Shantaram: A masterpiece

I recently read a gripping master piece Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts for the second time. During the first reading I was mesmerized not only by the breathtaking story Roberts narrates but also by the sequence of plots he has designed. Second time though, along with the plots some of the characters and a bit of philosophy appealed me. It made me recount some of the incidents in my youth and highlight the evolution of thinking from youth till now…..

In addition to the familiar Bombay life, Robert takes to you the places where general bambaiah public does not have clear cut access. Some of those places are the standing babas colony, slave market and of course inner underworld council meetings. The entire story is ripe of all the contrabands ever existed…it’s all a smoke filled café. In my youth, I was a vehement supporter of liquor prohibition. I even remember aggressively debating the whole evening in favor of prohibition against my friend Milind’s dad, Mr. Garde - a customs officer. Obviously the bald head had seen more monsoons that me in my teens and he was stressing the point that liquor (and many contrabands) does act as a medicine too and hence should not be banned but probably should be regulated. In front of my eyes, I was viewing only one picture. It’s still sharply etched in my memory. I had a friend called Ravi for a very short while when I was very small. Probably 5-6 yrs old. There was an apartment being constructed next to our chawl. Ravi was the kid of one of the construction workers. He used to attend school with us and was my playing partner after school. One day when I went to his place after school to call him to play I saw his monstrous father beating his mother to death. Mother and the kid were crying and crying inconsolably. Scene similar to what Johny does to Maria in the book Shantaram. To my knowledge, it was quite unfortunate that there was no Quasim Ali who would cause the transformation similar to Johny to Ravi’s father. Later that year, Ravi left the school but the memories remained. I could not fathom as to what makes people go to the oblivion state and turn into a beast. Back then, Prohibition to me was the only logical end, a profound answer attacking the root cause to solve the entire problem. Today as I see the problem is not really the liquor but other factors that stress human lives. I am quite convinced today that if Ravi’s father has been a well earning individual, satisfying the mandatory desires of himself and his family, he would not have been beating his wife whom he must be loving and caring a lot. The feeling of failure, being not able to make both ends meet would have stressed him to loose control over himself….to follow the way which he would always dislike rather loathe. So, prohibition is not really the answer but the empowerment though education could be…..just could be the way out….

Robert’s tough days in the Arthur Road Jail and his narration of the slave market in Bombay (A market where young boys and girls from all over India and Bangladesh are for sell to the rich and privileged, predominantly Sheiks in Dubai and to me selling of a human is synonymous to sending him to prison…although for no crime…..or his only crime is that he is poor and only a poor) calls for only one question to be asked. I confronted upon the same question after Sachsenhausen concentration camp visit in Berlin. How can a human being be so cruel to other human being? A story at Sachsenhausen suggested that Nazi’s were offering Vodka as gift to the soldiers doing the job of causing massacre in the prison cells. The gifted Vodka would send them to an oblivion state and it would not allow them to spend time and energy fighting their conscience and they would be willing to do the same job next day, untired…I am sure some of the soldiers in Jail would have been taken to suicide themselves and many of them would have lived an unconscious life so long as their conscious would have allowed them to. I am sure they must have thought a ton times that it would have been better if they would have been battling on the field…..as least they would embraced the death as martyrs for their motherland but now some of them might have seen themselves as cowards exercising their weapon on enervated prisoners.

During my younger days I was of the opinion that one ought to fight the fire with fire or aggression is the best defence or what ever but in the similar aggressive lines. As the days have passed Gandhian philosophy “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” fascinates me. I believe that the Gandhian principles if obeyed by most of us would certainly free the world of the most deterring problems.

Robert’s journey after escaping from Australian prison is nothing but exciting. His stay in Bombay had certainly been every eventful and what impressed me most is his stunning attitude to assimilate in the crowd, to be a part of it, even during the entire ordeal. He speaks not only hindi well but also the local language Marathi with a proficiency that would awe a Maharashtrian. I find it nothing but impressive as my initial efforts to learn a foreign language German ended with a crush on my German teacher followed by departure to IIT-Madras for my post graduate studies. In Belgium, I took a long time to make my mind as whether to learn Dutch or French. Then I decided and enrolled in the Dutch course in IMEC. During the class, I was found myself solving Poisson’s equation for Through Silicon Vias (TSV) in the class. What I was finding exciting was small stories Dutch teacher Sofie used to introduce. They were interesting and used to inform a bit about Belgian culture but whenever the discussion used to move to grammer I felt bored and used to start working on my techie stuff again. I missed a few classed because of my stupid meeting planning and after a while I stopped going to attend Dutch course….clearly I lacked the attitude to learn the language. I still wish to add fourth language to my repertoire and it would be pragmatic to choose between telugu (for friends) or kannada (for roots) or Punjabi (dunno why I am always attracted to this one)….may be a while later though.

Finally on a lighter note, the cutest and the most lovable character is Prabhakar-Mr. Bombay Guide of narrator Linbaba (Mr. Lin). The character is so much of fun and life. He is somebody you will find on a daily basis on the streets of Bombay and would love to roam Bombay with him. In terms of physique described he is certainly close to me and may be in terms of smile as well……just may be…well, just being more optimistic.