Behind the Beautiful Forevers_ Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo [61]
A few boys in the room, select boys, would reform themselves and live admirably, The Master said. Rewards would come to them. But life would be dire for the other boys, who would continue in their criminal ways. Their disgusted families would cease to visit them in jail, and when they were released as old, broken men, they would die on the pavement, unloved.
The Master cried for parents who beat their children instead of taking time to reason with them. Intriguingly, he also cried about his divorce, and how his wife had been a bitch to his mother, and how in the settlement he’d lost a big car. He cheered up when talking about his pretty new girlfriend.
Whenever the man cried, whether for the loss of his car or for the fates of Dongri inmates, the boys started crying, too. Abdul had never in his life wept as he wept now. The tears weren’t the kind he’d shed after being beaten by the Sahar Police. These were tears of inspiration. He’d never encountered a man as refined and honest as this Master.
Abdul was reluctant to name the feeling he had, listening to the man, because it could be taken wrong. But what he felt for The Master was intense. The man had allowed him to become a student.
Not a great student. He didn’t quite get the Hindu myth about King Shibi offering up his own flesh to an eagle, which seemed not unlike a story that his father used to tell him when he’d misbehaved, about a different king and his scoundrel sons and a monkey. But his father’s king story had left him feeling guilty. The Master’s words lit up a virtuous path. Be generous and noble. Offer up your flesh, agree to be eaten by the eagles of the world, and justice will come to you in time. It was a painful way to go through life, but Abdul was drawn to the happy ending.
He assessed himself to have been virtuous in some ways. He had resisted Eraz-ex, desi liquor, brothel visits, or other diversions he felt might impinge on his alertness and ability to work. He refused to encourage other boys to steal things, even if it meant losing out to the Tamil who owned the game shed and maximized his profits by lending out wire-cutting tools. Abdul never fought, lied only sometimes, rarely voiced resentment of his father. But he could have been better and more honorable. He still could be.
He would categorically refuse to buy anything he thought had been stolen, even if it was only stolen garbage. He wouldn’t admit to something he hadn’t done to Fatima, even if it would get him out of Dongri, even if his family’s income suffered in his absence.
To his family, Abdul’s physical capability had been the mattering thing. He was the workhorse, his moral judgments irrelevant. He wasn’t even sure that he had any moral judgments. But when The Master spoke of taufeez and izzat, respectability and honor, Abdul thought the man’s stare had blazed across the rows of heads and come to rest on him alone. It was not too late, at seventeen or whatever age he was, to resist the corrupting influences of his world and his nature. An awkward, uneducated boy might still be capable of righteousness: He intended to remember this and every other truth The Master spoke.
In July, when Asha and her family stepped off the train after a thirteen-hour journey north to the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, their village relatives inspected their faces, finding evidence of how good life was in the Mumbai slums. “You’re all fairer than you were when you were little,” noted a cousin of Manju, Rahul, and Ganesh. “Smooth-type. Chikna. You were very black before, and shy.”
To examine Asha properly, the older women had to crane their necks, since their bodies were bent from decades of agricultural labor. Asha’s great-grandmother walked on all fours. Looking at the ancient woman, Asha stood mast-straight. She felt like a giantess, coming home.
In Annawadi,