Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

I was first introduced to this novel (epic is probably the more appropriate term) while on holiday with a rather free spirited friend.

“I’m reading Shantaram,” she said one day while we were basking in the holiday sun. My brain did not quite register this foreign sounding word.

“It’s amazing. It’s about this man who was one of Australia’s most wanted men because he escaped maximum security prison by the front wall.”

Huh? I get up on my elbows and look at her.

“Yeah. And through the work of God, he escaped to India and found salvation.”

Ah.

My cynicism sank back into the sand and washed the novel from my mind as she continued to wax lyrical about this book apparent.

In fact, this Shantaram was not thought of again until I got back to the real world, the one that had shops and multinational bookstores aplenty. On walking into one of these said bookstores, I encountered one of those ‘customer voted top ten’ shelves.

Now, Dear Reader, I understand that this is not exactly the tried and true method of excellent reading, but surely you must understand that strange human behaviour that celebrates something simply because it was celebrated by someone else.

Frankly, I had no great hopes for this novel. But that should never stop a girl from shelling out x amount of dosh to take a brick home with her. I was expecting a whole lot of airy-fairy crap that quite usually happens with memoirs that follow the adventures of a white man into the exotic beyond. What I was presented with was depth and a story that was riveting.

Oh man, was I surprised.

And true to word, Gregory David Roberts/Shantaram/Lin did escape over the front wall of a prison. He certainly did find God in India. But he then proceeded to reject it whole-heartedly by convincing himself that worshiping at the altar of atheism and the Afghan mafia was a much worthier cause.

And it is for this very reason that I decided that I was going to like this man. You see, while I will almost always agree that there is nothing better in this world than blasphemy, I feel that Gregory David Roberts takes it up a notch by adding some reverence and a touch of love.

He is a confused man, doing bad things, in a bad place (I am not saying that India is a bad place… just the company that our dear author was keeping). He comes to India. He does not become token white man making the pilgrimage from his secular world to one of intense spirituality. He just becomes a man who comes to embrace the dirt.

To put it quite simply, you don’t jump a stupidly high, barbed concrete fence to go and eat slum dirt unless you are a kick ass guy. It also helps that this kick ass guy is also a kick ass writer – there is nothing as excellent as reading an outlandish memoir without having to trawl through bad grammar.

So Gregory David Roberts. Kudos to you.

Tags: Australia's most wanted, Books, escape, Gregory David Roberts, India, prison, Shantaram, spirituality