Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  The question was offensive, but his tone was entirely gentle and compassionate. I stared into his eyes, and was sure that he meant no offence or harm. It was Khader who’d rescued me from the Indian prison, after all and, indirectly, from the Australian prison that we were discussing.

  ‘You could say that,’ I answered calmly. ‘But that doesn’t change the principle. You don’t tell on people—not for any reason.’

  ‘I am not trying to trap you, Lin, or trick you. But you will agree, I think, from this example, that it is possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons.’ He smiled again, for the first time since the story of the escape had begun. ‘This will come back to us, at another time. I have raised it in this way because it is a very important point about how we do live our lives, and how we should live our lives. There is no need to talk of it now, but this question will come back to us in another discussion, I am sure, so I would like you to remember it.’

  ‘And what about currencies?’ I asked, seizing the opportunity to change the subject away from me, and toward the rules of his moral universe once more. ‘Don’t currencies come under your heading of sin-full crimes?’

  ‘No. Not currencies,’ he said firmly. The voice was deep, the words surging upwards from the diaphragm into the chest, and passing through the rumbling gemstone-tumbler of his throat. What emerged was a tone of voice that resonated with the hypnotic piety of a sermoner, reading from the Koran, even as he talked of his most profitable crimes.

  ‘And gold smuggling?’

  ‘No. Not gold. Not passports. Not influence.’

  Influence was Khader’s euphemism for the full range of interactions between his mafia group and the society in which it thrived. They began with bribery, in a schedule of venalities ranging from insider trading to the securing of profitable tenders. When bribes failed, Khader’s influence extended to debt collection and protection rackets, aimed at businesses that operated in the areas he controlled. Not least in the spheres of his influence was intimidation, through force or blackmail, of political and bureaucratic recalcitrants.

  ‘So, how do you determine how much sin is in any one crime? Who judges that?’

  ‘Sin is a measure of evil,’ he replied, leaning back to allow the waiter to clear away his plate and the crumbs on the table in front of him.

  ‘Okay. How do you determine how much evil is in any one crime? Who judges the evil in it?’

  ‘If you really want to know about good and evil, we’ll have a walk, and talk further.’

  He rose, and Nazeer, his constant companion, rose like his shadow and followed him to the sink, tap, and mirror housed in an alcove that was set into the back wall of the restaurant. They washed their hands and faces, hawking and spitting noisily into the sink, as did every other man in the restaurant at the conclusion of his meal. When my turn at washing, hawking, and spitting was complete, I found Khaderbhai talking with the owner of the Saurabh on the footpath outside the restaurant. When they separated, the owner embraced Khader and asked for his blessing. The man was a Hindu, and his forehead bore the mark of blessing he’d received at a temple only hours before. Yet when Khaderbhai held the man’s hands in his own, and softly mumbled a Muslim blessing, the devout Hindu responded with delight and gratitude.

  Khader and I strolled back towards Colaba. Stocky, ape-like Nazeer walked a metre or so behind us, scowling at the street. At Sassoon Dock we crossed the road and passed beneath the arch at the main entrance to the old dockyard. The smell of prawns, drying in the sun in pink mountains, made my stomach flip, but when we caught sight of the sea the stench was lost in the strong breeze. Nearer to the docks we threaded our way through crowds of men pushing handcarts, and women carrying baskets on their heads, all bearing crushed ice and a burden of fish. Factories that produced the ice and processed the fish added their industrious clangour to the wailing of auctioneers and salesmen. At the edge of the dock itself, there were twenty large, wooden fishing boats, built to the same designs used for vessels that had sailed the Arabian Sea, on the Maharashtrian coast of India, five hundred years before. Here and there between them were larger, more expensive metal boats. The contrast between those rusted, graceless hulks and the elegant wooden boats beside them spoke a history, a modern saga, a world story that moved from life at sea, as a romantic calling, to the profiteer’s cold, efficient lusting for the bottom line.

  We sat on a wooden bench in a quiet, shaded corner of the dock where fishermen sometimes rested to share a meal. Khader stared at the vessels, which were shifting and genuflecting at their moorings on the lapping tide.

  His short hair and beard were almost white. The tight, unblemished skin of his lean face was tanned to the colour of sun-ripened wheat. I looked at the face—the long, fine nose and wide brow and upward curving lips—and wondered, not for the first time, and not for the last, if my love for him would cost me my life. Nazeer, ever watchful, stood near us and scanned the dock with a glowering expression that approved of nothing in the world but the man who sat beside me.

  ‘The history of the universe is a history of motion,’ Khader began, still looking at the boats nodding together like horses in harness. ‘The universe, as we know it, in this one of its many lives, began in an expansion that was so big, and so fast that we can talk about it, but we cannot in any truth understand it, or even imagine it. The scientists call this great expansion the Big Bang, although there was no explosion, in the sense of a bomb, or something like that. And the first moments after that great expansion, from the first fractions of attoseconds, the universe was like a rich soup made out of simple bits of things. Those bits were so simple that they were not even atoms yet. As the universe expanded and cooled down, these very tiny bits of things came together to make particles. Then the particles came together to make the first of the atoms. Then the atoms came together to make molecules. Then the molecules came together to make the first of the stars. Those first stars went through their cycles, and exploded in a shower of new atoms. The new atoms came together to make more stars and planets. All the stuff we are made of came from those dying stars. We are made out of stars, you and I. Do you agree with me so far?’

  ‘Sure,’ I smiled. ‘I don’t know where you’re going yet, but so far, so good.’

  ‘Precisely!’ he laughed. ‘So far, so good. You can check the science of what I am saying to you—as a matter of fact, I want you to check everything that I say, and everything you ever learn from anyone else. But I am sure that the science is right, within the limit of what we know. I have been studying these matters with a young physicist for some time now, and my facts are essentially correct.’

  ‘I’m happy to take your word for it,’ I said, and I was happy, just to have his company and his undivided attention.

  ‘Now, to continue, none of these things, none of these processes, none of these coming together actions are what one can describe as random events. The universe has a nature, for and of itself, something like human nature, if you like, and its nature is to combine, and to build, and to become more complex. It always does this. If the circumstances are right, bits of matter will always come together to make more complex arrangements. And this fact about the way that our universe works, this moving towards order, and towards combinations of these ordered things, has a name. In the western science it is called the tendency toward complexity, and it is the way the universe works.’

  Three fishermen dressed in lungis and singlets approached us shyly. One of them carried two wire baskets containing glasses of water and hot chai. Another grasped a plate bearing several sweet ladoo. The last man held a chillum and two golis of charras in his extended palms.

  ‘Will you drink tea, sir?’ one of the men asked politely in Hindi. ‘Will you smoke with us?’

  Khader smiled, and wagged his head. The men came forward quickly, handing glasses of chai to Khader, Nazeer, and me. They squatted on the ground in front of us and prepared their chillum. Khader received the honour of lighting the pipe, and
I took the second dumm. The pipe went twice around the group and was tipped up clean by the last man, who exhaled the word Kalaass … Finished… with his stream of blue smoke.

  Khader continued talking to me in English. I was sure that the men couldn’t understand him, but they remained with us, and watched his face intently.

  ‘To continue this point, the universe, as we know it, and from everything that we can learn about it, has been getting always more complex since it began. It does this because that is its nature. The tendency toward complexity has carried the universe from almost perfect simplicity to the kind of complexity that we see around us, everywhere we look. The universe is always doing this. It is always moving from the simple to the complex.’

  ‘I think I know where you’re going with this.’

  Khader laughed. The fishermen laughed with him.

  The universe,’ he continued, ‘this universe that we know, began in almost absolute simplicity, and it has been getting more complex for about fifteen billion years. In another billion years it will be still more complex than it is now. In five billion, in ten billion—it is always getting more complex. It is moving toward … something. It is moving toward some kind of ultimate complexity. We might not get there. An atom of hydrogen might not get there, or a leaf, or a man, or a planet might not get there, to that ultimate complexity. But we are all moving towards it—everything in the universe is moving towards it. And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to, is what I choose to call God. If you don’t like that word, God, call it the Ultimate Complexity. Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving toward it.’

  ‘Isn’t the universe a lot more random than that?’ I asked, sensing the drift of his argument, and seeking to head it off. ‘What about giant asteroids and so on? We, I mean our planet, could get smashed to fragments by a giant asteroid. In fact, there’s a statistical probability that major impacts will occur. And if our sun is dying—and one day it will—isn’t that the opposite of complexity? How does that fit in with the movement to complexity, if all this complex planet is smashed to atoms, and our sun dies?’

  ‘A good question,’ Khaderbhai replied. A happy smile revealed the run of his slightly gapped, ivory-cream teeth. He was enjoying himself in the discussion, and I realised that I’d never seen him quite so animated or enthused. His hands roved the space between us, illustrating some points and emphasising others. ‘Our planet may be smashed, it is true, and one day our beautiful sun will die. And we are, to the best of our knowledge, the most developed expression of the complexity in our bit of the universe. It would certainly be a major loss if we were to be annihilated. It would be a terrible waste of all that development. But the process would continue. We are, ourselves, expressions of that process. Our bodies are the children of all the suns and other stars that died, before us, making the atoms that we are made of. And if we were destroyed, by an asteroid, or by our own hand, well, somewhere else in the universe, our level of complexity, this level of complexity, with a consciousness capable of understanding the process, would be duplicated. I do not mean people exactly like us. I mean that thinking beings, that are as complex as we are, would develop, somewhere else in the universe. We would cease to exist, but the process would go on. Perhaps this is happening in millions of worlds, even as we speak. In fact, it is very likely that it is happening, all over the universe, because that is what the universe does.’

  It was my turn to laugh.

  ‘Okay okay. And you want to say—let me guess—that everything that helps this along is good, right? And anything that goes in the other direction—your spin on it is that it’s evil, na?’

  Khaderbhai turned his full attention on me, with one eyebrow raised in amusement or disapproval, or both. It was an expression I’d seen on Karla’s face more than once. He might’ve thought that my slightly mocking tone was rude. I didn’t mean it to be. It was defensive, in fact, because I couldn’t find a flaw in his logic, and I was profoundly impressed by his argument. Perhaps he was simply surprised. He told me once, much later, that one of the first things he liked about me was that I wasn’t afraid of him; and my fearlessness often took him by surprise with its impudence and its folly. Whatever the cause for his little smile and arched eyebrow, it was some time before he continued.

  ‘In essence, you are right. Anything that enhances, promotes, or accelerates this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is good,’ he said, pronouncing the words so slowly, and with such considered precision, that I was sure he’d spoken the phrases many times. ‘Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil. The wonderful thing about this definition of good and evil is that it is both objective and universally acceptable.’

  ‘Is anything really objective?’ I asked, believing myself to be on surer ground at last.

  ‘When we say that this definition of good and evil is objective, what we mean is that it is as objective as we can be at this time, and to the best of our knowledge about the universe. This definition is based on what we know about how the universe works. It is not based on the revealed wisdom of any one faith or political movement. It is common to the best principles of all of them, but it is based on what we know rather than what we believe. In that sense, it is objective. Of course, what we know about the universe, and our place in it, is constantly changing as we add more information and gain new insights. We are never perfectly objective about anything, that is true, but we can be less objective, or we can be more objective. And when we define good and evil on the basis of what we know—to the best of our knowledge at the present time—we are being as objective as possible within the imperfect limits of our understanding. Do you accept that point?’

  ‘When you say that objective doesn’t mean absolutely objective, then I accept it. But how can the different religions, not to mention the atheists and agnostics and the just plain confused, like me, ever find any definition universally acceptable? I don’t mean to be insulting, but I think most believers have got too much of a vested interest in their own God-and-Heaven franchises, if you know what I mean, to ever agree on anything.’

  ‘It is a fair point, and I am not offended,’ Khader mused, glancing at the silent fishermen sitting at his feet. He exchanged a broad smile with them and then continued. ‘When we say that this definition of good and evil is universally acceptable, what we mean is that any rational and reasonable person—any rational and reasonable Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or Jew or any atheist, for that matter—can accept that this is a reasonable definition of good and evil, because it is based on what we know about how the universe works.’

  ‘I think I understand what you’re saying,’ I offered when he fell silent. ‘But I don’t really follow you, when it comes to the … physics, I guess, of the universe. Why should we accept that as the basis of our morality?’

  ‘If I can give you an example, Lin, perhaps it will be clearer. I will use the analogy of the way we measure length, because it is very relevant to our time. You will agree, I think, that there is a need to define a common measure of length, yes?’

  ‘You mean, in yards and metres, and like that?’

  ‘Precisely. If we have no commonly agreed criterion for measuring length, we will never agree about how much land is yours, and how much is mine, or how to cut lengths of wood when we build a house. There would be chaos. We would fight over the land, and the houses would fall down. Throughout history, we have always tried to agree on a common way to measure length. Are you with me, once more, on this little journey of the mind?’

  ‘I’m still with you,’ I replied, laughing, and wondering where the mafia don’s argument was taking me.

  ‘Well, after the revolution in France, the scientists and government officials decided to put some sense into the system of measuring and weighing things. They introduced a decimal system based on a unit of length that they called the metre, from the Greek word metron, which has the meaning of a measure.’
r />   ‘Okay …’

  ‘And the first way they decided to measure the length of a metre was to make it one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the North Pole. But their calculations were based on the idea that the Earth was a perfect sphere, and the Earth, as we now know, is not a perfect sphere. They had to abandon that way of measuring a metre, and they decided, instead, to call it the distance between two very fine lines on a bar of platinum-iridium alloy.’

  ‘Platinum …’

  ‘Iridium. Yes. But platinum-iridium alloy bars decay and shrink, very slowly—even though they are very hard—and the unit of measure was constantly changing. In more recent times, scientists realised that the platinum-iridium bar they had been using as a measure would be a very different size in, say, a thousand years, than it is today.’

  ‘And … that was a problem?’

  ‘Not for the building of houses and bridges,’ Khaderbhai said, taking my point more seriously than I’d intended it to be.

  ‘But not nearly accurate enough for the scientists,’ I offered, more soberly.

  ‘No. They wanted an unchanging criterion against which to measure all other things. And after a few other attempts, using different techniques, the international standard measure for a metre was fixed, only last year, as the distance that a photon of light travels in a vacuum during, roughly, one three-hundred-thousandth of a second. Now, of course, this begs the question of how it came to be that a second is agreed upon as a measure of time. It is an equally fascinating story—I can tell it to you, if you would like, before we continue with the point about the metre?’

  ‘I’m … happy to stay with the metre right now,’ I demurred, laughing again in spite of myself.

  ‘Very well. I think that you can see my point here—we avoid chaos, in building houses and dividing land and so forth, by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of length. We call it a metre and, after many attempts, we decide upon a way to establish the length of that basic unit. In the same way, we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.’