I bought my Kindle in 2015. 3 years down,
being true to my engineering nature, I didn’t spend another single penny on any
book. The rationale being that you do not need to pay money for things that
appear on the screen. This rule finally broke when I picked up Gregory David
Robers’ (GDR) Shantaram. It’s not that I was unable to find the book. Both
Shantaram and the sequel were easily available. Only when I’d spent months
devouring them and realized that the journey was about to end, I bought the
special author’s edition of The Mountain Shadow (TMS). Honestly, it is
unfathomable that an Indian engineer would pay for an e-book he already has.
But that’s how much I loved GDR’s writing.
Shantaram and its sequel, TMS are the
epitome of good contemporary writing. The books give you plot, style, humour,
thought, wisdom, romance, and an insight into the mind of a city that I have
personally come to love over the years. GDR’s autobiographical account of his
life in Mumbai give you a new lens to see the city. One that takes you through
the underworld, slums, back markets, and weird fetishes that exist only in a maximum
city. But while grappling with difficult subjects GDR makes sure we are
entertained and puts in the right dose of comedy whenever the plot starts to
get too dry. He reveals his writing technique in the author’s edition of TMS.
He finds a painting that includes elements of his plot and carves out
non-linear portions from the image into his writing. That gives the text a
sense of chaos that is fitting to Mumbai, yet leaves a coherent narrative. It
also helps the author in coming back to side-stories that one may be tempted to
write at a go. It also adds another layer to the book that the reader is
rewarded with every time he goes back to the book. Never before had I
encountered such a writing technique and I’m thankful to GDR for sharing the
process. It was worth the money.
But there’s more. GDR’s books work on
central themes and he carefully creates characters adhering to them. In
Shantaram, the central theme is that of exile. Only when the book ends does one
realize that every character in the book, no matter how significant or
insignificant, is an exile in some way. In TMS, the same characters who evolve,
and sometimes literally metamorphose in unexpected new ways explore the ideas
of love and faith. And of course in the stream of characters like Prabaker,
Didier, Kavita Singh, Lisa, and Lin, this review would be incomplete without
the mention of Karla.
Karla is a character created out of the
pure grit and honed writing skills of GDR. It’s almost as if GDR took the
wittiest writing he’s ever written or read in his life and sculpted Karla out
of those words. To the extent that even when she’s not in a scene, other
characters would say something deep and immediately attribute the quote to
Karla. But in TMS we discover that Karla is more than just words. She can be
showrunner when GDR needs her to be. And quite honestly, we could not have
enough of her. GDR has mentioned in his last interview that he would create
spin-offs for Karla and Didier. I don’t know how a book created exclusively for
Karla would work. Just like Karla needs GDR’s writing, she also needs Lin’s
thoughts to reach the reader. I’m not sure if we would like her in her own
head. But I trust GDR’s writing enough to know that he wouldn’t disappoint.
GDR understands that a reader invests a lot
of life in reading an 800-page book. He respects their time. Usually when I
read a book, I mark any interesting quotes I discover in it. The last book that
I noted down quotes from was The
Fault in Our Stars. I found dozens in Shantaram and TMS. Here, I want to
share 22. Why just 22? Well, for one thing, I’d like you to visit the books
yourself and discover your own wisdom. Secondly, it makes for much better decoration.
Quotes from Shantaram and TMS
"Greed
is human Kryptonite." - TMS, Chapter 18
"Love:
desire, stripped of hunger." - TMS, Chapter 47
"Power
is the opposite of freedom." - TMS, Chapter 81
"Expectation,
the ghost of reputation." - TMS, Chapter 69
"The
truth is just inhibition, after 3 drinks." -
TMS, Chapter 80
"If
you're gonna do something, make an art of it."
- TMS, Chapter 23
"The
people showed thanks, rather than saying it."
- Shantaram, Chapter 12
"An
amateur is anyone who hasn't learned how not to do it." - TMS, Chapter 2
"Religion
makes men soldiers, and war makes them apostles." - TMS, Version 15
"When
will we demand peace, as passionately as we demand freedom?" - TMS, Chapter 80
"Depression
only happens to people who don't know how to be sad." - Shantaram, Chapter 26
"News
tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it." - Shantaram, Chapter 17
"Journalism,
Didier once said to Ranjit, the media baron, the cure that becomes its own
disease." - TMS, Chapter 34
"The
Koran commands me to study everything, and learn everything, in order to serve
Allah." - Shantaram, Chapter 33
"Corruption
is a tax imposed on any society that doesn't pay people enough to repel it
themselves." - TMS, Chapter 68
"The
world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred
million cowards." - Shantaram, Chapter 17
"It is
always a fool's mistake, Didier once said to me, to be alone with someone you
shouldn't have loved." - Shantaram, Chapter 42
"Friendship,
for him, was measured by what men do and endure for one another, not by what
they share and enjoy." - Shantaram, Chapter 31
"Cruelty
is a kind of cowardice. Cruel laughter is the way cowards cry when they're not
alone, and causing pain is how they grieve." -
Shantaram, Chapter 21
"Only
a wicked man would derive such benefit from good works. A good man, on the
other hand, would simply be worn out and bad tempered." - Shantaram, Chapter 17
"Praising
people behind their back is monstrously unfair, because the only thing you can't
defend yourself against is the good that people say about you." - Shantaram, Chapter 31
"She
wasn’t in love with me, and I couldn't be in love with her. But we made the
night bright and the sunlight right a lot of the time, and never felt used or
unloved." - TMS, Chapter 8
