| I don't often read books twice. Not (just) because | | | | pages of this book take place on a scale of |
| I have particuarly high standards, but because I | | | | experience vaster than just larger than life, and I |
| am both blessed and cursed with in the word's of | | | | am certain for some quite beyond belief. |
| another: "an elephantine memory". Not so much | | | | I personally found no reason to doubt the author's |
| for detail, but for the order and substance of | | | | probity. To me it mattered not whether this book |
| experience. I have an ongoing internal chronologue | | | | is verifiable fact. Even if it were only three |
| of what happened when, why it happened, and | | | | quarters true, it is a tale of heart and not of fact, |
| more importantly how I felt about it. | | | | of life lived and felt rather than observed and |
| More so in the past than in the now--a tangible | | | | described. |
| blessing of my ongoing practise of meditation--is | | | | *Sometimes, you have to surrender before you |
| the ever more vivid emergence of the eternal | | | | win.* |
| now, the light of which obscures in increasing | | | | A journey of several continents and more than |
| brightness the shadows of the forgettable then. In | | | | ten years, it is really the story of intuition followed |
| this respect I am more than cheerfully losing my | | | | and dharma learnt. A man near lost in a |
| mind! | | | | maelstrom of his own making accepts the |
| With regard to books, for this is in fact a book | | | | guidance of fate's unseen hand and the certitude |
| review, I remember the reading experience too | | | | of the whisper within to find redemption and |
| well to cheapen the author's work by reliving their | | | | spiritual growth. |
| tale less than whole-heartedly at a premature | | | | As chief protagonist as well as author, Gregory |
| date. *Shantaram*, however, by Gregory David | | | | David Roberts is a warrior-poet of the modern |
| Roberts, I would quite happily read twice and then | | | | age, a man familiar with the path of violence but |
| again if but time did permit. | | | | adhering strictly to the code of honour and right, |
| *It took me a long time and most of the world | | | | all the while recording on paper his thoughts and |
| to learn what I know about love and fate and the | | | | experiences for retelling at a later date. |
| choices we make, but the heart of it came to me | | | | *There is no heart like the Indian heart. It's the |
| in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and | | | | heart that keeps us all together.* |
| being tortured.* | | | | Shantaram is a journey on two levels. Literally it is |
| Shantaram is the autobiographical novel of the | | | | a journey to the heart of India, the land where in |
| author's real life journey from bank robber and | | | | the author's words "the heart is king". Personally it |
| addict to prisoner and then fugitive, from Australia | | | | is a journey of the heart through experience, |
| to India, and from only an actor in his own life to | | | | from "Mr. Lindsay" of passport stolen to the |
| its' playwright and author. | | | | affectionately nicknamed "Linbaba", and finally to |
| *Truth is the bully we all pretend to like.* | | | | the name "Shantaram" (man of God's peace)--the |
| Beginning with armed robbery and Australian | | | | name given to the author by his adopted Indian |
| prison to the slums of Bombay and it's mafia | | | | family. It is a journey of who he was in his own |
| wars; from battlefield gun-running to the | | | | eyes, has now become in the eyes' of others, to |
| fabulously surreal filmsets of Bollywood, the 933 | | | | who he himself seeks to be. |