took a bite of his portion, Abdul became alarmed. He’d fled the hut with the rest of his leaf just before the walls caved in.

In captivity, there was nothing to preserve—nothing to buy, sell, or sort. Later he realized it was the first long rest he’d ever had, and that during it, something had happened to his heart.

One morning, he and some other inmates were delivered to a small hospital run by the police department, where a doctor had been assigned to check the ages of suspiciously old-looking juveniles. A forensic examination would settle the matter, and those over eighteen would go to Arthur Road Jail.

In the examination ward, Abdul was weighed by a medical assistant: 108 pounds. He was measured: five foot one. He lay naked on a table as his pubic hair was declared normal, his facial hair categorized as “sub-adult,” and a bunchy old scar over his right eyebrow placed in the public record. Then a doctor entered the room with the results of the forensic investigation. Abdul was seventeen years old if he paid two thousand rupees, and twenty years old if he did not.

Abdul sat up, angry. He didn’t have two thousand rupees, and what was it with this rich doctor, asking a boy in detention for cash? The doctor held up his hands, rueful. “Yes, it’s rubbish, asking poor boys like you, but the government doesn’t pay us enough money to raise our children. We’re forced to take bribes, to be kamina.” He smiled at Abdul. “Nowadays, we’d do almost anything for money.”

Abdul couldn’t help but feel sorry for this friendly doctor, especially when the guy relented and declared him to be 17. A few days later, Abdul would even find himself feeling concern for a Mumbai policeman.

An overweight officer, having delivered a batch of children to the home, started telling one of the guards about his heart problem. “You think you want to be a cop, but you don’t, because it kills you,” said the officer, mopping his brow. Then he told of another officer with a lung problem, and one who had cancer, and of others who were stress-sick, and of how none of them earned enough to afford decent doctors. Abdul hadn’t previously thought of policemen as people with hearts and lungs who worried about money or their health. The world seemed replete with people as bad off as himself, and this made him feel less alone.

One afternoon, the Dongri boys were surprised to learn that they had something to do, possibly because human rights people kept showing up with notepads. Sixty new arrivals were corralled into a concrete-block room with a blackboard and a poster warning of the ills of smoking, and told to wait for a teacher—an individual stirringly referred to as The Master.

When The Master appeared, Abdul felt a little disappointed. The guy wasn’t anything as commanding as his title. He was a pudgy, middle-aged Hindu with high-rise hair, watery pink eyes that reminded Abdul of his mother’s, and trousers that revealed a great expanse of tube sock. But then The Master started to talk.

He began with a story of a boy who did not listen to his parents and ended up in Arthur Road Jail. As he listed the terrible things that happened to the boy in jail, tears rolled down The Master’s face. He could barely get the specifics out, it was so tragic. Then he spoke of other boys: boys who did not respect the law, boys