Shantaram is a fiction based on the real life experiences of an Australian fugitive, Gregory David Roberts; who prison breaks and comes to the Maximum City, Mumbai. The book is about his journey, his interactions with the underworld mafia, the black marketers and the cops. It’s about his survival and accepting himself and as a Mumbaikar by heart.
It’s not just a piece of literature. It’s far more than a book. Shantaram is a masterpiece. It is something which inspires you to travel. It changes your outlook towards this world, its problems and gives you the zeal to live life to the fullest; no matter what. It has been a life changing book for me. It has evolved me to a better person, a stronger person, who isn’t afraid of the catastrophes of his lives and who knows exactly how to move on gracefully from the failures.
Off late I have been on a Shantaram gifting spree as I want to make sure that most of the people I know should read it. This is one book, everyone must read before they die. With a hope that it touches many more lives, Shantaram has become my default mode of gifting. Well, I’ve been yelled at too by some (who aren’t into reading) for my poor judgement of gifting standards and I proved them wrong after I made sure they read it and indeed, I was right. Those non-readers absolutely loved it.
His writing is very gripping and passionate at the same time. He connects you to his characters so well, that you can actually feel their emotions. I must admit, the character sketching in this book is absolutely flawless. The author forms a very strong bond between the reader and the characters that when the book gets over, you actually feel like a part of you is lost.
The way he describes Mumbai, not even an Indian writer could’ve done it. He made me fall in love with the city and I had to travel all the way there from Bangalore after reading it.
He expresses most of the tragedies with his philosophy which is the best part about the book. Rhetorical dialogue provides provocative one-line philosophical nuggets. He’s too deep about subjects like love, faith, betrayal, friendship and family. Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book –
“The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly, and with the eyes open.”
“If fate doesn’t make you laugh, you just don’t get the joke.”
“A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.”
“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.”
“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.”
“Every human heart beat is a universe of possibilities.”
“I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.”
“There are no mistakes. Only new paths to explore.”
“It’s a fact of life on the run that you often love more people than you trust. For people in the safe world, of course, exactly the opposite is true.”
“The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is that it works so well.”
“News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.”
“The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards.”
“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.”
“Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.”
“You can never tell how much badness is in a man until you see him smile.”
“The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business.”
Shantaram, a name given to him by his first friend’s(Prabhakar) family in the city, means a ‘peaceful warrior’. It means a holy man who is at peace with his life and has sorted its meaning. And he sticks to the name throughout. Being a gangster, he has a certain positive demeanor to his personality which makes a reader to admire him till the very end. He doesn’t harm the innocents and always tries to help the needy. Inside this creepy, greedy world there are a few men like him who keeps our faith in humanity restored.
Everyone here in this world is at war with an option to choose a side to from. And, Shantaram my friend, chose the thug life. An outlaw with a good heart and principles, aimed to spread the light in others’ lives.
His writing is so powerful that he actually transports you to the streets of Mumbai. You can feel the filth of slums on one hand and the class of Café Leopold on the other. He has covered it all with such authority that it makes you spellbound. The book is a roller coaster ride into the protagonist’s life. His best work comes out while he is with his love, Karla and when the duo gets high over their fathomless conversations.
At a later stage, when he wages a war in Pakistan and Afghanistan with his mentor Abdul Kader Khan, you get to see his true grit. It’s a 900+ page novel and not even for a nanosecond you feel disconnected.
It’s engaging, inspiring and simply awesome. Just stop everything and go crab a copy!
PS: All the bibliophiles, check out this amazing artwork by FanGaadi on Shantaram !
FanGaadi 