Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘Sapna did that?’

  ‘His followers did it, Lin,’ Abdul Ghani answered for him. ‘That, and at least six more murders like it, in the last month. Some were even more hideous killings.’

  ‘I’ve heard people talking about Sapna, but I thought it was just a story, like an urban legend. I haven’t read anything about it in any of the newspapers, and I read them every day.’

  ‘This matter is being handled in the most careful way,’ Khaderbhai explained. ‘The government and the police have asked for co-operation from the newspapers. They have been reported as unrelated things, as deaths that happened during simple, unconnected robberies. But we know that Sapna’s followers have committed them, because the blood of the victims was used to write the word Sapna on the walls and the floors. And despite the terrible violence of the attacks, not much of any real value was stolen from the victims. For now, this Sapna does not officially exist. But it is only a matter of time before everyone knows of him, and of what has been done in his name.’

  ‘And you … you don’t know who he is?’

  ‘We are very interested in him, Lin,’ Khaderbhai answered. ‘What do you think about this poster? It has been seen in many markets and hutments, and it is written in English, as you see. Your language.’

  I sensed a vague hint of accusation in those last two words. Although I had nothing whatsoever to do with Sapna and knew almost nothing about him, my face reddened with that special guilty blush of the completely innocent man.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I can help you with this.’

  ‘Come now, Lin,’ Abdul Ghani chided. ‘There must be some impressions, some thoughts, that occur to you. There is no commitment here. Don’t be shy. Just say the first things that come to your mind.’

  ‘Well,’ I began reluctantly, ‘the first thing is, I think that this Sapna—or whoever wrote this poster—may be a Christian.’

  ‘A Christian!’ Khaled laughed. He was a young man, perhaps thirty-five, with short dark hair and soft green eyes. A thick scar swept in a smooth curve from his left ear to the corner of his mouth, stiffening that side of his face. His dark hair was streaked with premature white and grey. It was an intelligent, sensitive face, more scarred by its anger and hatreds than it was by the knife-wound on his cheek. ‘They’re supposed to love their enemies, not disembowel them!’

  ‘Let him finish,’ Khaderbhai smiled. ‘Go on, Lin. What makes you think Sapna is a Christian fellow?’

  ‘I didn’t say Sapna is a Christian—just that whoever wrote this stuff is using Christian words and phrases. See, here, in the first part, where he says I am come … and … Do this in memory of me—those words can be found in the Bible. And here, in the third paragraph … I am the truth in their world of lies, I am the light in their darkness of greed, my way of blood is your freedom—he’s paraphrasing something … I am the Way and the Truth and the Light … and it’s also in the Bible. Then in the last lines, he says … Blessed are the killers, for they shall steal lives in my name—that’s from the Sermon on the Mount. It’s all been taken from the Bible, and there’s probably more in here that I don’t recognise. But it’s all been changed around, it’s as though this guy, whoever wrote this stuff, has taken bits of the Bible, and written it upside down.’

  ‘Upside down? Explain please?’ Madjid asked.

  ‘I mean, it’s against the ideas of the words in the Bible, but uses the same kind of language. He’s written it to have exactly the opposite meaning and intention of the original. He’s kind of turned the Bible on its head.’

  I might’ve said more, but Abdul Ghani ended the discussion abruptly.

  ‘Thank you, Lin. You’ve been a big help. But let’s change the subject. I, for one, do sincerely dislike talking about such unpleasantness as this Sapna lunatic. I only brought it up because Khader asked me to—and Khader Khan’s wish is my command. But we really should move on now. If we don’t get started on our theme for tonight, we’ll miss out altogether. So, let’s have a smoke, and talk of other things. It’s our custom for the guest to start, so will you be so kind?’

  Farid rose and placed a huge, ornate hookah, with six snaking lines, on the floor between us next to the table. He passed the smoking tubes out, and squatted next to the hookah with several matches held ready to strike. The others closed off their smoking tubes with their thumbs and, as Farid played a flame over the tulip-shaped bowl, I puffed it alight. It was the mix of hashish and marijuana known as ganga-jamuna, named after the two holy rivers, Ganges and Jamner. It was so potent, and came with such force from the water-pipe, that almost at once my bloodshot eyes failed in focus and I experienced a mild, hallucinatory effect: the blurring at the edges of other people’s faces, and a minuscule time-delay in their movements. The Lewis Carrolls, Karla called it. I’m so stoned, she used to say, I’m getting the Lewis Carrolls. So much smoke passed from the tube that I swallowed it and belched it out again. I closed off the pipe, and watched in slow motion as the others smoked, one after another. I’d just begun to master the sloppy grin that dumped itself on the plasticine muscles of my face when it was my turn to smoke again.

  It was a serious business. There was no laughing or smiling. There was no conversation, and no man met another’s eye. The men smoked with the same mirthless, earnest impassiveness I might’ve found on a long ride in an elevator full of strangers.

  ‘Now, Mr. Lin,’ Khaderbhai said, smiling graciously as Farid removed the hookah and set about cleaning the ash-filled bowl. ‘It is also our custom for the guest to give us the theme for discussion. This is usually a religious theme, but it need not be so. What would you like to talk about?’

  ‘I … I … I’m not sure what you mean?’ I stammered, my brain soundlessly exploding in fractal repetitions of the pattern in the carpet beneath my feet.

  ‘Give us a subject, Lin. Life and death, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal,’ Abdul Ghani explained, waving a plump hand in effete little circles with each couplet. ‘We are like a debating society here, you see. We meet every month, at least one time, and when our business and private matters are finished, we talk about philosophical subjects and the suchlike. It’s our amusement. And now we have you, an Englishman, to give us a subject to discuss, in your language.’

  ‘I’m not English, actually.’

  ‘Not English? Then what are you?’ Madjid demanded to know. Deep suspicions were planted in the furrows of his frown.

  It was a good question. The false passport in my backpack in the slum said that I was a New Zealand citizen. The business card in my pocket said that I was an American named Gilbert Parker. People in the village at Sunder had re-named me Shantaram. In the slum they knew me as Linbaba. A lot of people in my own country knew me as a face on a wanted poster. But is it my own country, I asked myself. Do I have a country?

  It wasn’t until I’d asked myself the question that I realised I already had the answer. If I did have a country, a nation of the heart, it was India. I knew that I was as much a refugee, a displaced and stateless person, as the thousands of Afghans, Iranians, and others who’d come to Bombay across the burning bridge; those exiles who’d taken shovels of hope, and set about burying the past in the earth of their own lives.

  ‘I’m an Australian,’ I said, admitting it for the first time since I’d arrived in India, and obeying an instinct that warned me to tell Khaderbhai the truth. Strangely, I felt it to be more of a lie than any alias I’d ever used.

  ‘How very interesting,’ Abdul Ghani remarked, lifting one eyebrow in a sage nod to Khaderbhai. ‘And what will you have as a subject, Lin?’

  Any subject?’ I asked, stalling for time.

  ‘Yes, your choice. Last week we discussed patriotism—the obligations of a man to God, and what he owes to the state. A most engaging theme. What will you have us discuss this week?’

  ‘Well, there’s a line in that poster of Sapna’s … our suffering is our religion—something like that. It made me think of something else.
The cops came again, a few days ago, and smashed down a lot of houses in the zhopadpatti, and while we were watching it one of the women near me said … our duty is to work, and to suffer—or as near to that as I can make out. She said it very calmly and simply, as if she accepted it, and was resigned to it, and understood it completely. But I don’t understand it, and I don’t think I ever will. So, maybe the question could be about that. Why do people suffer? Why do bad people suffer so little? And why do good people suffer so much? I mean, I’m not talking about me—all the suffering I’ve gone through, I brought most of it on myself. And God knows, I’ve caused a lot of it to other people. But I still don’t understand it—especially not the suffering that the people in the slum go through. So … suffering. We could talk about that … do you think?’

  I trailed off a little lamely into the silence that greeted my suggestion, but moments later I was rewarded with a warmly approving smile from Khaderbhai.

  ‘It is a good theme, Lin. I knew that you would not disappoint us. Majidbhai, I will call on you to start us on this talk.’

  Madjid cleared his throat and turned a gruff smile on his host. He scratched at his bushy eyebrows with thumb and forefinger, and then plunged into the discussion with the confident air of a man much used to expressing his opinions.

  ‘Suffering, let me see. I think that suffering is a matter of choice. I think that we do not have to suffer anything in this life, if we are strong enough to deny it. The strong man can master his feelings so completely that it is almost impossible to make him suffer. When we do suffer things, like pain and so, it means that we have lost control. So I will say that suffering is a human weakness.’

  ‘Achaa-cha,’ Khaderbhai murmured, using the repetitive form of the Hindi word for good, which translates as Yes, yes, or Fine, fine. ‘Your interesting idea makes me ask the question, where does strength come from?’

  ‘Strength?’ Madjid grunted. ‘Everyone knows that it … well … what are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing, my old friend. Only, is it not true that some of our strength comes from suffering? That suffering hardship makes us stronger? That those of us who have never known a real hardship, and true suffering, cannot have the same strength as others, who have suffered much? And if that is true, does that not mean that your argument is the same thing as saying that we have to be weak to suffer, and we have to suffer to be strong, so we have to be weak to be strong?

  ‘Yes,’ Madjid conceded, smiling. ‘Maybe a little bit is true, maybe a little bit of what you say. But I still think it is a matter of strength and weakness.’

  ‘I don’t accept everything that our brother Madjid said,’ Abdul Ghani put in, ‘but I do agree that there is an element of control that we have over suffering. I don’t think you can deny that.’

  ‘Where do we get this control, and how?’ Khaderbhai asked.

  ‘I would say that it is different for all of us, but that it happens when we grow up, when we mature and pass from the childishness of our youthful tears, and become adults. I think that it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering. I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realisation. Suffering, you see, is a kind of anger. We rage against the unfairness, the injustice of our sad and sorry lot. And this boiling resentment, you see, this anger, is what we call suffering. It is also what leads us to the hero curse, I might add.’

  ‘Hero curse! Enough of your hero curses! You bring every subject back to this,’ Madjid growled, scowling to match the smug smile of his portly friend.

  ‘Abdul has a pet theory, Lin,’ said Khaled, the dour Palestinian. ‘He believes that certain men are cursed with qualities, such as great courage, that make them commit desperate acts. He calls it the hero curse, the thing that compels them to lead other men to bloodshed and chaos. He might be right, I think, but he goes on about it so much he drives us all crazy.’

  ‘Leaving that aside, Abdul,’ Khaderbhai persisted, ‘let me ask you one question about what you have said. Is there a difference, would you say, between suffering that we experience, and suffering that we cause for others?’

  ‘Of course, yes. What are you getting at, Khader?’

  ‘Just that if there are at least two kinds of suffering, quite different to each other, one that we feel, and one that we cause others to feel, they can hardly both be the anger that you spoke of. Isn’t it so? Which one is which, would you say?’

  ‘Why … ha!’ Abdul Ghani laughed. ‘You’ve got me there, Khader, you old fox! You always know when I’m just making an argument for the sake of it, na? And just when I thought I was being bloody clever, too! But don’t worry, I’ll think it around, and come back at you again.’

  He snatched a chunk of sweet barfi from the plate on the table, bit a piece of it, and munched happily. He gestured to the man on his right, thrusting the sweet in his pudgy fingers.

  ‘And what about you, Khaled? What have you to say about Lin’s topic?’

  ‘I know that suffering is the truth,’ Khaled said quietly. His teeth were clenched. ‘I know that suffering is the sharp end of the whip, and not suffering is the blunt end—the end that the master holds in his hand.’

  ‘Khaled, dear fellow,’ Abdul Ghani complained. ‘You are more than ten years my junior, and I think of you as dearly as I would of my own younger brother, but I must tell you that this is a most depressing thought, and you’re disturbing the good pleasure we’ve gained from this excellent charras.’

  ‘If you’d been born and raised in Palestine, you’d know that some people are born to suffer. And it never stops, for them. Not for a second. You’d know where real suffering comes from. It’s the same place where love and freedom and pride are born. And it’s the same place where those feelings and ideals die. That suffering never stops. We only pretend it does. We only tell ourselves it does, to make the kids stop whimpering in their sleep.’

  He stared down at his strong hands, glowering at them as if at two despised and defeated enemies who were pleading for his mercy. A gloomy silence began to thicken in the air around us, and instinctively we looked to Khaderbhai. He sat cross-legged, stiff-backed, rocking slowly in his place and seeming to spool out a precise measure of respectful reflection. At last, he nodded to Farid, inviting him to speak.

  ‘I think that our brother Khaled is right, in a way,’ Farid began quietly, almost shyly. He turned his large, dark brown eyes on Khaderbhai. Encouraged by the older man’s nod of interest, he continued. ‘I think that happiness is a really thing, a truly thing, but it is what makes us crazy people. Happiness is a so strange and power thing that it makes us to be sick, like a germ sort of thing. And suffering is what cures us of it, the too much happiness. The—how do you say it, bhari vazan?’

  ‘The burden,’ Khaderbhai translated for him. Farid spoke a phrase rapidly in Hindi, and Khader gave it to us in such an elegantly poetic English that I realised, through the haze of the stone, how much better his English was than he’d led me to believe at our first meeting. ‘The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that is it what I want to say. Without the suffering, the happiness would squash us down.’

  ‘This is a very interesting thought, Farid,’ Khaderbhai said, and the young Maharashtrian glowed with pleasure in the praise.

  I felt a tiny twitch of jealousy. The sense of well-being bestowed by Khaderbhai’s benignant smile was as intoxicating as the heady mixture we’d smoked in the hookah pipe. The urge to be a son to Abdel Khader Khan, to earn the blessing of his praise, was overwhelming. The hollow space in my heart where a father’s love might’ve been, should’ve been, wrapped itself around the contours of his form, and took the features of his face. The high cheekbones and closely cropped silver beard, the sensual lips and deep-set amber eyes, became the perfect father’s face.

  I look back on that
time now—at my readiness to serve him as a son might serve a father, at my willingness to love him, in fact, and at how quickly and unquestioningly it happened in my life—and I wonder how much of it came from the great power that he wielded in the city, his city. I’d never felt so safe, anywhere in the world, as I did in his company. And I did hope that in the river of his life I might wash away the scent, and shake off the hounds. I’ve asked myself a thousand times, through the years, if I would’ve loved him so swiftly and so well if he’d been powerless and poor.

  Sitting there, then, in that domed room, feeling the twinge of jealousy when he smiled at Farid and praised him, I knew that although Khaderbhai had spoken of adopting me as his son, on our first meeting, it was really I who’d adopted him. And while the discussion continued around me, I spoke the words, quite clearly, in the secret voice of prayer and incantation … Father, father, my father …

  ‘You do not share our joy at the speaking of English, Sobhan Uncle,’ Khaderbhai said, addressing the tough, grizzled older man on his right. ‘So please, permit me to answer for you. You will say, I know, that the Koran tells us how our sin and wrong-doing is the cause of our suffering, isn’t it so?’

  Sobhan Mahmoud wagged his head in assent, his gleaming eyes nesting under a tufted ledge of grey eyebrows. He seemed amused by Khaderbhai’s guess at his position on the theme.

  ‘You will say that living by right principles, according to the teachings of the Holy Koran, will banish suffering from the life of a good Muslim, and lead him to the eternal bliss of heaven when life is at an end.’

  ‘We all know what Sobhan Uncle thinks,’ Abdul Ghani cut in, impatiently. ‘None of us will disagree with your arguments, Uncle-ji, but you must permit me to say that you are inclined to be a little extreme, na? I well remember the time that you beat young Mahmoud with a rod of bamboo because he cried when his mother died. It is, of course, true that we should not question the will of Allah, but a touch of sympathy, in these matters, is only human, isn’t it? But be that as it may, what I am interested in is your opinion, Khader. Please tell us, what do you think about suffering?’