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Abdul’s father said that what Kasab had done was wrong—that the Koran didn’t entitle Muslims to kill innocent civilians, some of whom had also been Muslim. Still, Kasab seemed lucky to Abdul. “They will probably beat him lots in the jail,” Abdul said one day, “but at least Kasab knows in his heart that he did what they said he did.” That had to be less stressful than being beaten when you were innocent.

The popular rage about Kasab didn’t seem to transfer to other Muslims in Mumbai, Abdul was relieved to find on the three days a week he traveled by train to Dongri. In the clammy, crowded train cars, he was no one’s proxy. The Hindus were just going where they had to go, as he was. Like him, they were coughing, eating lunch, looking out windows at billboards on which Bollywood heroes hawked cement and Coca-Cola. They were bent protectively over prized documents in prized plastic bags like his own, which said, TAKE A BREAK, HAVE A KIT KAT. It was all as it had been, which was hopeful.

Mumbai’s wealthy were also hopeful in the months after the terrorist attacks. Many had begun to engage in politics for the first time, intent on bringing about government reform. Rich Indians typically tried to work around a dysfunctional government. Private security was hired, city water was filtered, private school tuitions were paid. Such choices had evolved over the years into a principle: The best government is the one that gets out of the way.

The attacks on the Taj and the Oberoi, in which executives and socialites died, had served as a blunt correction. The wealthy now saw that their security could not be requisitioned privately. They were dependent on the same public safety system that ill served the poor.

Ten young men had terrorized one of the world’s biggest cities for three days—a fact that had something to do with the ingenuity of a multi-pronged plot, but perhaps also to do with government agencies that had been operating as private market-stalls, not as public guardians. The crisis-response units of the Mumbai Police lacked arms. Officers in the train station didn’t know how to use their weapons, and ran and hid as two terrorists killed more than fifty travelers. Other officers called to rescue inhabitants of a besieged maternity hospital stayed put at police headquarters, four blocks away. Ambulances failed to respond to the wounded. Military commandos took eight hours to reach the heart of the financial capital—a journey that involved an inconveniently parked jet, a stop to refuel, and a long bus ride from the Mumbai airport. By the time the commandos arrived in south Mumbai, the killings were all but over.

Parliamentary elections would be held at the end of April, and middle- and upper-class people, especially young people, were registering to vote in record numbers. Affluent, educated candidates were coming forward with platforms of radical change: accountability, transparency, e-governance. While independent India had been founded by high-born, well-educated men, by the twenty-first century few such types stood for elections, or voted in them, since the wealthy had extra-democratic means of securing their social and economic interests. Across India, poor people were the ones who took the vote seriously. It was the only real power they had.

Another garbage trader had set up shop at Annawadi, filling the niche created by the demise of the Husains’ business. Abdul now spent his days in a tiny rented storage shed at the edge of the Saki Naka slums. His efforts at trading came to little. The Saki Naka scavengers had preexisting allegiances. But sitting idly in the doorway of the new shed, looking out over an alien maidan, Abdul found that he felt light. Annawadi tragedies did not rank here. No one knew of Fatima, or of his family’s trial, or of Kalu’s death, or that Sanjay and Meena had eaten rat poison. Afternoons, a man turned a small Ferris wheel with a hand crank, and children took rides for a rupee. The police came to take bribes from other businesses