"Gora kaun hain?"
I've been reading Shantaram, the whopping (936 pages in the St. Martin's Griffin trade paperback edition [ISBN: 0-312-33053-7]) debut novel by Gregory David Roberts, the Australian ex-felon whose life serves as the template for the main character: a junkie bank robber who escaped from Oz's toughest prison in broad daylight and managed to flee to Bombay (now technically called “Mumbai” thanks to some Hindu reactionaries), where he fell in first with some seedy European and American ex-pats, and then into Bombay's underworld, where he set up a free clinic for the denizens of the zhopadpatti, or slum (technically "hutments") in which he lived when his false visa expired, and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gun-runner and goonda (the basis for the English word "goon") for a mafia don. (Still and all, fans of gangster fiction should take note: I'm a little over 200 pages in, and the main character has yet to become seriously involved in any exciting illegal activities.)
Shantaram has been dubbed a roman-à-clef, although Roberts has apparently taken pains to state that most of the novel's events are fictional. (Although in 2004, he told BBC News Online: "'"All the substantial events which happened to Linbaba [the main character / "Mary Sue" figure] are real events. Some of the other events were invented to help with the narrative.'") It is certainly a Bildungsroman ("Shantaram," the first name that the village women of Sunder bestow upon Linbaba, means "man of peace" or "man of God's peace"; p. 136), and, for all of its physical heft, it's only the second book of a planned quartet (!). A movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan is due to start production this month.
While I'm liking it thus far -- and it's making Suketu Mehta's much-lauded 2004 book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found move up on my reading list -- it's showing an alarming tendency to slip into "Mumbai With Morrie" mode: much of the spiritual "uplift" thus far doesn't always observe the border between edification and saccharine, and anybody who has ever thumbed through the works of Idries Shah is likely to drum his fingers with impatience when Roberts unlimbers his pithy apophthegms.
The cultural clashes -- and acceptances -- plus the humor and (half-) witty bits are what's keeping me reading, as well as the sheer busy-ness of the character's life. And for my money, there's more insight in some of the throwaway lines -- as when a spaghetti western-worshipping Indian named Vikram says, "So many Indian guys are chutias, yaar. They'd be swearing, and saying all sorts of indecent shit, the childish motherfuckers" (p. 90) -- than there is in some of the oh-so-solemn pontifications. (Although Roberts has posted three philosophical "seminars" onto his website; click the link labeled "philosophy" on the left-hand side of the page if interested.)
Oh, the subject line of this entry -- “Gora kaun hain?” -- is Hindi for "Who's the white guy?," which is also in many ways the subject of Shantaram.
Shantaram has been dubbed a roman-à-clef, although Roberts has apparently taken pains to state that most of the novel's events are fictional. (Although in 2004, he told BBC News Online: "'"All the substantial events which happened to Linbaba [the main character / "Mary Sue" figure] are real events. Some of the other events were invented to help with the narrative.'") It is certainly a Bildungsroman ("Shantaram," the first name that the village women of Sunder bestow upon Linbaba, means "man of peace" or "man of God's peace"; p. 136), and, for all of its physical heft, it's only the second book of a planned quartet (!). A movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan is due to start production this month.
While I'm liking it thus far -- and it's making Suketu Mehta's much-lauded 2004 book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found move up on my reading list -- it's showing an alarming tendency to slip into "Mumbai With Morrie" mode: much of the spiritual "uplift" thus far doesn't always observe the border between edification and saccharine, and anybody who has ever thumbed through the works of Idries Shah is likely to drum his fingers with impatience when Roberts unlimbers his pithy apophthegms.
The cultural clashes -- and acceptances -- plus the humor and (half-) witty bits are what's keeping me reading, as well as the sheer busy-ness of the character's life. And for my money, there's more insight in some of the throwaway lines -- as when a spaghetti western-worshipping Indian named Vikram says, "So many Indian guys are chutias, yaar. They'd be swearing, and saying all sorts of indecent shit, the childish motherfuckers" (p. 90) -- than there is in some of the oh-so-solemn pontifications. (Although Roberts has posted three philosophical "seminars" onto his website; click the link labeled "philosophy" on the left-hand side of the page if interested.)
Oh, the subject line of this entry -- “Gora kaun hain?” -- is Hindi for "Who's the white guy?," which is also in many ways the subject of Shantaram.