It is not every day that you read a book and it leaves you with a feeling of waking up at a dawn when the whole world is fast asleep.. A feeling defined by each word in the nine hundred and thirty six pages that you have read but yet cannot fathom in words. I am generally the last person to pick up a book which reeks of philosophy in a single page and yet for me to Shantaram and why... Appreciate it is a farfetched thought- now imagine being bowled over by it. Before I tell you about this soul-wrenching, heart-hauling and regeneration experience called Shantaram I have to tell you about how I laid my hands on this book. As I was walking down M G Road in search of Ludlum’s Bourne Trilogy (fiction fanatic that I am…) a friend of mine notices this book, old, worn-out and deglamorised by the cover and thicker than my pillow in size I was repelled by the book at the first sight. My friend now mentions that Mira Nair is making her next movie on this book with Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan in the cast- this was the sole motivation for me to pick this book and flip to the first page which read
“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”
When the first page stares at you with such words, it becomes hard to put down that book. How do I term Shantaram? Part travelogue, part love letter, part autobiography, Shantaram is a vivid, entertaining but slightly grandiose autobiography of Gregory David Roberts. It is a spiritual and thrilling journey from the streets of Mumbai in the 1980’s to the riot thawed Afghanistan. It is the story of undying faith and living humanity unbeaten by will and immovable with time. What makes this book special however is that it is (mostly) biographical. I would assume fiction has been used to a good extent but still most of the story really took place with the person. But going through a tough life is one thing, and putting it down as a book for the disposal and ridicule of the reader is another.
As the story unfolds Lin, a fugitive from Australia having jumped from the towers of his Australian prison, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for armed robbery escapes and lands on Indian soil in Bombay and within minutes falls in love with the chaotic, mess of the city. Here he befriends taxi driver Prabakar a comically affable, young cab-driver, who, in the course of a day, helps him escape from a scene of mob violence, finds him a cheap hotel, and sets him up with a little dope to smoke and eventually finds him a place to live in a slum away from the eyes of the law. This slum is to be the home of Linbaba, as Lindsay is called, for the next few years. While he runs a makeshift first-aid center in the slum, he also engages in criminal activities like smuggling and counterfeiting, and eventually starts gun-running to Afghanistan. Lin’s experiences in Bombay range from falling in love with the beautiful Karla, who introduces him to the world of prostitutes, to meeting the motherly Rukhmabai of Sundargaon, who christens him “Shantaram”, or man of peace. Little do they realize the turmoil in the Heart of this man of peace. Interspersed amid a plethora of characters like Rukhmabai, Prabakar, Karla, and Kader are the panic and grime, squalor and debris, disease and fire and extreme poverty - all narrated with genuine affection, passion and generosity. This love and openheartedness towards the characters and circumstances is what sets Robert’s work apart. What could have been a mere narrative of poor people’s lives is transformed into an extraordinary piece of fiction.
This brick of a book does that to what years of teaching or preaching can possibly not do- It mesmerizes you, enthralls you and still keeps your mind ticking. Shantaram is based on simple truths lost in the complicated mesh of life, It is an eye opener par excellence.
Now I am one of those people who buy and preserve books with the same respect and reverence of a shrine but one look at my copy of Shantaram would shock any reader. With every alternate page dog-eared for easy reference and underlined for its innumerable unforgettable one-liners this book is undoubtedly one of the best this genre that I have come across. Before I conclude let me share with you my favorites line from the book.
I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun towers, I became my country’s most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler, and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them; better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else’s hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.
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