Book Review - Shantaram

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Almost everyone I know has read this book. And their reviews have been unanimously positive. Suffice to say that was enough to get me to read this pseudo-autobiographical account of an escaped Australian convict who called India (and specifically Bombay) his home.

Our protagonist (for lack of a better word), Lin, is on the run from the local authorities back home in the land down under and is just arriving at the Bombay International Airport in the early 80s as the story begins. From there begins his humorous, at times bizarre, uncanny and ultimately spiritual journey through Bombay, India and beyond.

Lin's journey, as penned in the book, spans five parts with forty-two chapters across the slums of Bombay, a village in Maharashtra, shady hotels in Africa, the mountains of Afghanistan and finally comes full circle to an enlightened end at the slums. The experiences he narrates are often interlaced with philosophical teachings as well personal observational conclusions which at times do sound kinda as though he's some sort of Guru. But if you remove the prejudicial thought from your mind, the experiences do provide some truly pearls of wisdom.

The author bases the anecdotes and stories based on personal experiences and his knowledge of the land is undeniably first hand. One of the elements of the book that really made me re-read certain chapters was the brilliantly detailed description of the geography of my home town of Bombay (Mumbai if you want to sound politically correct!)

Another aspect of the book that made it entertaining (and also run over 900 pages) was the author's attempt to vividly describe every single character, minor or major, on every page. Barring a few descriptions that were completely uncalled for, this approach does provide a great visual interpretation of the characters you are reading.

At 933 pages, this is no simple read and took me a good amount of time to complete (but then I'm a slow reader!). But the long reading journey will reward you with the experience of an absolutely unprecedented journey into the life of Linbaba aka Shantaram. And who knows, his journey may inspire you to embark on one of your own!




View all my reviews

Gandhi's 52 in 2014 Challenge - Week 5

Firstly, I've got to apologise for the miss on last week's update on the task. Returning from the holiday in Vietnam we were so exhausted that logging my weekly progress was the last thing on my mind! Hopefully this doesn't repeat in the future.

Additionally it would appear that the holiday was a little too good since I ended up gaining a significant amount of weight on the trip and am considerably behind my target (Damn!!!). The holiday also has me off my weekly walking and kilometres target. Bottom line, on the health and fitness front I am really in the RED! To track these misses I am now tracking the tasks with the colour RED and will do so till I am able to make amends and come back on the required weekly target.

Achievements wise I did make some progress on a few tasks. Despite all the negative impact the holiday had on my health objectives, it did provide me with multiple photo-walks and as a result I have over 2000 pictures that I will be sorting and processing. The flickr set for that photo walk should be up by the end of the coming week. The holiday also helped me score some journal entries, one each day! My total journal entries till date are quite impressive and the ones from the trip also have great polaroid pictures accompanying the hand-written entries.

Last week I also celebrated my birthday (February 5th) and since I was turning the big 30, the wife helped me with one of the items on my 52 in 2014 list, viz. the Mac Mini. Woohoo!!! So with that I have my first official item crossed off the list which also means that I have been able to kick start my task to give my self $10 for every completed task.

Although I haven't seen any of the movies on the list, I did indulge in some new series and will be updating that list soon to reflect the additions.

The first month of the challenge officially ended last weekend but let me recap the progress in this week's post. Overall I am in the RED on the health and fitness front, but seem to be making decent progress on all other fronts. Guess I know what needs to be the priority for the next few weeks.

Until next week!

Link to the list