Boy oh boy! Have you ever felt like a book could have used some serious editing by the sheer volume it might have? Or was it the case that the sum of its grandeur was so commensurate to the size of its weight that there was just no way to delete even a word! Well, let me elaborate. After having spent 3 glorious weeks at the rate of about 5-6 hours per day, I have finally managed to complete this mammoth of a book called ‘Shantaram’ which appears to be an example of the pondering above.
But let me start from the beginning. Much like the protagonist, Lin Baba does. A good friend of mine recommended this book during one of our conversations about a month ago. She said it was a book about India, nay, about Mumbai written by a foreigner. Now, being the cynical monster I can be I immediately dismissed it as one more clichéd tribute to every possible thing there is to say about our revered financial capital. But then she continued ‘…its about this guy, you know, who escapes from a prison in Australia, I think, and comes to Bombay haan. And there he joins the mafia!’
There was something quite delightfully sinister about this two sentence fabric that made me pause to reflect. Not only was this set up intriguing but it suddenly began transforming into questions – Who is he? How did he manage to get away from Australia? Why did he do it? And why Mumbai? How did he get there? How was he not caught? I immediately asked her to lend me the book after her husband was done with it.
And she did. A week later. I was just about to start my 3 week hiatus called the Xmas break and there seemed nothing more pleasing than to submerge myself into this mysterious character who had the audacity to escape a high security prison to end up in a place, which I am sure of, was probably much worse.
And so we start looking at this magnificent journey through the eyes of an Australian, Contrary to her mixed up version of the tale, although the central character – Lindsay Ford (later dubbed ‘Lin Baba’ and then ‘Shantaram’) – is indeed from down under, he is not fleeing a prison from there. He is in fact heading out of New Zealand on his way to Germany. On the way, he has a stop over in Mumbai where, as it turns out, he ends up staying for good.
The book’s main source is the author himself – Gregory David Roberts – who quite candidly confessed that the tales in the book were true episodes that he had had to go through. Save for murder, he said, he had committed almost all other kinds of cons like theft, armed robbery et al. Hence, there is immense detail in the way the narration picks up. I specially loved the first few lines that pretty much summarize his journey right away.
"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 realised, 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. "
It was in this deep seeded sense of humanity that I decided to go head first into this 900+ page Herculean venture that took me a good 3 weeks to wrap up.
The story, as mentioned above, starts with Lindsay arriving in Mumbai. Clueless about the kind of life he can expect here and conscious about the fact that he is a ‘wanted’ criminal at large, he wanders into the bustling cacophony of the metro. He meets Prabhakar. A local fellow who he befriends almost immediately and who later on becomes one of Lin’s closest friends. He then ends up in a slum where he takes on an almost demi-God status for being a white man. He is looked at by many as a doctor and a healer. He helps in slum fires and slowly starts getting involved in the lives of those who have given him shelter despite being low on it themselves. In this essence of basic human emotion, Lin finds his new home – his Mumbai. It is from here, that his journey into a dozen other places – including the likes of the Mumbai mafia, into the life of the much esteemed Godfather Khader Khan, the confused yet poignant eyes of Karla – the green eyed Swiss American immigrant and even the now famous Leopold Café where most of their meetings take place. ‘Shantaram’ documents the lives of non-Indian migrants who have made Mumbai their home. Their adherence to everything from Mumbai’s famous hangouts to its infamous drug world is documented in all its glory. Everyone from the ‘standing babas’ to the colorfully neurotic world of Bollywood makes its appearance in Lin’s story. He learns, teaches, suffers, gets beaten up, is cheated, falls in love, finds friends, and even makes a trip with his mentor Khader Khan to Afghanistan to help mujahadeen fighters in their combat. It is then, after Khader’s untimely demise, that Lin realizes the cesspool of sins that he had involuntarily wallowed into. It is then, with the shrapnel still fresh on his face that he decides to turn his life around. It is here, that he truly starts becoming what he had been christened a long time ago – Shantaram.
At the end of the 900+ pages, it becomes apparent why this story is so personal to Gregory. It oozes of his love to India and everything it has meant for him in life. Every thing he says about it is a result of pure affection and love to the one place that finally turned him into a human being. The one place, he calls, ‘the only proof that love exists’ in the world. Simply put, ‘Shantaram’ goes beyond being a big fat novel after its half way journey. It becomes a spiritual adventure that a convict takes nestling in the arms of a city that for long as been the epitome of solidarity and undeniably immaculate spirit. ‘Shantaram’ is a definite read to those who are alien to either Mumbai or India.
..ShaKri..
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