Slum as a Floodbowl
Boo describes the slum as a "floodbowl" and explains how construction workers building the Intercontinental Hotel helped some of the residents to safety:
The slum was a floodbowl, surrounded as it was by high walls and mounds of illegally dumped construction rubble. In a 2005 deluge that brought the whole city to a standstill, Fatima’s family had lost most of what they owned, as had the Husains and many other Annawadians. Two residents had drowned, and more would have, had not a construction crew building an addition to the Intercontinental hotel supplied ropes and pulled slumdwellers through the floodwaters to safety. (73)
This strange scene portrays a rare interaction between the Annawadians and the development efforts happening in downtown Mumbai; of course, the decision to save the slumdwellers was not one made by a tycoon, but by individual construction workers.
Burning Bodies
Boo describes the scene after Fatima's burning:
It was 8 P.M. now, the sky above the maidan purple as a bruise. Everyone had decided that when Fatima’s husband returned from his garbage-sorting work, he could take his wife to the hospital.
The adults drifted back to their dinners, while a few boys waited to see if Fatima’s face would come off. That had happened to a woman who had rented a room from Asha. The woman’s husband had left her, and she, unlike Fatima, had torched herself thoroughly. The woman’s charred face-skin had stuck to the floor, and Rahul claimed that her chest had sort of exploded and that you could see straight through to her heart. (98)
Imagery of the sky as a bruise emphasizes the pain that the night's events have inflicted upon Annawadians, particularly upon the Husains; however, descriptions of a past burning link Fatima's self-immolation to a larger narrative desperation and hopelessness, and a pattern of people in slums having to witness gruesome scenes of violence, like Noori, who witnesses her own mother's burning.
Muslim Neighborhood in Mumbai
Boo describes a Muslim neighborhood in Mumbai, an uncommon sight in a Hindu-dominant city:
On either side of a dark green mosque, storefronts were humming with commerce despite the rain. Halal butcher. Muslim furniture-wallah. Nazir chemist. Habib hospital. Kitchen shops with ladles dangling from hooks. A restaurant with a bright yellow door. Tattered pennants on poles advertising exam-prep courses and aspiring Muslim politicians. A man in a stall selling pinwheels, right before the street life blanked out. (123)
The scene is a sort of haven for Abdul and his family, a dream situation where they would not have to fret about being singled out for their background.
WE CARE WE CARE WE CARE
Boo describes the scene of Sunil walking past the airport on his way back to Annawadi:
Sunil turned and walked home, past the immense pilings of the elevated expressway being constructed in the middle of Airport Road, past a line of signs GVK had planted that said WE CARE WE CARE WE CARE, past the long wall advertising floor tiles that stay beautiful forever. He felt small and sad and useless. Who had done such a thing to his friend? But the fog of shock and grief didn’t fully obscure his understanding of the social hierarchy in which he lived. To Annawadi boys, Kalu had been a star. To the authorities of the overcity, he was a nuisance case to be dispensed with. (168)
The scenes hark to the earlier Beautiful Forever sign, with a similar degree of irony. GVK is the airport behind which Annawadi exists. The blunt, all-caps signs insisting that the airport "CARES" contributes to an absurd environment of excess in which the hypocrisy of capitalism is fully transparent.
