The Basti, Urban India, Contemporary

The neighborhood where Jai grows up, known as the basti, is an overcrowded urban slum. The streets are lined with the homeless and the inebriated. Crime is rampant. Gangs of thieves and huddles of prostitutes crowd the narrow streets. Children run free amid the push carts that sell uninspected produce. The sidewalks are strewn with litter and scraps of discarded food. Stray animals wander the streets. The residents who live in the basti’s rowhouses are poorly educated and work long hours in backbreaking menial work. Little is done to enhance the exteriors of their rowhouses. The buildings stretch in any direction in drab monochromatic beige. These residents must queue up to use public bathrooms. The novel recreates with the immediacy and detailing of journalism an authentic sense of the basti. The novel records the unending cacophony, babies crying, parents screaming at their children...