Sunil rarely finds enough trash at the airport to have money to eat properly. He scavenges all day for trash to sell to Abdul, mainly looking along a concrete wall at the airport that is covered in advertisements for ceramic tiles that will stay “beautiful forever.” The purpose of this wall is to hide Annawadi from the airport’s rich international passengers. Another young boy in Annawadi, Sunil, knows just how few options there are for the poor. Manju does not approve of Asha’s corrupt dealings, but Asha sees corruption as the only way for the poor in India to get ahead. Asha does nothing without profit in mind, including sending her daughter, Manju, to college so that Manju will be able to improve their family’s situation even more. She wants to be the first female slumlord of Annawadi, fixing issues for the powerful Shiv Sena party and taking advantage of government anti-poverty programs to make money. Mirchi dreams of a clean job working as a waiter in a hotel, though he knows that Muslims like himself still face discrimination, and that could limit his opportunities.Īnother slum resident, Asha, also dreams of making it big. Because Abdul works so hard, his younger brother Mirchi can continue his education. Abdul, the Husain family’s oldest son (who is sixteen or seventeen), sorts recyclables to sell to recycling plants, which helps his parents Karam and Zehrunisa provide for their family of thirteen.
The book then skips backward to January of 2008, seven months before the burning. Abdul is hiding in his family’s garbage shed, afraid of being arrested for setting his neighbor Fatima on fire, despite that he is innocent and has tried as hard as possible to stay out of trouble all his life. The book opens with a prologue that introduces Abdul, a garbage sorter in the Mumbai slum of Annawadi.
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