Hiding his past, and making friends quickly and with apparent ease as he learns to survive in this new world, Gregory (under the alias of "Lin") gets immersed in what seems to be almost every section of forgotten Indian society- the drug dealers, the slum-dwellers, the lepers... As these people become part of his new reality, Lin is forced to move with the tide. But how far into the ocean of the Bombay underworld can Gregory safely go? And will there be anything other than an empty prison cell waiting for him on shore when he gets back?
Review: Right from the very first sentence, "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", you get the feeling that this is a very sincere book. Evocative descriptions throughout the first chapter will convince strangers to the Indian subcontinent that they are walking through the chaotic streets of a steaming hot afternoon in India's largest city.
For the romantically squeamish, you should be warned that, at times, "Shantaram" does look like it's getting a bit... you know... "Eat. Pray. Love."-esque, especially when describing Karla who, to a standing ovation from every Hollywood director in history, encounters Gregory by pulling him out of the way of the path of a bus. Cue the eyes meeting... two smiles- hers joyful, and his love-struck; her a successful, ambitious soul who's fallen in love with India and been accepted by the locals, him a lost and bewildered foreigner who despite escaping from prison can't master the art of basic road safety... Sadly, the flowery metaphors about his unrequited love for her don't subside- get ready for them to pop up and visit anytime!
Still, the periods between his inability to truly win her heart are filled with some amusing stories, such as bear hugging (of the literal kind), bear incarceration (of the literal kind), bear smuggling... and I think there's something about a blood-thirsty search for revenge for his unfair imprisonment, which was most inconvenient as it means that we hear (in graphic detail) about a hellish 4 months in an Indian Prison system without even a single anecdote about a bear to lighten the mood!
It's always a joy when Prabaker, Lindsay's first friend in India and trusted Bombay tour-guide, comes back on the scene. Roberts captures his broken English without making him sound to much like Apu from The Simpsons. As you can probably already tell, there is quite a lot of "soul-searching", going on throughout this novel. From the time he visits like Prabaker's village, and makes undeniable tangents between the insightful way that the villagers measure the height of the river and how they make the same delineations in him as a man, to the pathetic fallacy of the Palestinian Khaled walking into the snowy Afghan night having committed murder. And as for his chats with Khader, his mafia boss/amateur Yoda, about the complexity of the universe- let's just say, there's a reason that it's over 900 pages long! However, his vivid and thoughtful description of the "leper slum" is truly heartbreaking, and any resentment you feel towards Gregory David Roberts for laying on the sentiment and spirituality a little too thick is instantly washed away as soon as you finish chapter 10.
It's certainly a great achievement, considering it took him 13 years to write (the first two copies having been trashed by Indian prison guards)... Sadly (and not to the books detriment), the tale is nothing new or surprising- to anyone who's visited the developing world, it's a story of daily hardship and inequality that's far too common to be denied, and way too familiar to many travellers to be surprising.
Like so many descriptions of India, it's in danger of falling into stereotype at times- the romantic idea of India, the place where "the soul is king"... basically the same kind of sentiment you could get from watching Slumdog Millionaire. However, to be fair to a very well written book, it takes the time and opportunity to show the true tragedy behind the romance- aside from the obvious extensive poverty, there's the gang violence, cholera epidemics, drug addiction (which Roberts describes vividly and openly). All this wound into a pretty thrilling (if not always convincing) apparently true narrative means the summary can be as short as: "A pretty good read".
Score: 7/10
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