A breath of Bombay hope, in the first glimpse of the sea, on Marine Drive, filled my heart, if not my head. I turned away from the red shadow. I stopped thinking of that pyramid of killers, and Sanjay’s recklessness. I stopped thinking about my own part in the madness. And I rode, with my friends, into the end of everything.
Ten years in the making, The Mountain Shadow is the sequel to the best selling Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It begins two years after he leaves Mumbai to look for love and redemption in Sri Lanka.
It is tough to pick up the strands of a conversation you left a decade back. But for Roberts’ fans, it is just a turn of the page away.
Shantaram and me
So there I was in a Mumbai cab, my suitcases secured with a blue rope on the top of the frail Premier Padmini, waiting for the landlord to hand over the house keys somewhere in the belly of Versova, a suburban neighbourhood famous for its star residents, stench and star-struck film aspirants. I held in my arms two books that would define my relationship with the city upon my arrival – Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, and Shantaram. Both intimidating for their the sheer girth, and promising in their premises, written by two very different storytellers.
Maximum City has been hailed has one of the finest pieces of narrative non-fiction to capture the essence of the city, its people. Shantaram became what it did by virtue of the author's audacity of imagination and ambition that struck a chord with its millions of readers, me included.
Could Shantaram have been set in any other city and been as powerful a piece of writing? As impactful, as loved? Perhaps not. The story of an Australian fugitive who lands in the city on a whim is sucked into its underbelly, a man who comes dangerously close to falling apart but is held together by the tenuous thread we call hope – scattered on its streets and in the cavernous slums, in the shadow of the towering sky scrapers, in the eyes of the hundreds of Bollywood aspirants and extras – had to be set in Maximum City.
Fact or fiction?
Shantaram’s story is compelling and yet fantastic. Over the years, many of Davis’s claims were contested by some of the characters who he wrote about. In an interview he later said: “It is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact.”
So, how much of Shantaram was factual?
At one of his earliest book readings in SoBo, Roberts put on a fine performance. He was yet to become the phenomenon that he is today. But still quite the star. Attendance was thin. But Roberts was in his element.
He was talking about his days at the Arthur Road Prison, where he was tortured by the jailers, an experience he shares with his readers in the book. “And there I was, face down on the floor, flayed, brutalised,” said Roberts, an imposing figure with his scars, braided hair, and limp (all of which are explained in the book), “And I was telling myself, if ever I got out of this alive, this would make for a bloody good story!”
Roberts’ Mumbai
A month later, I was chatting with him at his favourite hangout, Cafe Leopold (also made famous by the 26/11 attack) for a story I had been commissioned by a fledgling city tabloid. He was already famous then. And his book was doing to Colaba what Dan Brown was to do to the Louvre years later.
We walked the neighbourhood, the places he would supposedly frequent in his days as Shantaram – a man on the run from the law, sheltered by the city's lawless but generous inhabitant. He was evidently a familiar face there, and a popular one. We visited a gym tucked away in an alley, where the equipment hung from mossed walls and blue tarpaulin sheets kept the rain away. We made our way through the fishermen's colony near the Radio Club, where he nodded at women cooking and watching TV in their tenements, and they smiled back.
He was charming alright. He also used a ball point pen to demonstrate how I could defend myself if I ever got into a street fight. Such was his sincerity that for a moment I thought was Uma Thurman.
And like so many of his fans, I did not for a moment have the heart to question the veracity of what he wrote about some characters, incidents. To quote an ad filmmaker who often hung out with him at Leopold before his book was published: “His scars were full of stories. You knew here was a man who has seen things you don't wanna know.”
A sensational success
Perhaps this is why Shantaram became such a sensation. It flirts with reality and make-believe, takes such audacious artistic liberties with so much flair that the reader cannot help but hold on to his cape and take that huge leap of faith. So it did not really matter when some of his claims – like that of running a free medical camp in the SoBo slum (which is for real) or buying a cab for his friend Prabhaker (who was for real) or selling arms in Afghanistan – were disputed by those alive, and real. The author and his creation may have led separate, conflicting lives, but for the world, they were one.
For those unfamiliar with Mumbai, it was essentially a story that grabs them by the cuff and drags them into a netherworld of slum dogs, drug lords, terrorists, arms dealers, artists, con artists, illegal expats, film stars, the abandoned, the affluent, samaritans and villains and lovers. It takes every cliché, every stereotype that Mumbai has been known for, and pumps them liberally with adrenalin and empathy.
Even when Shantaram is beaten, broken, pushing needles and sinking deeper and deeper into the cesspool of despair, he does it with such swagger that it you could have reading the biography of a 1960s rock star or a Quentin Tarantino script starring Johnny Depp (if only!).
But it is more than that. The reason why Shantaram has been mentioned as one of the greatest novels of recent times is that it is not just a story of a convict who comes to India and never goes back. It is because Roberts himself has probably been through at least half the things that he writes about, and has lived to tell the tale.
And because, more than anything else, he is essentially a romantic, who may have robbed banks, done drugs and joined a terrorist outfit, but one who lets love and faith pull him back from the brink every time he stood there. And that, he is always high on that curious drug he calls “Bombay Hope.”
So, the sequel…
The end of the 1980s was the beginning of everything. The Berlin Wall fell on an empire, and the Taliban took Afghanistan. Lin, on the run after escaping from prison in Australia, working as a passport forger for a Mumbai mafia gang, finds himself standing on a tattered corner of a bloody carpet that would soon cover most of the world. But he can’t leave the Island City: not without Karla.
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Ten years in the making, The Mountain Shadow is the sequel to the best selling Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It begins two years after he leaves Mumbai to look for love and redemption in Sri Lanka.
It is tough to pick up the strands of a conversation you left a decade back. But for Roberts’ fans, it is just a turn of the page away.
Shantaram and me
So there I was in a Mumbai cab, my suitcases secured with a blue rope on the top of the frail Premier Padmini, waiting for the landlord to hand over the house keys somewhere in the belly of Versova, a suburban neighbourhood famous for its star residents, stench and star-struck film aspirants. I held in my arms two books that would define my relationship with the city upon my arrival – Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, and Shantaram. Both intimidating for their the sheer girth, and promising in their premises, written by two very different storytellers.
Maximum City has been hailed has one of the finest pieces of narrative non-fiction to capture the essence of the city, its people. Shantaram became what it did by virtue of the author's audacity of imagination and ambition that struck a chord with its millions of readers, me included.
Could Shantaram have been set in any other city and been as powerful a piece of writing? As impactful, as loved? Perhaps not. The story of an Australian fugitive who lands in the city on a whim is sucked into its underbelly, a man who comes dangerously close to falling apart but is held together by the tenuous thread we call hope – scattered on its streets and in the cavernous slums, in the shadow of the towering sky scrapers, in the eyes of the hundreds of Bollywood aspirants and extras – had to be set in Maximum City.
Fact or fiction?
Shantaram’s story is compelling and yet fantastic. Over the years, many of Davis’s claims were contested by some of the characters who he wrote about. In an interview he later said: “It is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact.”
So, how much of Shantaram was factual?
At one of his earliest book readings in SoBo, Roberts put on a fine performance. He was yet to become the phenomenon that he is today. But still quite the star. Attendance was thin. But Roberts was in his element.
He was talking about his days at the Arthur Road Prison, where he was tortured by the jailers, an experience he shares with his readers in the book. “And there I was, face down on the floor, flayed, brutalised,” said Roberts, an imposing figure with his scars, braided hair, and limp (all of which are explained in the book), “And I was telling myself, if ever I got out of this alive, this would make for a bloody good story!”
Roberts’ Mumbai
A month later, I was chatting with him at his favourite hangout, Cafe Leopold (also made famous by the 26/11 attack) for a story I had been commissioned by a fledgling city tabloid. He was already famous then. And his book was doing to Colaba what Dan Brown was to do to the Louvre years later.
We walked the neighbourhood, the places he would supposedly frequent in his days as Shantaram – a man on the run from the law, sheltered by the city's lawless but generous inhabitant. He was evidently a familiar face there, and a popular one. We visited a gym tucked away in an alley, where the equipment hung from mossed walls and blue tarpaulin sheets kept the rain away. We made our way through the fishermen's colony near the Radio Club, where he nodded at women cooking and watching TV in their tenements, and they smiled back.
He was charming alright. He also used a ball point pen to demonstrate how I could defend myself if I ever got into a street fight. Such was his sincerity that for a moment I thought was Uma Thurman.
And like so many of his fans, I did not for a moment have the heart to question the veracity of what he wrote about some characters, incidents. To quote an ad filmmaker who often hung out with him at Leopold before his book was published: “His scars were full of stories. You knew here was a man who has seen things you don't wanna know.”
A sensational success
Perhaps this is why Shantaram became such a sensation. It flirts with reality and make-believe, takes such audacious artistic liberties with so much flair that the reader cannot help but hold on to his cape and take that huge leap of faith. So it did not really matter when some of his claims – like that of running a free medical camp in the SoBo slum (which is for real) or buying a cab for his friend Prabhaker (who was for real) or selling arms in Afghanistan – were disputed by those alive, and real. The author and his creation may have led separate, conflicting lives, but for the world, they were one.
For those unfamiliar with Mumbai, it was essentially a story that grabs them by the cuff and drags them into a netherworld of slum dogs, drug lords, terrorists, arms dealers, artists, con artists, illegal expats, film stars, the abandoned, the affluent, samaritans and villains and lovers. It takes every cliché, every stereotype that Mumbai has been known for, and pumps them liberally with adrenalin and empathy.
Even when Shantaram is beaten, broken, pushing needles and sinking deeper and deeper into the cesspool of despair, he does it with such swagger that it you could have reading the biography of a 1960s rock star or a Quentin Tarantino script starring Johnny Depp (if only!).
But it is more than that. The reason why Shantaram has been mentioned as one of the greatest novels of recent times is that it is not just a story of a convict who comes to India and never goes back. It is because Roberts himself has probably been through at least half the things that he writes about, and has lived to tell the tale.
And because, more than anything else, he is essentially a romantic, who may have robbed banks, done drugs and joined a terrorist outfit, but one who lets love and faith pull him back from the brink every time he stood there. And that, he is always high on that curious drug he calls “Bombay Hope.”
So, the sequel…
The end of the 1980s was the beginning of everything. The Berlin Wall fell on an empire, and the Taliban took Afghanistan. Lin, on the run after escaping from prison in Australia, working as a passport forger for a Mumbai mafia gang, finds himself standing on a tattered corner of a bloody carpet that would soon cover most of the world. But he can’t leave the Island City: not without Karla.