SHANTARAM

SHANTARAM

Six months of gap, after finished reading “ shantaram” and writing about it because nine hundred and thirty three pages are not small amount  of bunch to be read and remember, joke apart. But In this ‘kind of’ book review,  not exactly book review but what I am going to write in the next few pages are, my experience with this book while reading and feel the situation not virtually but also physically.

I was not a really reading addict, but after reading this book I can say that I needed book or books with me, maybe I read a little or less than little.

Somehow I ordered this book “shantaram” through website and I was eagerly waiting for this book to come and its arrived before my calculated time with fine bookmark within “your flight has taken off without you, reason to use book mark” ha ha.

(Gregory David Roberts)

I was ready to jump into this deeply expressed filling of ocean with so many varieties of events and subjects.

I read few of pages and then I somehow leave the book a side because I was not able to understand lots of words, but I started again and its going well. I leave few of words and read the entire line, even I first time read those words still I imagine and create meaning of any  line .

Time flies and numbers of pages are going forward and forward.

Actually, I forget to tell you about this book’s contain. This book is about Gregory David Roberts, in early 80s, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slaking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Amazingly, Roberts wrote “shantaram” three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions. It’s a profound tribute to his willpower. One  can see the different different events, people, feeling, their nature and thought process in it.

                                                 

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(Image source: Down Memory Lane - In a Local Train)

One day I got a interior project in Kandivali, Mumbai so I have to go for the site visit there and I generally like to travel by local compartment of the train because I like to socialize with people, not really socialize but I like to see the people faces, activity and expression, in short the drama behind human mental movement. And one main benefit was to get a four hours of time to read. So whenever I go for Mumbai I always kept “shantaram” with me and read as maximum pages as possible.

Instead of going for project site visit I really like to see the places which were mention in the book so every time I ready I underline those important places and visit those whenever I get a chance in Mumbai.

Once David quoted “ you learn to live with it, and you learn to like it, or you leave it”

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(Leopold cafe, Mumbai)

Leopold café was the main center, where all the Lindsey’s friends and kind of customers meet each other. (Lindsey name was false name expressed in his passport) for survival of the fittest he did illegally currency exchange and sometime drug dealing also. The way he articulated the Leopold café and the surrounding street was fantastic because I personally feel the situation like, pimp on the road and their eyes expression, passing through the Leopold café, from window I saw the group of foreigner seating and drinking the bear from tap of central bear pot. Café was painted with full of white people with goan cartoonist painting on background. Lindsey meets regularly to his friends and talks and discuss about the different different topics. Leopold café was a place to see, to be seen, and to see themselves in the act of being seen.

(Leopold cafe, Mumbai)

He used to go to colaba  area streets in search for the customers. Actually when group of labors came to Mumbai from Dubai that was the main time for currency exchange because in Dubai they paid them in cash so they must transfer that currency in to the  India rupees.

I was seating on the parapet wall and reading the “shantaram” at the monument opposite the taj hotel and suddenly I read that linbaba (linbaba was the Indian name gave to Lindsey by prabhakar and prabhakar was the friend of linbabba) also explaining that place when he first time visit the gate way of India  with karla.(karla was his friend cum girl friend) I had not remember all the names which came into this story but still I am using some of the actual names here like karla, prabhakar etc. so one can feel the actually link of it.

Colaba reminds me the attack 26/11 Mumbai because in that attack what media show on the news channel was all about taj and Leopold café. And in this book also some of the events are connected with those places.

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One day Lin experienced the slum with prabhakar and decided to live there with slum people. He used to live in the temporary kind of hut with plastic roof on it and hardly ventilated and all in one but without bathroom in it. For bathroom he had to go outside where everyone seating in a group for toilet and Lin would be the focus point of all. If you want to use covered bathroom than you have to pay for it, as you seen in the movie “slum dog millionaire”. Still Lin enjoyed each and every moment of the life in the slum.

(Image source: Slum dog millionaire movie)

(Image source: Slum dog millionaire movie)

People are saving others by destroying their own house, Fire in the slum makes Lin more popular because he did a lot to save the people who are affected through this accident. He used his small first aid box to fix up the wounds of injured people because of that people gives Lin a doctorate degree. Every morning people arranged themselves  in a line outside the Lin’s hut. They called that place; Lin’s clinic. And Lin was more than happy to repair their broken parts, like someone had rat bit then fever then cholera then loose motion and so on and on. One of the slum person arranged the free medicine, illegally. Lin says; If you do wrong things for the right reason than it’s not a crime.

He never asked for the money but instead of money people are giving him a dinner, lunch and sweets and in summer time, neighbor used to give him hot water bucket for bathing. In short their world enfolded Lin’s life. They all live like one big family, we ate waffle style rotis filled with ghee and sugar, and rolled into tubes, we all dance when someone got married, we all feared from doges at night and we all help each other without asking. Beedies and chillums creates tension free and relax environment around us. He also sometime feels that why people use smelly coconut hair oil.

(Mumbai slum)

He explained not only the Mumbai but entire philosophy of Indian way of living. He says; when you go there and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. The poor were almost never alone in Bombay.

He also experienced old mentality of people that they gives more importance to the  boy child than girl child, Victim of one family, people celebrated at the time of  boy child born after four girls child, they invited Lin for the dinner and dance party. He also questioned on why Nakedness was like a secret religion in India ?, in slums they’d been married for years and had never seen their own wives naked.

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(Local train platform, Mumbai)

By Mumbai local trains he traveled a lot and experienced the closeness between people. While project site visit, I felt population blast every time increasing in the city of Mumbai and not in the local train but also at the platform.

Once he got a chance to visit the prabhakar’s village, where he used to wear dhoti. After staying there he understood the Life style and the nature of the village people are totally different than city people. Even he don’t want to compare both the situations. The people showed thanks there, rather than saying it.

“Shantaram” secret behind the title of this book reveled in this village where he got the name “shantaram” which means man of peace, or man of God’s peace.

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(Image source: Mafia the city of lost heaven-games)

With this slum gang and his illegal money exchange business he faced Khaderbhai once then both meets regularly and became good friends. Khaderbhai was the don or mafia’s main person who represent India. Khaderbhai mostly talks about the philosophy of life…..Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Those are three big questions. And if you love him than he will tell you the meaning of life. As the universe expanded and cooled down, these very tiny bits of things came together to make particles. Then the particles came together  make the first of the atoms. Then the atoms came together to make molecules. Then the molecules came together to make the first of the stars. Those first stars went through their cycles, and exploded in a shower of new atoms. The new atoms came together to make more stars and planets. All the stuff we are made of came from those dying stars. We are made out of stars, you and I.

(Source: www.hdwallpapers.com)

We all are moving towards it, everything in the universe is moving towards it. And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to, is what I  choose to call God. If you don’t like that word, God, call it the ultimate complexity.

We’re all driven by a desire to find meaning in life. We have to know what it’s all about. If it was just sex or power we’d still be chimpanzees. It’s meaning that makes us human beings. We the human beings are the most complex arrangement of the matter. Nothing can exist without the existence of its opposite.

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Karla meets at Leopold café, first time and from that days lin was in love with her and she also like lin but don’t know exactly what’s in her mind. Actually nobody knows what’s cooking in girl’s mind, its biggest mystery of all time. She lived with lin and help him in the clinic work as a nurse, in the slum at the time, when cholera fever was on its peak. But somehow she disappeared from lin’s life and came back and disappeared again…… Sometime feeling sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. We know who we are and we define what we are by reference to the people we love and our reasons for loving them.

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(Haji ali Dargah, Mumbai)

Smell of the city almost settled on me, walking through the Haji ali dargah, I memorized the way he explained that place and meetings with all “gundas”. While security check at Haji ali, one of the police said: this book “shantaram” is one of the great book to be read. I read few of pages at the seashore behind the Haji ali mosque. One person almost like khaderbhai was generously giving notes of money to all the baggers seating from main gate to mosque. I remembered those words of khaderbhai that, in Islam all people have to spend 10 percent of their  eared money to help other people. Haji ali juice center was the junction for the major meeting at night time. Lin first time saw the technocolured drink call “faloodha” and the way he gave explanation for faloodha was wonderful.

Lin also involved in the false passport making business with khaderbhai and team. And his bonding with khaderbhai leads lin deeper and deeper into this illegal market. Ones khaderbhai sent lin, to the Afghanistan, to learn how to make the false passport and also gun business. The richest and the most wretched, educated and illiterate, virtuous and criminal, old and young-it seemed that the only thing they had in common was a power to make lin feel something.

A mujaheddin fighter once told lin that fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, or fought them.

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(Image by: Marcin 'Jedras' Jedrzejewski)

Why slum in the city? Behind the World trade center tower in Mumbai, slum exist because at the time of construction all the working labors were staying there and after finished that project there was no place for them to go for survival and that group of people creates those livelihood space called “slum”. Not only in the city of Mumbai but if we look at any metro cities, the scenario will be about the same. Almost every tower of luxury apartment had its adjacent slum.

While the construction time of WTC tower, lin was in that slum and construction floors became his meeting point with “gundas” and sometime with his love karla also. While kissing her from the highest construction floor he explained the below situation of the slum was amazing. To add more excitement into this story “sapna” came into the picture, the name ‘sapna” itself was the mystery among the people. Everywhere in the slum and the city the poster of “sapna the gangster” took place. But at the end secret comes out and the man behind that “sapna was one of the lin’s gangster friend.

I heard the name “Jaffna” about two years ago, I  actually was planning to go there for urban design training, this place was belongs to Sri lanka but somehow not worked out and suddenly I read  in this book that two of the lin’s friends, Krishna and villu were from same village on Jaffna, those words refreshed my memory. Conflict between the tamil tigers – the liberation of tigers from eelem – and the Sri lankan army had obliterated their village. And  a fishing boat brought them to India, on the people smuggling route between Jaffna and the coromandal coast.

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( Image source: Fillyjonka)

Madam “juhu”, again one more mysterious character and nobody knows about her. She was like female khaderbhai but nobody knows about the existence of the madam juhu. She never comes out of her rooms in the beer bar, she always communicate with people, behind the curtain. Lin once help her friend’s best friend to free from madam juhu’s  beer bar and her brutal behavior. Don’t know but this was one of the reason or may be collection of earlier all, leads lin to the imprisonment in the arthur road jail. More simple the man, the more effort it requires.

(Indian jail)

Lin lost almost 12 kilogram after two months at the prison. He received only one meal a day. Government says less than so many, but everybody of us, we know there were twelve thousands of man inside the jail. There’d been another tunnel of pain, in another country. In the beginning we feared everything-animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky-everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else. People fought with each other without any good reasons. Lin once said “some time in India you have to surrender before you win”. Act of forgiveness-without forgiveness there would be no history  ; Lin every time says. People burnt their “chappal” footwear to boiled their foods. Lin suffered a lot in the prison. Lin said: Writing was one of the things that saved me: the discipline and abstraction of putting my life into words, everyday, helped me to cope with my life. As most people see it-is nothing more than an illusion. There is another reality, beyond what we see with our eyes. He wanted to die at least as much as he wanted to live. He had confusing collection of complaints. The answer to all big question s, came in lin’s part. We have to be weak to suffer, and have to suffer to be strong.

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He came back into the smell and color and sound of his city. But his friend vikram told that karla left the city two days before. Lin lost everything. Still there was a chance for love. He kept walking on into slum. He wasn’t sure why. He was following an instinct and drawn, perhaps, by the swollen moon. The narrow lane, those writhing alleys of struggle and dream. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.

((Gregory David Roberts)

Lin lived around ten years in the Mumbai and he experienced people, feeling, love, hate, village, mafia, bollywood, heroin, drugs, chilam, slum, jail and himself. He enjoyed each and every moments which came through time, sometime he became good person and sometime became bad. But he always ask questions to himself.

Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.