Shantaram

"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 me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."These are some memorable lines of the novel penned by a convict who escaped from and Australian jail to Bombay..Life is sometimes queer..Society labels few ppl as bad and chain them behind bars..But seldom do we realize that "Prisons are the temples where the devils prey.Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate..Because every time we cage a man we close him with fate"


I have heard about people who come out of prison insane..However the author Shantaram alias David Gregory Roberts comes out with his soul intact as he is a master of survival."In his own words.."It is not just the body that must survive a jail term,the spirit and the heart has to make it through as well.And it is for those small victories of the heart the spirit and the will we sometimes risk the body that cradles them."

Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals.

Lin's journey in Bombay starts with his taxiwallah Prabakar..and amazingly he starts understanding the meaning and love of life through simple people.We get a beautiful perspective of the poor in India and the happy life they live with trust and simplicity inspite of not having much money.Are not they they the richest people in the world with lots of happiness and fulfillment???

Lin falls in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Karla a lady who wished that she had trusted him but couldnot.And in love he writes.."At first when u truly love some one our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us.What we should fear and dread of course is that you cannot stop loving them even after they are dead and gone."Here love transcends lust and selfish cravings..This is real pure love..

And thus the novel passes from this moment to the other capturing the beauty in the world that we have taken for granted and realizing us the significance of it.In some of his concluding pages he writes "Nothing in life how well or poorly lived is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow.And in the tiny precious wisdom that they give us even those dreaded and hated enemies sufferings and failures have their own reason and right to be"

Since my childhood i was often haunted with a question."What is the purpose of life?"Reading this book written by a man with such a vivid and wide range of experience, I finally realized with neither science nor philosophy that what the world wants is nothing but our love and the ability to forgive others as we can forgive ourselves .."The only kingdom that makes any man a king is the kingdom of his soul.The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world"..

This book is the product of his blood and sweat..grit and determination..Twice it has been destroyed in prison..and again with his ever enduring spirit the author had penned this 936 pages of semi fiction cum auto biography..With almost lyrical and musical quality..with lines from the depth of realization..the novel is a fantastic read..I read this book within 2 and a half days at NBRC like a maniac..Spl thanks to Richa didi who recommended it for me..