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The newspapers Sunil collected said that a lot of Americans were now living in their cars or in tents under bridges. The richest man in India, Mukesh Ambani, had also lost money—billions—although not enough to impede construction on his famed twenty-seven-story house in south Mumbai. The lower stories would be reserved for cars and the six hundred servants required by his family of five. Far more interesting to young slumdwellers was the fact that Ambani’s helicopters would land on the roof.

“Things will get better soon,” Abdul told Sunil and the other scavengers, because that was what his father told him. Although the global markets were volatile, the behavior of tourists could be predicted. They inundated Mumbai in the winter. Indians who lived abroad began arriving in November, for the Diwali holiday. Europeans and Americans came in December. The Chinese and Japanese came soon after, and the hotels and airport boomed until January’s end. With the influx of travelers, Annawadians decided, the losses of monsoon and recession would be recovered.

One night in late November, Sunil was in the game shed after an unprofitable day of scavenging, watching two boys at one of the red consoles play Metal Slug 3. On the video screen, guerrillas were fighting policemen and mutant lobsters in the streets of a bombed-out city. Outside the game parlor, other Annawadians started getting loud. Sunil eventually realized that the commotion was not the usual Eraz-ex bullshit. People were pressed against the window of the hut where the game-shed owner lived, watching a news report on the man’s TV. Muslim terrorists from Pakistan had floated in rubber boats onto a Mumbai beach, and were running loose in the city.

The jihadis had taken over two luxury hotels, the Taj and the Oberoi, slaughtering workers and tourists. People were also dead at a place called Leopold Cafe, and reports of more than a hundred other casualties were coming in from the city’s largest train station. Before long, a photo of one of the terrorists filled the television screen. Black T-shirt. Knapsack. Running shoes. He looked like a college kid, except for the automatic weapon.

The attacks were taking place seventeen miles from Annawadi, in the wealthy southern part of the city—to Sunil, a reassuring remove. He was interested when the television people said the terrorists might have bombs. The bombs in his second-favorite video game, Bomberman, were black and round with long sizzle-fuses. Circus music played when they exploded.

But a taxi had blown up near Airport Road, and older boys were saying that the airport itself would be a logical target. Manju speculated that if the terrorists had invaded five-star hotels in south Mumbai, they might also come to the five-star hotels by the airport. Might even come through Annawadi to get to these hotels. Mercifully, her unit of the Indian Civil Defense Corps was not being called upon to aid in this particular crisis. She went into her house and shut the door.

Abdul’s parents were afraid to do the same. What if Annawadi Hindus decided the slum’s Muslims were part of some plot? Door open, Karam Husain turned on the TV. As Abdul covered his head with a sheet, one of his little brothers drew close to the screen. The architecture in the colonial part of the city was beautiful to the younger boy—the red turrets rising up behind the reporters at the Taj, the ornate façade of the train station. Here in Annawadi, every home looked a little like the family who had made it. But even when besieged, this south Mumbai seemed to him majestically coherent—“like a single mind made the whole place.”

Early the next morning, Sunil and Sonu the blinky boy set off for work, only to discover that scavenging was out of the question. The airport perimeter was sealed, and military commandos with long black guns clustered on Airport Road. The boys ran back to Annawadi and the television of the man who owned the game shed. The Taj Hotel had