Hi all!!This time I’m writing about a book called Shantaram. It’s written by an Australian who after escaping from the prison, where he was sentenced for robbery and heroin addiction, comes to India. Most of the book is non-fiction but there is also fiction.
Gregory David Roberts gets a false New Zealand passport with the name of Lindsay Ford. After arriving Bombay, he gets a guide called Prabu (Prabaker), who later becomes his friend. Prabu takes him to the slums and the black markets in the city. He also goes to Leopold’s, where he meets Karla (a swiss-american woman, of whom Lin fell in love from the first time he met her), Didier, Modena, Ulla, Maurizio, Letita, Kavita, Vikram and many others. Lin and Karla have a close relationship. One day, Prabu invited Lin to go for vacations to his native village (Sunder village). They stayed there for nearly six months. Lin learned a lot about Indian culture there, and also learned Hindi and Marathi. He became like a brother to Prabu and part of their family. Prabu’s parents called him Shantaram Kishan Kharre. Shantaram meant man of peace, or man of god’s peace. Lin went to live in the slums. He worked as a doctor. He met new people as Johnny Cigar, Raju, Mr. Qasim Ali Hussein, Anand, Rafiq, Jeetendra, Radha, Abdullah Taheri, etc. One day, Abdullah took him with Abdel Khader Khan (Khaderbhai), Nazeer, and others and they talked about philosophical things. Once, while he was attending some people, Karla passed by to visit him. He was very shamed to be seen by Karla in that condition. After finishing, Lin invited her to join him to eat at the Village in the Sky. There he hears about the Sapna killers. They were supposed to be a gang that killed the rich people to give it to the poor ones. With Khaderbhai too he talked about them. One day, Karla asked him to help her get her friend, Lisa out of Madame Zhou place. Karla arranged everything and Madame Zhou accepted to leave Lisa, but with the condition that if Lisa returned she would never be able to go out. Lisa joined them and they three left that horrible place.
Lin also took care of Khaderbhai’s nephew Tariq. He had to teach English and his culture. He looked after Tariq for 3 months. During that period, Tariq and Lin became close friends.
Lin also met a Nigerian called Hassan Obikwa.
A hard cholera fever occurred in the slums. Radha, Parvati, and many others fell sick. Karla also helped him to attend people. Lin did all he could, but still when the epidemic finished, 6 people died.
One day, Ulla told Lin to meet her outside Leopold’s at 1:00 at night. When Lin arrived there, some people took him to the police station.
Lin found out that he was there as someone discovered that he had escaped from the Australian jail. He was sent to the Arthur Road Prison, where he tried to get stronger and remembered his Australian life. Four months passed, Lin was told that a man had come to release him; Vikram, Khaderbhai had sent him. When Lin was out, he also paid for a man called Raheem to be released. Vikram told Lin that Karla had left the city. Khaderbhai asked Lin to work for him, so he joined the Bombay mafia.
Lin started his instruction with Khaled Ansari, to learn the black-market money trade, and then he learnt the gold-smuggling trade with Madjid. Finally, he was about to start the passport business with Ghani.
Ulla came and told him that she’ll tell him where to find Karla if he helped her. Ulla was in some trouble along with Modena and Maurizio and she needed money. Karla had written a letter to her from Goa somewhere near Masupa. After searching Karla the whole day, he sits by the beach. Just then, Karla appears. They start talking and spent a week visiting the shores. When Lin was about to go, Karla told him not to return to Bombay. She told him that if he went away it was all over between them. Lin left her. In Bombay, Ghani told Lin that the Sapna guys had killed Madjid, and then he presented Krishna and Villu. They were experts in the counterfeiting arts. Krishna was a light-box man, he could duplicate the effects of any passport and Villu was a stamp man. He could make any stamp. They became good friends. Lin went with them everyday.
Prabaker gave him the news that he and Johnny were going to get married.
3 African men wanted to kill him and Obikwa told them that they were tourists and when they found where those men were staying, Abdullah, Lin and others went to fight against them. At last, Abdullah forced them to tell who arranged it, finally they told that it was Maurizio Belcane.
The next day, Johnny told him that Anand Rao had killed Rasheed. It was the first murder in the slum, so everyone was really worried. Anand had done the wrong thing for a good reason. Rasheed sold the kidneys of his wife and sister and in the end he ran away. In the hospital they were claimed dead but half an hour later they were alive. Lin told Kavita to make an article about Anand and his case. Sometime later, the story became famous. The women were called “The blue sisters” and as people visited them as a miracle they became famous.
Lin helped people with illegal passports get into other countries by a system called double-shuffle. He also worked with Lisa in film industries contracting foreign stunts.
Some days later, Lisa killed Maurizio as he was disturbing her and Ulla. Lin arranged Obikwa to take the body away and clean the place. Modena was injured so Lin took him to the hospital. He told Ulla to return to Germany.
The ambience at Leopold’s had changed, new people came. Vikram and Lettie had got married. Johnny’s and Prabaker’s weeding was a very happy one. Lin gave Prabu a taxi as his wedding present and 5 thousand American dollars for Johnny.
One day, when Lin was returning from the film set, Khaled told him that the cops thought Abdullah was the Sapna guy and had killed him. In Leopold’s, Johnny told him that Prabaker had had an accident. Prabaker was in the hospital, he was really bad. The doctors told them that he’ll die and indeed some time later, it happened. Lin was really upset. Khaderbhai, Khaled and the others had disappeared and Lin felt alone. His closest friends had died and Khaderbhai wasn’t there and all together he felt terrible.
3 months passed. Everyday Lin smoked heroin, he was really weak. One day, Nazeer came and took him away. When he woke up, he saw Karla. He asked her how she found him; she replied that Khaderbhai had sent her. Half an hour later, he woke up beside Khaderbhai. He said that he had a work for Lin. He told Lin that in 3 or 4 months he would be ready. Lin had lesson of riding horses with Nazeer and their friendship grew. Khaderbhai told him that they were going to go to the war in Afghanistan, and that Lin will come as an American.
Time passed and they prepared to leave to Afghanistan. They flew from Bombay to Karachi, Pakistan. Lin used 4 passports in Karachi. He met a lot of new people; Lin had met them all before...the first time he met Khaderbhai. He then realized that Khaderbhai had included him since the first time. There were many people from different parts of the world. Khaderbhai explained about the war. Sometime later, the Pakistani police searched the hotel where they stayed. They knew that someone close to them had betrayed them so they needed to be careful. Lin remembered read a note from Didier, which said that the woman that had betrayed him was Madame Zhou. Many crazy things happened in Afghanistan. Lin learned a lot of things about Khaderbhai and Karla, about how he went to the jail, between many other things. One day, he got really angry at Khaderbhai and he refused to go with Khaderbhai. That had saved his life, cause after days that Nazeer, Khaderbhai and others left, Nazeer returned with Khaderbhai’s dead body. Lin and everyone became really depressed but the named the oldest man as their guide. Most of the men who started the journey started to die one by one. At the end, just Nazeer, Lin, a boy called Ala-ud-Din and Mahmoud survived.
When they returned to India, some people didn’t know that Khaderbhai had died. Some time after he left Ghani, Nazeer and his men killed him. He was the one that had betrayed them in Pakistan. Krishna and Villu were freed. New followers came to Khaderbhai’s gang. Now they were a different kind of people, so many things had changed. One day, Lin saw Abdullah, he thought that he was going crazy, but then Abdullah told him that in the attack he was taken to New Delhi and there he had recovered himself. They had new types of tasks and all. One day, Lin met with Modena in Leopold’s; he said that he was waiting to Ulla’s return. So many things had happened since he had come to Bombay. At the end, he has 2 options to go to the war in Sri Lanka or go with Karla. After leaving Karla, he went to the slum. Prabu’s parents were there, they were really happy to him, and Parvati gave birth to a boy whom they named Prabaker.
Lin had changed completely since he stepped Bombay for the first time. A new life was ahead of him.
I liked a lot this book. I think it shows a part of India, well exactly about the life in the Bombay slums. It’s really good.
