The vaccuum of vacations, lumbering on for 3 months was, if only for a week,smothered by this amazing book a came accross......
It made such an engrossing read that the 930 odd pages felt like a breeze....no, a gale...that has demolished my conceptions of our country's greatest metropolis and its most thriving social organism, in such a way that the new light that illuminates my outlook regarding it has compelled me to respect it on previously alien lines.
Yes. I am talking about the international bestseller,the 'fictionised' autobiographical account of Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram.Such a nondescript name for a book by an australian seems incongruous at the start but by the time the book ends, u realize that there couldnt have been a better title.Not because the name shantaram is clinching to the plot but because even in the few pages that it graces, it summarises the authors message.
The early pages are a peep into the underbelly of mumbai and the interactions of the protagonist with the unseeming who were to become his best mates.Theres also a certain Karla Saaranen who with her mature, if cold bearing, striking good looks and a razor intellect detains my mind even now, hours after i have finished the book. My first fictious infatuation, if u call it.
The story weaves around how lindsay(protagonist) thrives in the most grungy of environs with a company like vermin and enjoys it every bit, thence making a connect with the throbbing heart of Mumbai.
Then follows a period when things start going wrong for him and the ebb of his life is threatened by forces that he has provoked quite unknowingly.....
The fighter that he is, comes out on the top, Has a great carreer under the tutelage of the most influential mafiosos in the city and becomes a gangster, a man of honour, albeit.
Struggles ensue, in work and love.He loses his best friends at the very time when his spirits hit an air pocket and plummet.
But he lives on......as a figher,as a survivor and as a.......lover......
he does....i do.....live on....
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