that even Manju had to laugh, and Asha decided, wrongly, that her daughter had forgotten Mr. Kamble.
Abdul was always twitchy, but by February 2008 the scavengers saw he was more so: jingling coins in his pocket, shaking his legs as if preparing to sprint, chewing a wooden matchstick while his tongue did something weird behind his teeth. Across the city, gangs of young Maharashtrians had begun beating up migrants from the North— bhaiyas , as they were called—in hope of driving them out of the city and easing the scramble for jobs.
Though Abdul had been born in Mumbai, the fact that his father had come from the North qualified the family as targets, and not abstractly. Rioters chanting “Beat the bhaiyas!” were moving through the airport slums, ransacking small North Indian businesses, torching the taxis of North Indian drivers, confiscating the wares that migrant hawkers displayed on blankets.
These poor-against-poor riots were not spontaneous, grassroots protests against the city’s shortage of work. Riots seldom were, in modern Mumbai. Rather, the anti-migrant campaign had been orchestratedin the overcity by an aspiring politician—a nephew of the founder of Shiv Sena. The upstart nephew wanted to show voters that a new political party he had started disliked bhaiyas like Abdul even more than Shiv Sena did.
Abdul quit working and stayed inside to avoid the violence, about which roaming scavengers brought lurid reports. Ribs broken, heads stomped, two men on fire—“Enough,” Abdul cried out one night. “Can you please stop talking about it! The riots are just a show, a few bastards making noise and intimidating people.”
Abdul was repeating the reassurances of his father, Karam, who sought to keep his children incurious about aspects of Indian life beyond their control. Though Karam and Zehrunisa occasionally spoke in whispers of the city’s 1992–1993 Hindu–Muslim riots and the 2002 Hindu–Muslim riots in the bordering state of Gujarat, they raised their children on a diet of patriotic songs about India, where tolerant citizens of a thousand ethnicities, faiths, languages, and castes all got along.
Better than the entire world is our Hindustan
We are its nightingales, and it our garden abode
This song, based on verses by the great Urdu poet Iqbal, played every time Karam’s cellphone rang. “First these children have to learn to run after bread and rice,” he told his wife. “When they’re older, they can worry about the other things.”
But Sunil Sharma, a perceptive twelve-year-old scavenger, could read the frantic matchstick in Abdul’s mouth. The garbage sorter was already worried.
Sunil, a Hindu bhaiya, wondered about Abdul, who he thought worked harder than anyone else in Annawadi—“keeps his head down night and day.” Sunil was startled once when he saw the garbagesorter’s face in full sunlight. Except for the child-eyes, black as keyholes, Abdul looked to him like a broken old man.
Sunil was a seed of a boy, smaller even than Abdul, but he considered himself more sophisticated than the other scavengers. He was especially good for his age at discerning motives. It was a skill he had acquired during his on-and-off stays at the Handmaids of the Blessed Trinity orphanage.
Though Sunil was not an orphan, he understood that phrases like AIDS orphan and When I was the second-hand woman to Mother Teresa helped Sister Paulette, the nun who ran the Handmaids of the Blessed Trinity children’s home, get money from foreigners. He knew why he and the other children received ice cream only when newspaper photographers came to visit, and why food and clothing donated for the children got furtively resold outside the orphanage gate. Sunil rarely got angry when he discovered the secret reasons behind the ways people behaved. Having a sense of how the world operated, beyond its pretenses, seemed to him an armoring thing. And when Sister Paulette decided that boys over eleven years old were
Abdul was always twitchy, but by February 2008 the scavengers saw he was more so: jingling coins in his pocket, shaking his legs as if preparing to sprint, chewing a wooden matchstick while his tongue did something weird behind his teeth. Across the city, gangs of young Maharashtrians had begun beating up migrants from the North— bhaiyas , as they were called—in hope of driving them out of the city and easing the scramble for jobs.
Though Abdul had been born in Mumbai, the fact that his father had come from the North qualified the family as targets, and not abstractly. Rioters chanting “Beat the bhaiyas!” were moving through the airport slums, ransacking small North Indian businesses, torching the taxis of North Indian drivers, confiscating the wares that migrant hawkers displayed on blankets.
These poor-against-poor riots were not spontaneous, grassroots protests against the city’s shortage of work. Riots seldom were, in modern Mumbai. Rather, the anti-migrant campaign had been orchestratedin the overcity by an aspiring politician—a nephew of the founder of Shiv Sena. The upstart nephew wanted to show voters that a new political party he had started disliked bhaiyas like Abdul even more than Shiv Sena did.
Abdul quit working and stayed inside to avoid the violence, about which roaming scavengers brought lurid reports. Ribs broken, heads stomped, two men on fire—“Enough,” Abdul cried out one night. “Can you please stop talking about it! The riots are just a show, a few bastards making noise and intimidating people.”
Abdul was repeating the reassurances of his father, Karam, who sought to keep his children incurious about aspects of Indian life beyond their control. Though Karam and Zehrunisa occasionally spoke in whispers of the city’s 1992–1993 Hindu–Muslim riots and the 2002 Hindu–Muslim riots in the bordering state of Gujarat, they raised their children on a diet of patriotic songs about India, where tolerant citizens of a thousand ethnicities, faiths, languages, and castes all got along.
Better than the entire world is our Hindustan
We are its nightingales, and it our garden abode
This song, based on verses by the great Urdu poet Iqbal, played every time Karam’s cellphone rang. “First these children have to learn to run after bread and rice,” he told his wife. “When they’re older, they can worry about the other things.”
But Sunil Sharma, a perceptive twelve-year-old scavenger, could read the frantic matchstick in Abdul’s mouth. The garbage sorter was already worried.
Sunil, a Hindu bhaiya, wondered about Abdul, who he thought worked harder than anyone else in Annawadi—“keeps his head down night and day.” Sunil was startled once when he saw the garbagesorter’s face in full sunlight. Except for the child-eyes, black as keyholes, Abdul looked to him like a broken old man.
Sunil was a seed of a boy, smaller even than Abdul, but he considered himself more sophisticated than the other scavengers. He was especially good for his age at discerning motives. It was a skill he had acquired during his on-and-off stays at the Handmaids of the Blessed Trinity orphanage.
Though Sunil was not an orphan, he understood that phrases like AIDS orphan and When I was the second-hand woman to Mother Teresa helped Sister Paulette, the nun who ran the Handmaids of the Blessed Trinity children’s home, get money from foreigners. He knew why he and the other children received ice cream only when newspaper photographers came to visit, and why food and clothing donated for the children got furtively resold outside the orphanage gate. Sunil rarely got angry when he discovered the secret reasons behind the ways people behaved. Having a sense of how the world operated, beyond its pretenses, seemed to him an armoring thing. And when Sister Paulette decided that boys over eleven years old were
Similar Books
![Hagen, Lynn - Hunter [Zeus's Pack 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting ManLove)](https://fs.collectorofbookboyfriends.com/478352/thumbs/152x264/hagen-lynn-hunter-zeuss-pack-5-siren-publishing-menage-everlasting-manlove.jpg)
