Shantaram

Summary

Shantaram is a wonderful book. It details the story of somebody who fled from a prison in Australia and made his way to India, where he found shelter in the gangster underworld of Mumbai and started to live his life there. It's a magical exploration of what makes India beautiful, a fascinating tale of mysterious stories, beautiful characters and an epxloration of eternal human themes such as love, perseverance, friendship, addiction and morality.

I think this book is among the best books out there to describe India to somebody who has never been there. Some of the observations are so on point, so detailed and exact, that it is like somebody has seen through to some of the essence of this country.

Yet at the same time the story seems bigger than life, it's a sort of mix between real world events and fiction, a unique blend. The main character Lin, lives part of the story in a slum in Bombay, setting up a medical clinic. My hair still stands on end when I think about the description of how cholera is sweeping through the slums or how a fire breaks out and the people have to hold together strongly to fix it. The depiction of people living somehow beauitful lives, even among rapant misery, the smiles and friendships, the bonds and close connections, all of it feels so real, so graspable and having been to India, I can relate deeply to what he is writing about. Often the people with the least to give have the biggest heart, and to me this idea is something so counterintuitive and inspirational that whenever I think about it, it has a positive influence on my life. It helps me to see that first of things are not that bad, that attitude makes all the difference in the world, and that I could still behave better myself. More gracefully, more gracious, more friendly and beautiful.

One of the characters of the book, Khader Khan, is a mentor to Lin and powerful mafia boss, but his philosophical musings in the book are some of the best monologues written anywhere, right up there with Ayn Rand's. Khader Khan uses his philosophy to make sense of his actions as an underworld gangster boss. In doing so he shows crystal clear, that even people who do the most dirty of work, can think of themselves as honorable men. They will try to think of themselves as doing the good, morally right thing.

Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil. The wonderful thing about this definition of good and evil is that it is both objective and universally acceptable.

Even somebody like Khader Khan can think of himself as morally good. The truth is, the line between good and bad is blurry and dependent on viewpoint and interpretation. This sort of idea, of how humans do this neurobiologically is explored in more detail in the work by Jonathan Haidt, in books such as The Righteous Mind.

At some point the group around Khader Khan sets out on a mission to Afghanistan to supply weapons to the muhajideen fighters resisting the Soviet Union. The confrontation with war is another immense moment in the story and the effects that it has on Lin are heartwrenching. It contrasts so harshly with the environment of the slum and Lin seeing true human misery and bloody war breaks him, permanently.

There are a few more scenes that I remember very vividly from the book. One of them is Lin's time spent in an Indian prison. He got there because he was betrayed by a close friend. The thing that I remember is how filthy and tormenting the prison was. The descriptions of itching skin, of lice and flees and rotting food next to shit as the daily order. How the dignity of a human can be stripped away like this, beaten out by sticks, stench and cold water. It reminded me of descriptions of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. And it made me think about how such places could ever exist in this world, when there are also people who are smiling in the slums, even though they have next to nothing. Contrasts like these don't make sense to me. They just leave an empty sadness for humanity. But the book also tells a different story, how, even in these worst of circumstances, you are free, you have the power to choose how you react. A central stoic idea.

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. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Another powerful scene in the book is when Lin and a child get attacked by a pack of feral dogs in a shady area of the city and are close to death, only miraculously saved by a friend of Lin in the nick of time. I can visualize this scene so vividly, because dogs in India can be quite brutal, especially packs of them at night. There is something wolf like in these animals still, something terrifying.

Another moment is when Karla, Lin's mysterious romantical interest with a dark past and her own ties to the underworld of Mumbai, tells him that he values clothes more than she does. Yes, true, she has a full closet of exquisite garments... but to her, every one of them is replacable, she doesn't mind too much which of them she wears, whereas Lin, who only has a few clothes, couldn't think of wearing anything else besides those few.

All in all Shantaram is a great book. Through its vivid characters, moral dilemmas, and cultural exploration, it offers a powerful meditation on the complexities of human nature, the quest for redemption, and the enduring strength of the human spirit. It is a terrific book, full with hauntingly beautiful language and a lively, detailed world that makes you feel how living in India feels like.

Detailed Notes

Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.

Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.

Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it's the other way around.

For this is what we do. 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 truth other than our own. With longing; the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on.

Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.

Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honour is concerned with how we do it. You can fight a war in an honourable way—the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason—and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all. In its essence, honour is the art of being humble. And gangsters, just like cops, politicians, soldiers, and holy men, are only ever good at what they do if they stay humble.

And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them: better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference.

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance, is that it works so well.

I can't stand politicians. A politician is someone who promises you a bridge, even when there's no river.

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. No-one knows why anyone does anything. No-one tells the truth. No-one is happy. No-one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate.

It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart.

But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one.

You can't serve God with a gun.

Fanaticism is the opposite of love. A wise man once told me - he's a Muslim, by the way - that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion.

There's a truth deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.