Shantaram - My Review

      Being an obsessive, compulsive reader, I have spent a sizeable chunk of my life and a good part of my income buying books, reading and re-reading them. I hate buying books off second hand stores and I hate buying pirated versions. It has been my principle to buy original books. A book is more than just a product to be sold in the market. A lot of toil and soul goes into writing a book and I find it almost inhuman to even entertain the thought of depriving the writer a monetary gain that he/she so rightly deserves.

       I never pick my book based on popular opinion. I prefer taking my chance. If the book turns out to be boring, ah well, big deal. But on the other hand, if a book turns out to be a delightful read, it’s worth the investment of money and time. Right now, I have quite an impressive collection of books. I intend to hand them down as an heirloom :) In an age where even weddings happen online, I am not sure how much the future generation would appreciate a truckload of yellowed books, but I sure do intend to give it a try.

      I have been reading up English Classics of late and I am loving it. Today, having just read a very impressive page from one of the English Classics, I felt that the book actually struck a chord somewhere. Feeling weirdly emotional, I went back in time to dig out the last time when I felt so absolutely taken over by a book. And just then, a line crossed my mind.

               “Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.”

       That line, that simple yet profound line has stayed with me, even years after I read it in one of the books that has influenced my life in such a big way, that I cannot even begin to explain. I cannot point out a trait and say “ Look, this is what I learnt from that book”. But, many a decision and many a bitter moment in my life have been passed through just from the sheer strength that I derived from reading this masterpiece. This line is but one of the many treasures that lay hidden in one of best written books of the century, “Shantaram”.

       Shantaram is almost an epic. If you are the kind who looks for popcorn entertainment, twists and turns and happy endings and sugary romance, Shantaram is not for you. Shantaram is a journey, a timeless travel into life, full of learning , pain, love and a myriad other emotions. After having completed reading the book, I remember clutching it to my heart and kissing it. That is how much I love that book. I cannot assure that you will go through the same emotions after having read it. Experiences vary from person to person. But what I can assure you is that the book will not disappoint you. At any level !

      The title may lead you into thinking that the book is about an Indian man. Yes, the novel is set in India. But the main protagonist of the story is an Australian prisoner who escapes from his 19 years of sentence in an Australian prison and ends up in India on a fake passport. Destiny brings him to Bombay ( Mumbai) and he meets Prabhakar, his humble Indian taxi driver friend who gives him shelter in a filthy slum in Bombay, away from the eyes of the law. Lindsay the Australian, goes on to be Linbaba in the slum and later in life, he becomes “Shantaram” when Prabhakar’s mother calls him that during his stay at the tiny village tuck away in rural Maharashtra. “ Shantaram” transalates to mean “ The Peaceful man”. But the entire book revolves around pain, crime, disease, death, drugs and a very poignant, profound and alluring definition of love.

      I do not intend to dissect and explain the story. But just believe me when I say it, time will just flow by while you read the book. It makes you wonder, it makes you cry, it makes you smile with tears flowing down your cheeks, it makes you want to go hold Lindsay’s hand and live his wretched life in the slum, it makes you say prayers for him and it makes you want to take the next flight to Bombay. Inspite of being written quite some time back, the book is relevant to this day and each night I went to sleep after having read a part of Shantaram, in a very strange way, I felt as if the events in the book were happening during my lifetime, right now in Bombay. That is how livid and tangible the events are. You know a book is good when you begin to be a part of it.

       Lin is a struggler, trying to make through life by peddling drugs and getting involved in counterfeit and crime. And yet, you will love him. He is no hero. He is a normal human who succumbs to pressure, cries out in pain, yearns to be loved and has his own failures to deal with. He is an anti-hero. In spite of his unromantic, drab, glamour-deprived life, as he ploughs through his days in Bombay, finding himself involving with thugs and murderers, you will push aside all the negativity and turn the pages to move with him. Twined into the narration, is a wealth of wisdom, surreptitiously intertwined with the story that just hits you the first time you read it. There have been many moments in the book when I turned the pages backward and re-read sections that I absolutely loved.

      Linbaba, Prabhakar, Didier,Karla,Abdullah,Abdel Khader Khan and the other characters of the book will take you through a sojourn that is almost spiritually enlightening. And yet there is nothing religious or spiritual about the story. There are no Godmen who will tell you about life, but there are marvellous moments in the story that will simply explain life to you in terms that you will immediately grasp. And terms that will stay with you for a lifetime.

      Being an Indian, I know my country well. So when Linbaba stays at Prabhakar’s village, or when he talks about the slums in Bombay, the construction sites, the poverty, the foreigners who give up their lives in their own countries and settle down in Bombay, peddling drugs and becoming a part of the local crime gang, I can totally relate to what he says. Being used to viewing my country through my own eyes, when Shantaram, a foreigner describes it for me, the picture of my country in general and Bombay in particular comes out as clear as a painting. The streets and gullies of Bombay, The Haji Ali Mosque, the beaches of Bombay and the Leopold Cafe are all real life landmarks in the wonderful city. And as Shantaram brings them into his story, the Bombay I have known, was shown to me in newer light. There is a certain romantic inclination for ths city and its filth. Such is the essential involvement of Bombay in Shantaram that even after all these years, I still remember Bombay as the place where Lindsay the Australian became Shantaram.

       Through his epic book, Gregory David Roberts brings to life, many moments from his own life. After having googled him out and read about him, Shantaram almost sounded like Roberts’ own autobiography. Read about his life and you will know what I mean. I could not help but draw parallels between Roberts’ life and his alter-ego Shantaram’s. For one, Roberts’ was a prisoner in an Australian jail before he began writing Shantaram :)

       If you are in the mood for aching hands and sleepless nights, Shantaram is just the thing for you! The book runs into 900 + pages and all the ”flipping back to re-read” moments will further add to the time that you will take to finish it :) Nevertleless, it is worth every hour of sleep that you will lose over it. I highly recommend this book as a must read. Take my word. You will love it !

       I will leave you with some of my favourite lines from the book. This should do enough to get you into buying an original copy of the book. :) Read on...

“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.”

“Every virtuous act has some dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.”

“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread instead is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone.”

“A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.”

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.”

“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 be in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.”

“The tendency towards complexity has carried the universe from almost perfect simplicity to the kind of complexity that we see around us, everywhere we look. The universe is always doing this. It is always moving from the simple to the complex. “

“I dont know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it”.

“Truth is a bully that we all pretend to like”.

If this review translates into 2 more Shantarams getting sold, my job is done :) Thanks for reading!

Arvind Swamy - The Unconventional Hero

       It was sometime in August 1992. It was drizzling in Bangalore. The monsoons were long over, but we still received an occasional drizzle every now and then. I was in the second grade.That day, my school bus dropped us off at the regular Bharat Petroleum stop. My classmate Divya and I were walking back home, when we passed by THE wall. THE wall was the wall of a rickety old room by the road side, probably a shop at some point of time. There was no roof now and the walls of that old shop now served as a free movie poster wall for the nearby Murali tent. Yes, tent. The nearest movie hall, the Murali tent was an actual tent, very much like the ones that were put up by Gemini Circus when they were touring Bangalore. Very huge and spacious, but a tent nonetheless. There were very few air conditioned movie hall those days, and they were all in the main commercial city centres. For the residential areas, there was always a local movie tent that would make enough money by screening the latest flicks.Murali tent was very much a part of my childhood and I recall blissfully watching some of the best movies of my childhood there.

       I always passed by that wall while coming back from school. Usually I gave it a customary glance and walked away. But that day, as Divya and I walked by,I slowed down. There was a new movie poster , a Tamil movie. “ Tamil, Color” at the bottom right of the poster confirmed my guess.

“Roja” i read aloud. Divya stopped walking.

“Yes, Roja” she said.

“That movie is very good. My sister (her eldest cousin who used to sometimes pick us up) went to watch it yesterday” she said.

       I was not bothered how good the movie was. What held my attention was the face on the poster. This handsome, moustached, smiling, mole-on-the-face hero who looked straight into my eyes! I was too young at that time to experience anything even remotely close to a crush, but I swear, I just could not take my eyes off him. It was not the looks. That I am sure of ! I was a movie buff even then and I had seen my share of better looking heroes. But there was a certain earnestness in his eyes, I cant explain that feeling, but I was sure I would never forget that face. And I never did forget.

     That night, in the Doordarshan countdown program “ Ek se bad kar ek”, a song from Roja was on the number 1 slot. I remember watching the entire song without batting an eyelid. Even before watching the movie, I had fallen in love with it.

       Later that month, the next door Bal Bharati School screened Roja on the occasion of a delayed Independence Day celebration. That was when I watched Roja for the first time. I remember shedding a few tears and missing a few heartbeats when I watched the hero being tortured. I also remember taking a silent oath to roll on an Indian Flag if I ever saw one burning. Thankfully, I have never had to witness that scene in my life so far! But my first sense of patriotism and the first seed of love for my country was sown by that movie, Roja. My first feeling of extreme respect and adoration was for the hero of Roja. Though at that time, I did not entirely understand the husband-wife relation, I did understand that it was a special one, meant to be kept for a lifetime. Madhubala’s strife to unite back with her husband, the way she morphed from being a simple village girl to a strong wife who did not give up her search in spite of the million hurdles, inspired in me, a desire to be strong and face life.

      After that first screening at Bal Bharati, I have watched Roja roughly 15 times or so. The latest being somewhere in 2008. The brilliance of that movie still continues to amaze me. The movie, thanks to its excellent camerawork, still looks like it was shot yesterday. It has been 18 long years for Roja, but the spirit of that movie will simply never die!

       This post however is not about Roja. I dedicate this post to the forgotten man, the man whose face still holds the same charm for me, whose songs I still hunt down and watch a million times on YouTube, who played his role with such conviction and passion, that even to this day, he continues to be one of my favourite heroes! Number one in fact. Arvind Swamy!

       He was a far cry from the quintessential Indian Hero. He had no rippling biceps or six packs. His face was not chiselled to perfection, nor was he an action hero. Nor was he overtly mushy, like the overdose of chocolate boys these days. He was a chubby, normal, man- next-door. I have never seen a moustache looking so good on any other face. He simply personified the typical well educated, Tamil Brahmin look and managed to make it look so cool! I can’t remember seeing him dance, but I do remember how his role in Bombay made my heart go flutter flutter! He was understated, unique and highly talented. He made acting look effortless. Every movie he ever acted in, he made it look like he was just being himself. And his sense of dressing, though some would call it drab, was uniquely personal . It was what any normal Indian man would wear. But on him, the sweaters, the jeans and his loose formal shirts, made a different statement altogether.

     I have a deep sense of respect and admiration for Arvind Swamy . I know nothing about the man, except for his movies. But the man’s simplicity and his effortless charm have been outstandingly awe-inspiring for me. He vanished from the screen sometime in the late nineties and never returned. But in spite of his short stay in the Indian movie industry, he has given us some of best movies ever made in Indian history, the biggest of all being his Roja and Bombay. Today, watching his movie clips on YouTube, I realized how late I have been in writing about him. Though late, I would want this post to document the almost insane respect I have for this man. I cannot recall another person who has been my object of admiration right from 1992 till now! :)

      I cannot explain why I feel the immense “respect” for him. What I feel for him is too profound to be a momentary crush and too inappropriate to be love :) In fact, there is still no sense of romantic inclination attached to my liking towards Arvind Swamy. It is pure, unadulterated respect for the man who rolled on the burning Indian flag, who stood up for his inter-religious love, who dramatically cut his wrist and hers and announced their union, whose bleeding face on the bridge in the Roja climax scene made many a people cry. He may be a rogue in real life for all I care, but the man I know from the movies, deserves every praise I have showered on him today.

      Btw, I googled him to find out what the guy is up to these days. There is not much information, but I did find a picture of him. A far cry from the handsome Tam Brahm engineer in Roja ! :) He is now Arvind Swamy Uncle :D