“Why did you stop here?” I asked my friend, as he parked his pulsar next to the atm.
“I got to get some money”, he said.
I stood next to the bike gazing at the book seller on the street. I had a quick look at the books, neatly placed, but wasn’t interested to know the titles. I hated books. I thought, reading a book was one of those things done by the lazy and it didn’t fit me.
My friend comes back, pushing his wallet down the pocket.
“Hey you got nice books here.”, and he moves to the stall. I followed him, uninterested but helpless.
He picks up this huge book which could easily kill an average man or a woman for that matter, with a single blow on head.
“Alright, man. Now you don’t tell me you are gonna buy one of those WMD’s ( weapon of mind destruction.” I said, with bit of sarcasm in my voice.
He gave me a stare, and then looked back at the book. He raised his head to look at me and said, “What do you know about this book?” There was something strange in his voice. It was a mixture of anger and something more to it. I knew he was hurt. I didn’t speak.
We got on bike and rode off. I broke the silence, “What was that?”
“What? The book?” he asked.
“Yes. What’s it?” I enquired to know more.
“It’s a book that I hold close to my heart. It’s a combination of all the religious book’s that people follow. It’s the book about you, me and them and life.” He said and kept quite. I guess he wanted to speak more but he couldn’t find any point in speaking about a book to ME. What he didn’t know is that, I was gonna buy the exact same book three months down the line.
Yes. I thought, for every individual, a day comes when he or she will do exactly what he had thought he wouldn’t or couldn’t do in the life time. This was my day.
I was pretty much bored with myself, work and life though I didn’t have any reason to say so because nothing was wrong. Its just one of those weeks or months that happens to everyone when everything seems to be just still and motionless.
There were million question’s which couldn’t be answered which were chewing on my brains or may be heart, I don’t know. To understand this difference in itself, was a big question.
I read few quick books. “ Anything for you ma’am – Tushar Raheja” , “Five point someone – Chetan Bhagat” and “One night at call center by the same author.”
I liked them. Especially, One night at call center. I really loved the concept of call from God and following your heart. I had got few answers, but not all and not very clear. I couldn’t believe that book’s could answer anyway.
I looked at this fat book which I had named, WMD few months back. The words of my friend recoiled in my head. I still wasn’t sure I could read it, but I think my friend’s words got the better of my conscious and I opened the book without knowing how it would inspire and answer me.
“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”
When the first page fires at you like that, its hard to put the book down. The weight of , almost 950 page book doesn’t bother you, no matter how long you hold it. You will just drift in to the ocean of real life experiences.
Gregory David Roberts, the man whose real life experience is such that it may not change your life but would surely beg you to look at the life for the second time, more clearly and more lovingly. The man who had dawned more than two names and meet incredibly strong and varied characters in his extremely thrilling real life adventure, painful and soulful life.
In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian high security prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail were he almost lost his life for the nth time.
Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Soon he finds all the people whom he loved die one after another next to him.
Amazingly, Roberts wrote this three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions. It's a profound tribute to his willpower… At once a high-kicking, eye-gouging adventure, a love saga and a savage yet tenderly lyrical fugitive vision.
Shantaram, is the book and also one his many names. I am sure Gregory has written this with great passion and love. It couldn’t be better. And I am thankful to him for sharing his experience and my fate for letting this book slip into my hands. I am also eagerly waiting for the movie to be released(2008) which is in the production phase, rights owned by Johnny Depp, himself acting along with Amitabh, directed by Mira Nair.
I leave you with few of my favorite learning’s from the man and the characters that revolve around him in this cruel but true, thrilling yet beautiful journey.
“Justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us.”
“When the wish and the dream are exactly the same, we call that dream, a nightmare.”
“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything but tears. In the end that’s all there is : Love and its duty, Sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have to hold on tight until the dawn.”
“Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.”
“I remembered on of those Khaderbahi’s favorite phrases. Every human heart beat, he’d said many times, is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he’d meant. He’d been trying to tell me thatevery human will had the power to transform its fate. I’d always thought that fate was something unchangeable, fixed for everyone of us at birth and as constant as the circuit of the stars. But I suddenly realized that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the week, you can change your life completely with a single thought, or a single act of love.”
“Truth is a bully that we all pretend to like.”
“I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.”
“Some of the worst wrongs were caused by people who tried to change things.”
“It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”
“One of the ironies of courage and why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.”
Happiness is a myth. it was invented to make us buy things
“Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom they give to us, even those dreaded and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be.”
“Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.”
And finally the book ends with this leaving you totally mesmerized if you did allow yourself to be,
“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Life our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequences to the tides of the 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 the new day. With love : the passionate search for a 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.”
Here is SHANTARAM by one of those lucky who found him at the Leopold’s – the bar which became famous after shataram was published.
God help us. God forgive us. We live on
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