Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.

This book is a stunner – a bottler – a corker – a humdinger – a ripsnorter. Or as the review by “The Age” simply states “A Masterpiece”.

You won’t want to put it down – but you will have to; it is a massive 933 pages long. I would certainly put it in the top five that I would take with me to that proverbial desert island. (Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is another.)

Shantaram is intense and thrilling throughout, at times blood-curdling and at other times deeply thoughtful and philosophical; but at all times very real.

Although touted as a novel, you get the sense that Roberts met those characters and lived those experiences – so it is really a memoir with perhaps a degree of literary licence taken to elaborate or exaggerate some of those experiences.

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“Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne. Sentenced to nineteen years in prison for a series of armed robberies, he escaped and spent eight of his fugitive years in Bombay – where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers, and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier for a branch of the Bombay mafia. Recaptured in Germany, he was extradited to Australia where he served out his sentence. Roberts is now a full-time writer, film producer and international public speaker. He divides his time between Geneva and Bombay, where he established a charitable trust to care for slum-dwellers.” [written in 2011]

Roberts opens Shantaram with the following paragraph:

“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 in 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 a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

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There are so many memorable highlights that it was much too difficult to list them and condense them all, let alone put them in context of the constantly unfolding drama of the plot. But as I was flipping through to recall the details of some of the major characters and events, I came across this brilliant ‘Study Guide’

https://gradesaver-website-prod-tql6r.ondigitalocean.app/shantaram

which provides a wonderful summary and analysis. So I am going to refer directly to that guide and merely list a few of the scenes and themes that appealed to me.

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From the study guide:

Shantaram is the action-filled story of Lin, a character based very closely on the author, Gregory David Roberts. The novel chronicles approximately seven years in Roberts' amazing life, from his arrival in Bombay in 1982 until his departure from Bombay in the late eighties. In the course of this time, Roberts' fictional self, Lin, participates in numerous violent, funny, moving and dangerous events, from the intimately personal (falling in love) to the global/historical (participating in the resistance against the Russians in Afghanistan).

[…]

Despite some harsh critical reservations, Shantaram soon attracted a broad readership as well as a cult following. Indeed, the elements of the book that seemed to turn-off most reviewers -- its sincerity, enthusiasm, sprawl, and philosophical aspirations -- appealed to the general readership of the novel.

[I can’t imagine anyone having “harsh critical reservations” about this novel.

The Characters:

https://gradesaver-website-prod-tql6r.ondigitalocean.app/shantaram/study-guide/character-list

The main character of this fictionalised auto-biography is of course ‘Lin’ himself (short for Lindsay from his false New Zealand passport, but ‘Indianised’ to Linbaba). There are over one hundred significant characters throughout the book, but Prabaker, the Indian who befriended and attached himself to Lin as his guide and friend is my favourite.

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My list of highlights

• · Lin’s relationship with Prabaker. Prabaker is Lin’s guide and becomes his closest friend.

• · Lin’s relationship with Karla, his love interest. Fate keeps tearing them and keeping them apart.

• · His meeting with Abdel Khader Khan who runs the underground passport counterfeit business

• · The mob violence on the Bombay streets.

• · Lin’s encounter with the child slave market.

• · “Prabaker leads him back out of the slave market, explaining to Lin that the children being sold into slavery are comparatively lucky, the survivors of natural disasters and the refugees of war. At least they would live. For every slave sold, hundreds of absent children had “starved in unutterable agonies.”

• · The scenes where Prabaker invites Lin to meet his family and spend several months in their native peasant village. This is a special honour, and a moment full of touching humanity.

• · It is in this village that the residents give Lin the name “Shantaram Kishan Kharre”, Shantaram, meaning “man of God’s peace,”

• · Then follows the visit to see the Standing Babas, a group of monks who have taken a vow never to sit or lie down for the rest of their lives.

• · Prabaker takes Lin to a restaurant where they get blind drunk. Lin is bashed and robbed and this paves the way for him to be offered ‘accommodation’ in the slums.

• · A fire breaks out and Lin shows his medical skills by assisting with the burnt and injured and is subsequently anointed as the chief slum doctor.

• · Lin discusses the routine roundups of homeless people by the police – which one could avoid, of course, with the help of a bribe

• · Lin’s humanitariani work is noticed by some powerfuyl men of the underworld, notably Abdullah who introduces him to Abdel Khader Khan (known affectionately as “Khaderbhai,” or “elder brother Khader”), the mafia boss.

• · Khader takes Lin to meet the Blind Singers of Nagpur.

• · Khader asks Lin about his religious beliefs, drawing him into the first of many philosophical discussions the two will share throughout the book.

• · Lin is convinced that he has discovered a new family, with Abdullah as his brother and Khader as his father.

• · Lin is introduced to Doctor Hamid. Abdullah takes Lin to the epicenter of the Bombay black market for medicine, the leper’s camp. Here Lin secures access to antibiotics and other necessary medications after meeting with the leader of the lepers, Ranjit,

• · Lin meets up with Karla again and offers to take her to the “Village In the Sky”.

• · The contrast between the slum city which provides cheap, virtual slave labour for the construction of the nearby World Trade Centre

• · The prison scene where Lin is subject to the most dire conditions and almost dies. And those lice!!

• · Lin’s introduction to the counterfeiting business.

• · The treacherous journey ‘smuggling’ weapons to the freedom fighters in Afghanistan resisting the Russian occupation (in the 1980s).

• · … and so much more

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I will let the Study Guide Summary link these thoughts together – the first several chapters only …:

Chapter 1

The protagonist of Shantaram, a man we’ll come to know as “Lin,” begins his story amidst the crowds of Bombay, India. He tells us briefly of his past – as a recovering heroin addict, a felon incarcerated for armed robbery, a fugitive escapee from a maximum-security Australian prison – and of the story we’ll see told in the pages to come. But most importantly, he starts his tale with the plunge into Bombay, a city of new and colorful sights, sounds, and – he’s careful to mention – pungent smells.

Lin is traveling under a New Zealand passport he has forged himself; he falls in with a band of New Zealander tourists in order to avoid arousing suspicion at border control. After making it through, he boards a bus headed for central Bombay. The bus approaches the city through the slums – enormous temporary settlements filled with refugees. Lin finds these slums deeply unsettling. “What kind of a government allows suffering like this?” he asks himself. But Lin catches flashes of a different perspective as well – the people living in the slums, though living in abject poverty, do not seem miserable. Lin even spots a serene Westerner living among them, seeming to enjoy the simplicity of the slum existence; a bit later, however, Lin witnesses a heartbreaking fire devour makeshift shelters. Serenity and misery seem to coexist in the slums.

Lin soon falls into conversation with two Canadians traveling through Bombay on their way to the mountains. They invite Lin to share a room with them, assuring them that they know how to navigate the wily streets of Bombay. The bus stops in Colaba, the central tourist district, and they disembark. A widely grinning man approaches Lin and the Canadians and offers to serve as their guide. The wary Canadians want none of it, but Lin finds the man’s smile genuine and enlists his services. This guide, Prabaker Kharre, will come to be Lin’s closest friend in Bombay.

Prabaker leads the three to the India Guest House, a hotel run by the surly Mr. Anand. Though the Canadians dislike both the hotel and the price of a room, Lin again decides to trust Prabaker and agrees on the lodging. When in their room, Prabaker offers to sell them hashish, known as “charras.” Lin trusts Prabaker once more and they all smoke together. After enjoying the hash, Lin offers Prabaker an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey as a gift. After this gesture, Prabaker cuts the price of the hash in half.

Having drunk whiskey and smoked hash, Prabaker and Lin exit into the streets of Bombay, leaving the Canadians holed up in their room. Prabaker leads Lin to a Maharashtra restaurant, though on the way Lin drifts into the careening traffic of Bombay. Just as he is about to be run over, someone pulls Lin out of harm’s way. Lin turns to see “the most beautiful woman [he]’d ever seen,” Karla Saaranen. Lin thanks her genuinely (and flirtatiously) and discovers that she is a regular at a bar called Leopold’s. After finding Prabaker again, Lin learns that Karla is very well-known in the neighborhood. In the course of speaking about her and other subjects, Lin and Prabaker grow fonder still of one another. Prabaker tells Lin his pet name, Prabu, and soon thereafter gives Lin the name “Lin” (and the more respectful “Linbaba”), a shortening of “Lindsay,” the false name on his passport. “Lin” sounds similar to the word for “penis” in Hindi and Prabaker assures Lin that it will impress the denizens of Bombay as powerful.

The first chapter closes with a visit to Sanjay Deshpande’s shop, Radio Sick, where Prabaker sells the bottle of Johnny Walker that Lin had given him. Afterwards, Prabaker tries to teach Lin to chew “paan,” an Indian chewing tobacco. Lin, having taken a definite liking to his guide, hires Prabaker for a week. Overjoyed, the guide looks forward to showing Lin the sights of India. He also admits that the hash he sold Lin was still overpriced even after the reduction and vows to deal with Lin as he would deal with a friend.

Chapter 2

Chapter Two begins in Leopold’s, an expatriate bar full of characters who will be very important to Lin in the course of the novel. Lin has become a regular at the bar in an attempt to get to know Karla. They talk about the sights of India and Karla alludes to her boss – a man we will come to know very well, but who for now remains mysterious. Lin learns that Karla is from Basel, Switzerland. Didier Levy, the resident wit of Leopold’s, soon joins their conversation. They are soon joined by two more regulars, Modena, a taciturn Spaniard, and Ulla, a beautiful German prostitute; Modena and Ulla are deeply in love with one another. The crew encourages Lin to leave Bombay, assuring him that other areas in India are far more enjoyable, but Lin seems determined to stay.

In a quick exchange in German, Karla and Ulla arrange to pass Ulla’s prostitution money through Lin in order to hide the extent of her earnings from Modena, who works for Ulla’s pimp. Lin complies with this arrangement and Karla soon leaves to run an errand, assuring Lin that she’ll return soon and allow him to accompany her to her apartment. After sitting alone for a moment, Didier joins Lin. He seems to have grown fond of Lin and points out some of the more powerful regulars seated at Leopold’s. These include many Mafioso, men we will come to know well in the course of the novel. Didier discusses the black market in passports, in which he himself plays a small role, gesturing toward an Afghan, Rafiq, and an Iranian, Bairam. He notes that the passport business, after a hard-fought turf war, is firmly in control of Abdel Khader Khan. Didier mentions several other powerful criminals who control parts of the Bombay black market, including Chuha and Abdul Ghani, though he emphasizes that Khader Khan is the king of crime in Bombay, a man respected for his intellect and generosity as well as his power. Didier also fills Lin in on the hashish business, in which he makes additional money as a middleman.

Finally, Didier turns to the subject of politics, noting that there is a seething conflict between the Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist political party representing the Maharashtrians (ethnic Hindi), and the Sikhs, members of the Muslim minority aligned with Kashmirian separatists. Didier emphasizes the complexity of the struggle for power in Bombay between these various national interests, noting that the war in Afghanistan following the invasion by the U.S.S.R. (a historical reference that clues us into the setting of the novel, the mid-eighties) has further complicated the picture. Concluding his summary of the Bombay situation, Didier notes that Karla is as powerful as the most powerful politicos and criminals seated at Leopold’s.

Soon after, Karla reenters Leopold’s and Lin accompanies her to her apartment. He gives her Ulla’s money and they begin conversing about Didier. Karla reveals that she and Didier shared an apartment when she first arrived in Bombay. She notes that Didier is famous for his homosexual liaisons with young expatriots – though never with Indians, a point of discretion that endears him to the local authorities. Lin turns the conversation to some other regulars at Leopold’s – the quiet and spiritual Letitia, the handsome and mendacious Maurizio – before a legless beggar whom Karla knows interrupts them. They chat briefly before Karla leads Lin to her apartment, where they say goodnight.

Chapter 3

In Chapter Three, Lin has rejoined Prabaker, who has promised to lead him into the “real” Bombay. Prabaker, as is his custom, fails to tell Lin exactly where they’re going, but Lin accompanies him trustingly anyway in a taxi. The congested Bombay streets bring out the worst in their cabbie; he swerves, cuts off, and swears at the carts and cars that fill the streets. Lin encourages the driver to slow down but, unfortunately, this only angers the cabbie. Distracted, he rear-ends the car in front of him in his rage and a pile-up builds behind them. Prabaker immediately goes into a panic, screaming at Lin to get away from the car. When Lin is unable to free himself, Prabaker drags him to safety. In a moment, Lin sees the reason for Prabaker’s urgency: the other drivers involved in the accident mob the cabbie and beat him to a pulp. They then crowd-surf his unconscious body to the police.

Once they are out of harm’s way, Prabaker shrugs off this incident with a nonchalance that amazes Lin, assuring him that such mob violence is a common occurrence in Bombay. Prabaker calls his cousin, who he hopes will fill the taxi driver’s vacant post, and leads Lin on a “dark circuit of the city.” They make their way through narrow, twisting alleys, then through a fetid tunnel full of rats and excrement, until they arrive at a wooden door. Prabaker knocks, revealing a massive man – as it turns out, a policeman – called Vinod. This doorman refuses to allow Lin inside until Lin speaks a few phrases of Marathi, the official language of the state of Maharashtra. Suddenly elated, the doorman allows Prabaker and Lin to enter. A harrowing sight confronts Lin inside the door: a child’s slave market. Lin has an impulse to intervene, to end the market, but realizes that such an act would be futile. Prabaker leads him back out of the slave market, explaining to Lin that the children being sold into slavery are comparatively lucky, the survivors of natural disasters and the refugees of war. At least they would live. For every slave sold, hundreds of absent children had “starved in unutterable agonies.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Four finds us back in Leopold’s, where Didier enlightens Lin as to the elegance of the Borsalino hat before their conversation turns more generally to the nature of India. Lin reveals that Prabaker has invited him to spend several months in his native village, a very significant honor. Soon more regulars gather, including Letitia, Ulla and Modena, followed closely by Karla, Maurizio and an Indian man named Vikram Patel. Lin admits that he feels jealous of Maurizio, who is very handsome, and who seems constantly to accompany Karla. Vikram contrasts Indian and European sexual culture, noting that though Indian women seem prepared to embrace liberal Western mores, the men are far from ready to do so. An Indian woman, Kavita Signh, overhears him and joins their conversation, which is simultaneously playful and philosophical. They relate anecdotes about life in India, with some expressing pessimism about the country’s direction and others expressing optimism. Lin finds a moment to tell Karla about his plan to accompany Prabaker on his journey to his home village, a plan of which Karla highly approves. They walk back to her apartment together once more, and though Karla gives him a kiss on the cheek, Lin cannot obey his impulse to kiss her on the lips.

Chapter 5

Chapter Five opens as Lin and Prabaker wait on the crowded platforms of the Victoria Terminus station to board the first train in their long journey to Prabaker’s home village of Sunder. At the sound of a voice over a megaphone, everyone in the crowd shoves toward two small doors on the side of the train. Prabaker points out a massive porter towering over the crowd whom he has hired to assist Lin; the porter lifts Lin effortlessly and carries him into the packed train. Prabaker, meanwhile, rushes through the crowd and sprawls himself over a bench, suffering the pinches and punches of irate train-goers until the porter deposits Lin next to him. Lin is aghast that Prabaker would suffer such misery for the sake of a seat when he could easily have afforded first class tickets, but Prabaker is proud to have secured such a difficult seat for Lin.

As soon as the train begins moving, the jostling and kneeing and elbowing ceases and all the passengers put on a friendly attitude. At one point in their long journey, Lin gives up his seat for an old man who is standing; this gesture disappoints Prabaker, who had suffered such pains to get the seat. Even the old man himself tut-tuts Lin’s polite gesture when he hears Prabaker’s complaint. Meanwhile, Lin begins to pick up the body language of the Indians on the train, most notably a “head-wiggle” that communicates friendliness. As they change from train to bus and bus to cart in their journey to the village, Lin finds that this head-wiggle immediately puts the locals at ease. They begin to question Prabaker about Lin, and Prabaker fields questions about Lin from curious Indians.

Eventually, Lin and Prabaker arrive at the outskirts of Sunder village, where they meet Prabaker’s father, Kishan Mango Kharre. Kishan looks very much like Prabaker, though he seems somber where his son is perpetually jolly. Lin wiggles his head at Kishan, however, and the older man is immediately enraptured. He asks Lin to pat his belly as a gesture of friendship and they all board Kishan’s ox-cart. As they travel, Lin is disturbed by the way in which Kishan spurs the ox on, striking the ox’s hide with a nail at the end of a board. Kishan laughs off Lin’s objections and they finally arrive at the village. The villagers immediately crowd around Lin, staring dumbfounded at him. In order to put them at ease, Lin dons a jester cap and wiggles his head – a gesture that delights everyone.

At the close of the chapter, Lin strips nude to take a shower. Prabaker sees him and is horrified – “Nobody is ever naked in India,” he says. He arranges to find Lin a pair of traditional Indian “over-underpants” to wear while bathing. After his bath, Lin eats an excellent meal, converses with the villagers (with Prabaker translating), and finally goes to bed. Prabaker’s parents and neighbors, concerned that Lin will be lonely in a strange place, circle around Lin and watch him until he drifts into slumber.

Chapter 6

Chapter Six begins with the story of Prabaker’s remarkable mother, Rukhmabai Kharre. Kukhmabai’s marriage to Kishan was arranged, and though she did not at first like the look or status of Kishan, his incandescent smile reassured her. The two were industrious and soon maintained a thriving farm and family. After a devastating hysterectomy, however, Rukhmabai was crushed, until a band of “dacoits” (outlaws) began threatening Sunder village, eventually raping a woman and killing a man. This outrage spurred Rukhmabai to give a moving funeral speech urging the villagers to stand up to the dacoits; she called Prabaker and his friends from the Bombay slum to defend the village. Among them was Raju, a handsome boy who brought a gun. A great showdown followed in which the overconfident dacoits were badly beaten by the villagers. Raju shot their leader down and the rest fled. The villagers tell Lin the story of this battle many times in the course of his stay, even ceremonially reenacting the showdown, with the luckiest boy in the role of Raju. Rukhmabai, for her stirring funeral speech, holds a legendary status among the villagers.

Lin tells of his personal relationship with Rukhmabai – how she taught him to drink buffalo milk and she stuffed him with roti – before describing village life more generally. “It wasn’t paradise,” he says, noting that the women have little creative outlet, that the villagers live at the mercy of the elements, that then men sometimes work themselves to exhaustion – however, that said, village life has its rewards. The people are generally happy; they live with a rhythmic certainty, attuned to the soil and the seasons.

The chapter closes with an anecdote illustrating this attunement. After living in the village for three months, the rainy season begins. After a week of torrential rain, Lin notices that the river has started flooding. He rushes back to the village, warning everyone of the coming danger, and they merely laugh at him. They note that the river floods every year and point out a series of sticks pushed into the ground between the village and the river; each stick represents one villager’s guess as to how far the river will rise. As Lin reflects on the certainty of life in the village, he reveals that they gave him a Maharashtrian name to reflect his acceptance into the culture: Shantaram Kishan Kharre. Shantaram, which means “man of peace” or “man of God’s peace,” definitely represents the happy, serene man that the villagers see in Lin. But, Lin reflects, that is surely not the whole of his nature – he is still, in life outside the village, a convicted felon, an addict, a fugitive.

Chapter 7

The next chapter begins after Lin and Prabaker have departed from Sunder village; they are staying in Aurangabad. Prabaker has arranged for Lin to sleep with an immensely obese prostitute, figuring that after six months of celibacy in the village he would be eager for sex. After Lin passes, Prabaker happily takes his place and completes his visit in “about nine minutes.” This business transacted, Lin and Prabaker look for a party on the outskirts of Bombay. Prabaker leads Lin into an unlicensed bar, where he and Lin proceed to get ridiculously drunk; they sing with the local farmers, workers and lawbreakers. Suddenly, a group of men jump Lin, beat him, and steal his money. Prabaker tries to fight them off and screams that the men have shamed their people. In response, they return Lin’s watch and passport and flee.

Without his money, Lin is in serious trouble. He has no way of contacting his family to wire more – he is, after all, Australia’s most wanted man. He returns to Anand’s hotel and pays for three nights with money he gained from pawning his watch. While there, a foreigner approaches him. The foreigner has noticed Lin’s fluency in Hindi and Marathi and asks Lin to secure some hashish for his girlfriend and himself. Lin has suddenly fallen into business as a middleman in the drug trade. Meanwhile, however, he finds that the tourist visa in his New Zealand passport is about to expire. Prabaker shows up and proposes a solution to Lin’s difficulties: he arrives with a friend, Johnny Cigar, a representative of Mr. Quasim Ali Hussein, who runs the zhopadpatti, or slum, where Prabaker lives. They offer Lin a shelter in their slum. Though Lin finds the thought of living in such miserable poverty daunting, he understands the generosity of their offer and accepts it. The chapter closes as Prabaker reminds Lin that the next day they are going with Karla to visit the Standing Babas, a group of monks who have taken a vow never to sit or lie down for the rest of their lives.

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight opens with a description of the Standing Babas, who have a ghastly appearance as a result of their vow: their legs are as thin as bones and they undulate in constant, excruciating pain. All visitors to their den stand in their presence, drink water, and smoke very strong hashish. As Karla, Lin and Prabaker stand, admiring the Babas, a wild-eyed swordsman rushes at them, intent on killing them. Lin prepares to fight, but before he can another man trips and disarms the assailant. This rescuer introduces himself as Abdullah Taheri. The three friends depart the Standing Babas den and Karla and Lin discuss his imminent move to the slum. They both seem to know that after this move they will not meet again.

Prabaker meets Lin in a taxi and escorts him to his new home in the slum. He leads Lin through the “narrow rag-and-plastic lanes of the slum” and they arrive at a vacant black plastic shelter. Prabaker introduces Lin to his new neighbors, Anand and Rafiq to one side, Jeetendra and Radha to the other. In the midst of this introduction, Anand suddenly remarks that there is a fire. Sure enough, a part of the slum has been engulfed in flame. The men rush to help fight the fire. Lin is momentarily hesitant before he too joins the effort to save the slum. The leader of the slum, Qasim Ali Hussein, stands above the effort, directing the men to choke off the fire here or douse it with water there. They finally succeed in controlling and extinguishing the blaze.

In the aftermath, Lin realizes that many of the slum residents have been burned or otherwise injured. He has a relatively complete medical kit and offers to treat the wounded at his hut. Soon, Lin is surrounded by those seeking his medical help and calling him “doctor.” At the end of a long day of treating burns, Lin finally drifts into sleep. When he wakes up, he finds Prabaker watching him. His friend announces, “Your patients are ready.” Lin has instantly become the local doctor; he spends the whole of the day treating wounds.

Read on for the remaining 34 chapters:

https://gradesaver-website-prod-tql6r.ondigitalocean.app/shantaram/study-guide/summary-chapters-9-12

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Spoiler: my opening quote is actually Shantaram’s closing paragraph:

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts … a ripsnorter - a humdinger …