Shantaram

Author: Gregory David Roberts

Googy Rating: 2.5 / 5

Gist:

A tattered soul imprisoned in Australia without any real reason escapes the years of imprisonment in the jail and wanders around the world as a wanted fugitive in search of peace, in search of freedom and finds that India is the birthplace of his longings. The author falls in love with the life in Bombay and a resident foreigner like him Karla.

He gets to know the day to day habits of the drug dealings and other black market business. He joins with Bombay don Abdul kader khan who treats him like his son. He understands many aspects of life under the guidance of the great don and becomes trained in many illegal activities. Then he goes along with his mentor to the war front in Afghanistan to know about the true incidents that made him what he is, a member of the greatest mafia gang in Bombay still the most wanted one in the world.

Review:

The book is full of philosophical thoughts which are really interesting but slows down the pace of the story to a great extent. The author’s description of Bombay as a place for any person who can do any kind of job is simply great. The characters are well dealt with. My favorite character in the novel is Prabakar, a great and loyal friend of the author who greets everyone with a big smile. The most impressive nature about Prabakar is that he is very loyal to everyone and makes everyone happy around him with his warm welcome and his love and affection. Author’s visit to Prabakar’s village is an enjoyable part. It’s really difficult for a foreigner to adapt to the customs of the village and live among the villagers for nearly 6 months. The slums in Bombay are well explained and the conditions of the people are expressed in an apt manner. Author learns to believe and care for people during his life in slum. The little medical centre done by the author is really touching. Quasim Ali, the leader of the slum though comes in the novel less has impressed me with the way he handles the things in the slum. The author has made great effort in explaining the procedures of black market trading in Bombay. The novel is very informative in many ways. The chats between kader khan and the author is more of philosophical thoughts where the author writes about the importance of freedom, the way of doing wrong things for right reasons and many more which are really good to read but some may feel it very boring. Karla is described as a very beautiful, brilliant and a very mysterious girl who has been regretting her child hood. But I don’t think her child hood is so bad. I did not like her character very much. According to me she has betrayed herself with the wrong and lame reasons. The author’s travel to Afghanistan during the war is really boring and very long. The author’s experience in the jail of Arthur Road is really hard to read with those tortures and beatings. The author dislikes the thought that he had lost his freedom again for unmentioned reasons and waits for his revenge. The concept of ‘sapna’ killings was really nice. It had good motive in the start which went out of control. The words of the author as such ‘” You can change your life completely with a single thought or single act of love”. I think these lines contains lot more meaning that it really specifies.

Bottom line: Just philosophical.

With love

Googy.