Books

Underworld tour guide

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts; Abacus; Price: Rs.420; 933 pp

It’s a book which has reportedly shaken, if not quite stirred, the jaded passions and ennui of Mumbai’s page 3 crowd. According to Gregory David Roberts, author of this professed autobiography who held a glitzy press conference in India’s commercial capital last December, a contract has been concluded with a Hollywood studio to transform Shantaram into a multi-million dollar full-fledged movie starring Johnny Depp, no less. Little wonder urban India’s fashionable set is awaiting this denouement which would save them the trouble of reading this massive tome (933 pages), with eager anticipation. Certainly the print version of Shantaram tested the patience and broad sympathy this reviewer (and failed author) harbours for all writers who forswear the pleasures of dallying with tangles in Naera’s hair to live laborious days banging computer keys.

Shantaram starts promisingly. It heralds the arrival in Mumbai of the narrator-protagonist — a self-confessed convict for armed robbery and former heroin addict who has escaped from an Australian jail. "The first thing I noticed about Bombay on that first day, was the smell of the different air… I was excited and delighted by it, in that first Bombay minute, escaped from prison and new to the wide world, but I didn’t and couldn’t recognise it. I know now that it’s the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it’s the sour stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It’s the smell of gods, demons, empires, civilizations in resurrection and decay," writes the author of his first experience of India’s commercial capital where he is destined to spend the next decade of his life.

Such profundities pepper this voluminous tome described by the publishers as literary fiction, which proceeds in chronological order and describes the narrator-protagonist’s breathless Indiana Jones style adventures in contemporary India’s city of gold. It magnifies all the inequities and institutionalised injustices which India’s venal politicians, bureaucrats and fellow-travelling socialist intellectuals have imposed upon the unfortunate, but amazingly resilient billion people of this country.

Starting with the arrival of the protagonist variously described as Linsday, Lin and Linbaba in Bombay aka Mumbai, Shantaram traces his transformation from a white tourist frequenting south Bombay’s Leopold Café into a foreign currency changer, slum dweller, a gangster in the employ of Khaderbhai a philosophic mafia don running gold smuggling, currency exchange and passport-forging rackets, and finally into a mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In each of these avatars Linbaba experiences first-hand the slimy underbelly of Bombay where jet-setters and pillars of the establishment party on in cahoots with the politico-bureaucracy conspiracy.

In offering a compassionate outsider’s perspective of the entrenched social disparities and the hard grind of the urban under-class suffering the insolence of office, the proud man’s contumely, the law’s delay and perversion on an everyday basis — which the stone-hearted establishment and great Indian middle class regard natural conditions — Roberts has undoubtedly performed a valuable public service. But unfortunately his vaulting ambition to write a Charles Dickens-style novel incorporating a contemporary profile of Bombay, has fallen too far on the other side and has resulted in a mighty cast of embarrassingly stereotypical characters.

Each one of these heroes in their own right — crooks with hearts of gold — introduce Lin (who early in the novel visits Prabaker’s village and quickly learns Marathi) to the sordid rackets which make Mumbai the crime capital of India. In the process just as a tourist would be shown the historic and cultural sights of the city, the reader is introduced to the wonders of Bombay’s well-oiled underworld. Among these wonders: a colony of lepers which survives by selling drugs and medicines pilfered from government hospitals and health centres; a locality in which small children are sold inter alia to Arab traders who transport them to ride camel races in their deserts; life in a typical Bombay slum; Madame Zhou’s brothel featuring foreign prostitutes from where Lin rescues Lisa; the film sets of Bollywood where white-skinned tourists can find ready short-term employment as extras; and within the heart of Khaderbhai’s crime empire where "sinless crimes" such as gold smuggling, currency racketeering (the novel is set in the 1980s before liberalisation) and forging of passports are committed in hi-tech environments by fiercely loyal retainers.

Shantaram (the name given to Lin by Prabaker’s aged parents) recounts Lin’s rise within Khaderbhai’s empire of crime in which after innumerable adventures serially involving the shadowy characters above, he rises to head the relatively least sinless department of passport forgery. And a feature of this novel is that every illegal act is preceded or followed by detailed philosophical justifications reflecting upon the purpose of life, crime and punishment, the essence of right and wrong, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and existential angst suffered by soldiers of crime doing their thing in a chaotic world governed by an Ultimate Complexity (i.e God) who true to script, moves in mysterious ways.

Although the narrative of this "international bestseller", adjudged "a literary masterpiece" by the Daily Telegraph, London, is weighed down by excessive philosophising and irritatingly italicised witticisms, there’s no denying that it exposes the slimy underworld of urban India and Mumbai in particular. Shantaram tells the world that within shouting distance of Mumbai’s tourist traps and five-star hotels, millions of people live nightmarish lives in an urban hell in which they are easy prey for greedy politicians, lawless cops and mafia dons. Particularly frightening is a vivid first-hand description of life in Bombay’s insanitary police lock-ups and jails.

Essentially Shantaram is the oft-told tale of the invincible white man’s foray into Kipling’s "lands of lesser breeds without the law", and his angst-ridden Kurtz-like rise to the top in a jungle beyond civilization. Except in this case it’s about Lin’s passage through the squalid urban jungle that is contemporary Mumbai ruined by socialist rent control laws (which have bred its notorious slums) and the insatiable greed of its politicians, bureaucrats and thin upper crust.

Entertaining travelogue

Long Way Round — Chasing Shadows across the World by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman; Time Warner Books; Price: Rs.1,250; 312 pp

India’s automotive two-wheeler industry has experienced a radical metamorphosis during the past two decades. It’s unbelievable but true that only rickety scooters and pre-World War II design motorcycles were in the market until 1985, when the Japanese automobile major Suzuki signed up with Chennai-based TVS to manufacture the Ind-Suzuki range of two-wheelers. Since then the automotive two-wheeler industry has made a quantum leap and currently almost all Japanese and Korean motorcycle manufacturers including Yamaha, Suzuki, and Honda have set up shop in India.

Not surprisingly the ready availability of a plethora of nexgen motorcycles has incubated the phenomenon of biking holidays and spurred the popularity of biking as an adventure sport. It’s almost de rigueur, today, to see bike enthusiasts strap up saddlebags and hit the highways to exotic, far flung destinations, from the freezing heights of the Himalayas to the golden beaches of Kerala. Moreover smart two-wheeler marketers have been quick to promote bikers’ clubs with evocative names such as Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club, Inde Thumpers, Madras Bulls, in major cities across the country to popularise motorcycle adventure travels and holidays.

Despite this, in terms of movies, books and journals, India has little to offer on the subject and most automobile magazines devote their columns to technical mumbo jumbo. Little wonder mobike travelogues written by foreign, especially American, bike enthusiasts are warmly received in India. Long Way Round (LWR) by UK-based Hollywood actors and motorcycle aficionados Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman is yet another addition to this genre of travel literature. The book, also available as a movie in DVD, is a first-hand account of an ambitious motorcycle odyssey across the world from London to New York through Europe, Asia and North America. Presented as a diary of events recorded before, during and after the journey by the two actors, LWR is distinguishable from normative travelogues and its technique of interplaying both stars’ varying experiences and feelings as they hit roads and adventure around the world, is quite appealing.

Comprising 12 chapters, two appendices and interspersed with maps and glossy colour pictures of fascinating locales, LWR chronicles the duo’s experiences, observations and ruminations as they journey across Europe, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, across Bering Straits into Alaska, down through Canada, finally ending back home in the US.

Some of their notable easy rider style escapades include being chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, being accosted by gun-toting militia in Ukraine, harassed by the police everywhere and served bulls’ testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads. And yet despite all trials and tribulations they sped over 20,000 miles (35,000 km) in four months, a journey which according to the authors has changed their lives forever. Despite exhaustion and round-the-clock excitement, the authors have meticulously documented, photographed and video shot their encounters and experiences and produced a highly entertaining travelogue in two media.

On the down side McGregor’s endless whining about being away from his family is annoying. On a round-the-world journey anyone would miss his family, and surely there’s no need to harp on this theme in almost every chapter of the book.

LWR is especially invigorating for dyed-in-the-wool biking buffs in India, most of whom dream of hitting the road and circumnavigating the world. The authors’ can-do determination to traverse tarmac, stones, mud, water and often barely discernable paths to attain their mission is admirable. It drives home the point that beyond romantic notions of inter-continental road travel, great journeys require substantial reserves of perseverance, determination and guts-and-glory hard slog. The actor duo repeatedly detail experiences of common folk who didn’t have a clue of their star status spontaneously coming forward to help them. It’s enough to restore one’s faith in humanity and the brotherhood of man.