essay

this essay will be about the perspectives of Mumbai through 3 different characters. Mumbai is a slum in India. the 3 characters are Abdul, Asha and Sunil. we are going to be analysing their points of view on Annawadi and how their roles in the slum affect their judgement. firstly we meet Abdul who is a garbage seller. We then meet Asha who is trying to become the slum lord. we already know she wants a wealthy lifestyle as she has designer napkins. lastly we meet sunil who started a new lifestyle of stealing rubbish and selling it to earn a “disposable income”.

we are introduced, firstly, to abdul. abdul is around 15 years old. he buys and sells rubbish to make a profit. he is the bread winner in his family. abduls point of view differs from asha and sunils as a place in which nobody can be trusted. we see this when abdul says “the better i know you, the more i dislike you”i think that this suggests people in annawadi are not what they seem. this shows us abdul is quite a quiet character and likes to keep himself to himself. however is this how he really is or an act?

abdul says “even goats eyes were heavy with sleep”. i think that this suggests that abdul sees annawadi is a restless place. however i think this the reason annawadi is so restless is because all the people think about is their work and without the work they become bored. the fact goats can not sleep also suggests the people of annawadi are loud and reckless. we see this when abdul says “besides, this was the gentle going hour in which he hated the most”. this can also suggest that if this is the most peaceful hour where even animals can not sleep how is the rest of day, is it worse?

we are then introduced to asha. she is an older lady and is trying to become the slum lord of annawadi. she is the mum of manju and rahul. asha has a very rich taste and likes expenisve things like patterned napkins. we see this in her house. she has an “every man for themself logic”. this determines her character as we know she already is trying to become slum lord and in doing this will do anything to have this role.

“she had by now seen past the obvious truth that – that mumbai was a hive of hope and ambition”. i think that this suggests she once thought of mumbai was a good place and a place were people could do well, but we have now seen that she knows what the “real” annawadi is like and that the people in it are almost as accurate as what the rose petals suggests they are.

we last see sunil. sunil is a younger boy who sees the world in much a more sophisticated way then other children in his age group. he knew that the reason his friends got ice cream when photographers came were to butter them up after they make it out like annawadi is the worst place in the world. if only he saw what was on the tv, what the rose petals thought of the shit between. however sunil was still a young desperate child and thought if he stayed in the background a woman from the tv would take him for being “different” from the other children, knowing that they thought of all the children as the same “kind”.”And why food and clothing got donated and then furtively resold into the orphanage”. this is suggesting to me that the people do not care about the annawadians and just to make their documentaries. the quote was the second half of a sentence the narrator was telling us about sunil, related to the paragraph above.

“Sunil and Sunita had stood outside the huts of their neighbors at dinner time”. this is suggesting that they were so hungry that they looked at neighbors food and mental imagined themselves as not hungry. this shows what kind of lifestyle they are living, but it does not make them the shit in between. sunil, however started to rob metals with a local friend and started to make a disposable income. he knew he would like this job which changed his view of what the slum really was.

in conclusion I think that the perspectives of the 3 characters are the same but differ because of their roles. all of them believe that annawadi is a poor and is not a nice place to be. we see this as each character quotes a time in their life which has been bad. however i think there is a contrast because the fact that sunil was stealing and selling rubbish which is really a bad thing. their perceptions are similar but different.It is like makeup on a person, the roses make the adverts acting like they care and making them self look good and the Annawadians are the person behind it all. ‘But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity’. i think this quote really shows how the characters think because they are not scared about what they know and how they are the same, but from what they do not know and how different, not just them but the’rose petals’ are and what really lies outside annawadi.