Shantaram : Gregory David Roberts

Finally, I got down to read the novel which has made such an impact, and I have one word of advice for readers, read it. I must admit that I have never read anything comparable and it reminded me a lot about ‘Midnight’s children’, there’s love, there’s politics, there’s war and pretty much nothing else is left to be included in this scintillating debut by Mr. Roberts.

Form wise it is hard-hitting, the author knows at what exact point to get emotional and leave his reader choked, he knows when to draw back and reflect and he knows above all how to combine all these in one single package. The adjectives and metaphors are fabulous and yet its not laid out too thick. The build ups are natural and synthesize effortlessly with the intended purpose. Writing as he does from the first person, which is both a risk as well as an advantage, Mr. Roberts manages quite successfully to breathe life into all his myriad characters.

Realistically, it is an overwhelming triumph. The scenes from the Leopold café to the dogs in the slums are quite simply put, brilliant, there’s no other word for it, really. Maybe the only failure here is of the scenes set in Afghanistan, but I do suspect that the main reason for my feeling so, truly is because everywhere else, Mr. Roberts scores hands down. The fight with the dogs one dark night in the slums, the breeze of the bike rides past the marine drive would do any author proud, but Mr. Roberts has an even greater ace up his sleeve, the Indian prison scenes. When Mr. Roberts writes like this, when he lets go of all hesitancy, of all timidity, he writes like no one else and he writes like I daresay, Tolstoy. If ever there was a successor who could ruminate about morals like Tolstoy, it is him, of that I am in no doubt.

With such form, such realism is mixed the enormous normal failure of this work. From the very beginning till the end I kept asking myself what’s the main idea of this novel?
And in the end I must admit that all it boils down to is this, this is the saga of the repentance of an escaped convict and heroin addict, which by itself is not unworthy of being good literature, but there is a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt of finding some deep meaning in all that he has written about by Mr. Roberts, which never quite makes it somehow. Politically, the transition from Fabianism to anarchism is left unexplained, which in itself is a glaring omission and there is a pathetic attempt to expound anarchist views which does not quite succeed. Mr. Roberts would have us believe that all his illegal activities were done just like that, as if he floated into it, while the truth is no one egged him on into the arms of the great Khan. From socialism to heroin addiction in itself is extraordinary, no less than from treating cholera to selling illegal passports. The author emerges as a hopelessly lost figure who has never been able to make out what he exactly wants from life and that is the great tragedy of this novel. From Mr. Roberts at least one could have expected a sobering reflection towards the end of the novel; instead it ends rather abruptly with the character still floating around aimlessly like in his drug crazy robber days.

Mr. Roberts is not a bourgeoisie at heart. But the lack of any sort of political and hence social convictions leads him to end up in despair, not from his many sufferings, but from his own inability to reconcile himself to his total incomprehension of the society around him.

Overall, a tremendous first novel of extraordinary brilliance and the search that is still on at the end of the novel, by the author of some guiding philosophy promises another grand novel in the future. I can hardly wait for it.