Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  Kishan grinned as widely.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Lin. He wants you to pat his tummies.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He really wants you to give it a pat,’ he persisted.

  ‘Tell him I’m flattered, and I think it’s a fine tummies. But tell him I think I’ll pass, Prabu.’

  ‘Just give it a little pat, Lin.’

  ‘No,’ I said, more firmly.

  Kishan’s grin widened, and he raised his eyebrows several times, in encouragement. He still held the shirt up to his chest, exposing the round, hairy paunch.

  ‘Go on, Lin. A few pats only. It won’t bite you, my father’s tummies.’

  Sometimes you have to surrender, Karla said, before you win. And she was right. Surrender is at the heart of the Indian experience. I gave in. Glancing around me, on the deserted track, I reached out and patted the warm and fuzzy belly.

  Just then, of course, the tall green stalks of millet beside us on the path separated to reveal four dark brown faces. They were young men. They stared at us, their eyes wide with the kind of amazement that’s afraid, appalled, and delighted at the same time.

  Slowly, and with as much dignity as I could muster, I withdrew my hand from Kishan’s stomach. He looked at me, and then at the others, with one eyebrow raised and the corners of his mouth drawn down into the smug smile of a police prosecutor, resting his case.

  ‘I don’t want to intrude on your dad’s moment here, Prabu, but don’t you think we should be getting along?’

  ‘Challo!’ Kishan announced, making a guess at the meaning of my words. Let’s go!

  As we loaded our gear and climbed into the back of the cart, Kishan took his seat on the yoke attached to the ox-bow, raised a long bamboo stick that had a nail driven into the end of it, and moved us off with a tremendous blow to the animal’s haunches.

  Responding to the violent blow, the ox gave a lurch forward, and then set off with ponderous, thudding slowness. Our steady but very sluggish progress caused me to wonder at the choice of that beast, above others, to perform the task. It seemed to me that the Indian ox, known as the bailie, was surely the slowest harness animal in the world. If I’d climbed down from the cart, and walked at a moderate pace, I would’ve doubled its speed. In fact, the people who’d stared at us through the millet plants were rushing ahead through the dense crops at the sides of the path to announce our arrival.

  Every twenty to fifty metres or so, new faces appeared between the parted stalks of maize, corn, and millet. The expression on those faces was always the same—frank, stupefying, goggle-eyed amazement. If Prabaker and his father had captured a wild bear, and trained it to speak, the people couldn’t have reacted with more gape-mouthed astonishment.

  ‘The people are too happy’ Prabaker laughed. ‘You are the first person from foreign to visit my village in twenty-one years. The last foreign fellow coming here was from Belgian. That was twenty-one years ago. All the people who are less than twenty-one years old have never seen a foreigner with their own eyes. That last fellow, that one from Belgian, he was a good man. But you are a very, very good man, Lin. The people will love you too much. You will be so happy here, you will be outside yourself. You will see.’

  The people who stared at me from the groves and bushes at the side of the road seemed more anguished and threatened than happy. In the hope of dispelling that trepidation, I began to practise my Indian head-wiggle. The reaction was immediate. The people smiled, laughed, wiggled their heads in return, and ran ahead, shouting to their neighbours about the entertaining spectacle that was plodding along the track towards them.

  To ensure the unflagging progress of the ox, Kishan beat the animal fiercely and often. The stick rose and fell with a resounding smack at regular intervals of minutes. The rhythm of those heavy blows was punctuated by sharp jabs at the animal’s flanks with the nail attached to the end of the stick. Each thrust penetrated the thick hide, and raised a little tuft of cream brown fur.

  The ox didn’t react to those assaults, other than to continue its lumbering, drag-footed advance along the path. Nevertheless, I suffered for the beast. Each blow and jab accumulated within my sympathy until it was more than I could bear.

  ‘Prabu, do me a favour, please ask your father to stop hitting the animal.’

  ‘Stop … stop hitting?’

  ‘Yeah. Ask him to stop hitting the ox, please.’

  ‘No, it is not possible, Lin,’ he replied, laughing.

  The stick slammed into the broad back of the ox, and was followed by two quick jabs of the nail.

  ‘I mean it, Prabu. Please ask him to stop.’

  ‘But, Lin …’

  I flinched, as the stick came down again, and my expression pleaded with him to intervene.

  Reluctantly, Prabaker passed on my request to his father. Kishan listened intently, and then laughed helplessly in a fit of giggles. After a time, he perceived his son’s distress, however, and the laughter subsided, and finally died, in a flurry of questions. Prabaker did his best to answer them, but at last he turned his increasingly forlorn expression to me once more.

  ‘My father, Lin, he wants to know why you want him to stop using the stick.’

  ‘I don’t want him to hurt the ox.’

  This time Prabaker laughed, and when he was able to translate my words for his father, they both laughed. They talked for a while, still laughing, and then Prabaker addressed me again.

  ‘My father is asking, is it true that in your country people are eating cows?’

  ‘Well, yes, it’s true. But …’

  ‘How many of the cows do you eat there?’

  ‘We … well … we export them from my country. We don’t eat them all ourselves.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Oh, hundreds of thousands of them. Maybe millions, if you count the sheep. But we use humane methods, and we don’t believe in unnecessarily hurting them.’

  ‘My father is saying, he thinks it is very hard to eat one of these big animals, without hurting it.’

  He then sought to explain my nature to his father by recounting for him the story of how I’d given up my seat, on the train journey, to allow an elderly man to sit, how I shared my fruit and other food with my fellow passengers, and how I often gave to beggars on the streets of Bombay.

  Kishan pulled the cart to a sudden stop, and jumped down from the wooden yoke. He fired a stream of commands at Prabaker, who finally turned to me to translate.

  ‘My father wants to know if we have it any presents with us, from Bombay, for him and the family. I told him we did. Now he wants us to give it those presents to him here, and in this place, before we go any more along the road.’

  ‘He wants us to go through our bags, here, on this track?’

  ‘Yes. He is afraid that when we get to Sunder village, you will have a good hearts, and give it away all those presents to other people, and he will not get his presents. He wants it all his presents now.’

  So we did. Under the indigo banner of early-evening sky, on the scratch of track between fields of undulant maize and millet, we spread out the colours of India, the yellows and reds and peacock blues of shirts and lungi wraps and saris. Then we repacked them, with fragrant soaps and sewing needles, incense and safety pins, perfume and shampoo and massage oils, so that one full bag contained only those things we’d brought for Prabaker’s family. With that bag safely tucked behind him on the rails of the ox-cart harness, Kishan Mango Kharre launched us on the last leg of our journey by striking the dumbly patient ox more often, and with a good deal more vigour, than he’d done before I tried to intercede on its behalf.

  And then, at last, it was the voices of women and children, raised in laughter and cries of excitement, that welcomed us. The sounds reached us moments before we turned the last sharp curve and entered the village of Sunder along a single, wide street of swept, pressed, golden river sand. On either side were the houses, distributed so that no house fa
ced into another across the street. The houses were round, made of pale brown mud, with round windows and curved doors. The roofs were made with little domes of thatched grasses.

  Word had spread that the foreigner was arriving. The two hundred souls of Sunder village had been joined by hundreds more from neighbouring villages. Kishan drove us into the throng, stopping outside his own home. He was grinning so widely that everyone who looked at him was moved to laugh in return.

  We climbed down from the cart, and stood with our luggage at our feet in the centre of six hundred stares and whispers. A breath-filled silence settled on the crowd, packed so tightly that each one pressed upon his neighbour. They were so close to me that I could feel the breath upon my face. Six hundred pairs of eyes fixed me with the intensity of their fascination. No-one spoke. Prabaker was at my side, and although he smiled and enjoyed the celebrity that the moment gave him, he too was awed by the press of attention and the surrounding wall of wonderment and expectation.

  ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here,’ I said, in just the serious tone of voice that would’ve been funny if there’d been a single person in the crowd who understood the joke. No-one did, of course, and the silence thickened, as even the faint murmurs died away.

  What do you say to a huge crowd of strangers who are waiting for you to say something, and who don’t speak your language?

  My backpack was at my feet. In the top flap pocket there was a souvenir that a friend had given me. It was a jester’s cap, in black and white, complete with bells on the ends of its three cloth horns. The friend, an actor in New Zealand, had made the jester’s cap as part of a costume. At the airport, with minutes to go before my flight to India, he’d given me the cap as a good luck charm, a remembrance of him, and I’d stuffed it into the top of my backpack.

  There’s a kind of luck that’s not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that’s not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.

  I took the jester’s cap out of the pack and put it on, pulling it tight under my chin, and straightening the cloth horns with my fingers. Everyone at the front of the crowd drew back with a little inrushing gasp of alarm. Then I smiled, and wiggled my head, ringing the bells.

  ‘Hello, folks!’ I said. ‘It’s show time!’

  The effect was electrifying. Everyone laughed. The entire group of women, children, and men erupted as one, laughing and joking and crying out. One person reached out to touch me on the shoulder. The children at the front reached for my hands. Then everyone within grasping distance patted, stroked, and grabbed me. I caught Prabaker’s eye. The look of joy and pride I found there was a kind of prayer.

  He permitted the gentle assault for some minutes, and then asserted his authority over the new attraction by clearing the crowd away. He succeeded, at last, in opening the way to his father’s house and, as we entered the dark circle of Kishan’s home, the chattering, laughing crowd began to disperse.

  ‘You must have a bath, Lin. After such a long travel you must be smelling unhappy. Come this way. My sisters have already heated the water on the fire. The pots are ready for your bath. Come.’

  We passed through a low arch, and he led me to an area beside the house that was enclosed on three sides by hanging tatami mats. Flat river stones formed a shower base, and three large clay pots of warm water were arranged near them. A channel had been dug and smoothed out, allowing water to run off behind the house. Prabaker told me that a small brass jug was to be used to tip water over my body, and gave me the soap dish.

  I’d been unlacing my boots while he spoke, and I cast them aside, threw off my shirt, and pulled off my jeans.

  ‘Lin!’ Prabaker screamed in panic, leaping, in a single bound, across the two metres that separated us. He tried to cover my body with his hands, but then looked around in anguish to see that the towel was on my backpack, a further two metres away. He jumped for the towel, snatched it up, and jumped back, giving a little shout of panic—Yaaah!—each time. He wrapped the towel around me, and looked around in terror.

  ‘Have you gone crazy Lin? What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying to … take a shower …’

  ‘But like that? Like that?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Prabu? You told me to take a shower. You brought me here to have a shower. So, I’m trying to take a shower, but you’re jumping around like a rabbit. What’s your problem?’

  ‘You were naked, Lin! Naked, without any clothes also!’

  ‘That’s how I take a shower,’ I said, exasperated by his mysterious terror. He was darting about, peering through the tatami matting at various places. ‘That’s how everyone takes a shower, isn’t it?’

  ‘No! No! No, Lin!’ he corrected, returning to face me. A desperate expression contorted his normally happy features.

  ‘You don’t take your clothes off?’

  ‘No, Lin! This is India. Nobody can take his clothes off, not even to wash his bodies. This is India. Nobody is ever naked in India. And especially, nobody is naked without clothes.’

  ‘So … how do you take a shower?’

  ‘We wear it the underpants, for having a bath in India.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine,’ I said, dropping the towel to reveal my black jockey shorts. ‘I’m wearing underpants.’

  ‘Yaaah!’ Prabaker screamed, diving for the towel and covering me again.

  ‘Those teeny pieces, Lin? Those are not the underpants. Those are the under-underpants only. You must have it the over-underpants.’

  ‘The … over-underpants?’

  ‘Yes. Certainly. Like these, my ones, that I am wearing.’

  He unbuttoned his own trousers enough to show me that he wore a pair of green shorts under his clothes.

  ‘In India, the men are wearing this over-underpants, under their clothes, at all times, and in all the situations. Even if they are wearing under-underpants, still they are wearing over-underpants, over their unders. You see?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, just you wait here. I will get you some over-underpants for your bath. But don’t remove your towel. Please! Promise! If the people see you without the towel, in such teeny pieces, they will be like a wild people. Wait here!’

  He darted off, and after a few minutes returned with two pairs of red football shorts.

  ‘Here, Lin,’ he puffed. ‘You are such a big fellow, I hope we can get a good fits. These are from Fat Satish. He is so fat, I think they might fit you. I told him a story, and then he gave it this two pairs for you. I told him that on the journey you had loose motions, and you made such a mess in your over-underpants that we had to throw them away.’

  ‘You told him,’ I asked, ‘that I shit my pants?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Lin. I certainly couldn’t tell him that you have no over-underpants!’

  ‘Well, of course not.’

  ‘I mean, what would he be thinking about you?’

  ‘Thank you, Prabu,’ I muttered, through clenched teeth. If my tone had been any drier I wouldn’t have needed a towel.

  ‘That is my pleasure, Lin. I am your very good friend. So please, promise me that you will not be naked in India. Especially not without your clothes.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I am so glad you make this promise, Lin. You are my very good friend, too, isn’t it? Now I will take a bath also, like we are two brothers, and I will show you the Indian style.’

  So, we both took a shower, in the bathing area of his father’s house. Watching him, and following his lead, I wet my body in a first rinse with two jugs of water from one of the large pots, and worked the soap beneath my shorts without ever taking them off. After the final rinse, and a quick dry off with the towel, he taught me how to tie a lungi around the wet shorts. The lungi was a sarong-like rectangle of co
tton, worn from waist to ankle. He gathered two long ends or corners of the lungi at the front, and then passed them around my waist, and rolled them under the top edge, in the small of my back. Within the encircling lungi, I removed and discarded my wet shorts and slipped on a dry pair of shorts underneath. With that technique, Prabaker assured me, I could take a shower in the open, and not offend his neighbours.

  After the shower, and a delicious meal of dhal, rice, and homemade flatbreads, Prabaker and I watched as his parents and his two sisters opened their presents. We drank tea then, and for two hours we answered questions about me, and my home and family. I tried to answer truthfully—without the crucial truth that in my hunted exile, I didn’t think I would ever see my home or family again. At last, Prabaker announced that he was too tired to translate any more, and that I should be permitted to rest.

  A bed made from the wood of coconut trees and with a stretched mattress, formed from a web of coconut-fibre rope, was set up for me in the open, outside Kishan’s house. It was Kishan’s own bed. Prabaker told me that it might take two days to have a new one made to his father’s satisfaction. Until then Kishan would sleep beside his son on the floor of the house, while I used his bed. I tried to resist, but my protests drowned in the sea of their gentle, relentless insistence. So I lay down on the poor farmer’s bed, and my first night in that first Indian village ended, as it had begun, with surrender.

  Prabaker told me that his family and his neighbours were concerned that I would be lonely, that I must be lonely, in a strange place, without my own family. They decided to sit with me on that first night, mounting a vigil in the dark until they were sure that I was peacefully deep in sleep. After all, the little guide remarked, people in my country, in my village, would do the same for him, if he went there and missed his family, wouldn’t they?

  They sat on the ground around my low bed, Prabaker and his parents and his neighbours, keeping me company in the warm, dark, cinnamon-scented night, and forming a ring of protection around me. I thought that it would be impossible to sleep within a circle of spectators, but in minutes I began to float and drift on the murmuring tide of their voices; soft and rhythmic waves that swirled beneath a fathomless night of bright, whispering stars.