"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. God help us. God forgive us. We live on."
- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts.
And thus ends Shantaram, undoubtedly one of the best books I have read. It is of the kind that grips you until the very end and makes you feel upset when it is over. It bubbles with enthusiasm, despairs in search of life, preaches philosophy, destructs conformist premises, dilutes beliefs, and finally ends in hope.
India, as one of my friends, D, said ‘is the only country foolish enough to glorify and cherish convicts". Shantaram pretty much proves that point.
8 comments:
without evil, good is an orphan -
let us make good an orphan
hard enough to find one's truth...
God forgive us - for we live on
despite all these mean asides,the passage (in your post)is surpassingly simple, profound, and moving
Your friend meant it as a put-down - probably referring to jailed politicians in particular. I'm not sure that applies here.
Shantaram is not particularly about criminals or jails - it's a story in and about India, told from a outsider's perspective that came to love it in every way possible. He just happens to be an escaped convict and gets tied up with criminal elements, and their story gets told too.
I think he would have gotten the same kind of experiences even if he was a college professor trying to live in a slum, or trying to understand this country. Perhaps not so much about the dark underbelly of Mumbai, but some other part of our society, maybe.
Whether he would have been able to write this beautiful a book, that's a different story altogether :)
@ Silly swallow
"Simple, profound, and moving" - exactly my point. Forget this paragraph; the whole book is like that...Surprisingly simple statements with unimaginable depth.
@Vamsee
Hmmm...Agreed...‘A beautiful book like this???’... Definitely possible. Read 'City of Joy' by Dominique Lapierre
Oh, you finished reading shatharam? I'm still in the process. It's a great book.
It's been a while since I read City of Joy, but it never really appealed to me. It seems to revel it's own pathos. Not my type of novel. And books like that tend to stereotype India, which I detest. You could say Shantaram does the same - but it's not so much about slums as it's about being an Indian.
Even if it has to deal with the lowest of the low, Shantaram never stoops to the level where the reader gets repulsed by the poverty, but rather fascinated by the humanity in those circumstances. That's beauty. But City of Joy, no, I don't think I've found beauty in that book. Just bleak hopelessness.
@Varada
Yes it is :)
@Vamsee
I certainly disagree. 'City of Joy' does not treat poverty as an aphrodisiac. It is essentially about the triumph of human spirit even in the bleakest possibilities. It is very easy to say it repulses, but you cannot dispute the fact that people affected by leprosy and AIDS are still marginalized. Worse still… if they are poor. It brings out the shameful state of affairs in our country in the treatment of its poor. Shantaram is very influential and works his way through green notes. Here the protagonist has no such escape routes. Which is why ‘City of Joy’ strikes a deeper chord.
Swallows can only take a small bite (at a time)
The comment was, in a rhapsodic fashion, addressing only the quote and not the book.
A humble (and wretched, as it proved) effort to provide a light hearted twist (completely detached from the merits of the book).
to clear up a possible confusion (of my making) :
"despite all these mean asides,"
refers to my comments that preceded that phrase and not to the contents of the book or the quote of the post.
aside would normally have a meaning of talking to oneself - a private whisper quality far different from the attributes and intentions of a book meant for a wider public
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