Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  Not a few of those dreams were my own. I’d hired the girls and the musicians, not knowing what kind of show they’d planned to put on for Prabaker’s wedding. Chandra Mehta had recommended them to me, and he’d assured me that they always devised their own program. That first black-market money deal Mehta had asked me to transact—the ten thousand American dollars he’d wanted—had borne black fruit. Through him I’d met others in the film world who wanted gold, dollars, and documents. In the previous few months, my visits to the film studios had grown more frequent, and the profit for Khaderbhai accumulated steadily. There was a certain reciprocal cachet in the connection: the filmi types, as they were known in Bollywood, found it exhilarating to be associated, at a safe distance, with the notorious mafia don, and the Khan himself wasn’t indifferent to the glamour that laminated the movie world. When I approached Chandra Mehta for help in organising the dancers, two weeks before Prabaker’s wedding, he’d assumed that the Prabaker in question was an important goonda working for Khaderbhai. He put time and special care into the arrangements, selecting each girl from personal knowledge of her skills, and teaming them with a band of the best studio musicians. The show, when we finally saw it, would’ve satisfied the manager of the raunchiest nightclub in the city. The band played a long top ten of the season’s most popular songs. The girls sang and danced to every one of them, giving seductive and erotic emphasis to the sub-text of each phrase. Some of the thousands of neighbours and guests at the slum wedding were pleasantly scandalised, but most were delighted by the wickedness—Prabaker and Johnny first among them. And I, seeing for the first time how lubricious the uncensored versions of the dances were, gained a new appreciation of the subtler gestures I’d seen so often in the Hindi films.

  I gave Johnny Cigar five thousand American dollars as a wedding present. It was enough money for him to buy the little hut that he wanted in the Navy Nagar slum, near the spot where he’d been conceived. The Nagar was a legal slum, and purchasing the hut there meant the end of eviction fears. He would have a secure home from which to continue his work as unofficial accountant and tax consultant to the many hundreds of workers and small businesses in the surrounding slums.

  My present to Prabaker was the deed to his taxi. The owner of the small fleet of taxis sold the deed to me in a vicious bout of bare tooth-and-knuckle haggling. I paid too much for the vehicle and its licence, but the money meant nothing to me. It was black money, and black money runs through the fingers faster than legal, hard-earned money. If we can’t respect the way we earn it, money has no value. If we can’t use it to make life better for our families and loved ones, money has no purpose. Nevertheless, out of respect for the formalities of tradition, I damned the taxi fleet owner, at the conclusion of our deal, with that most polite and hideous of Indian business curses—May you have ten daughters, and may they all marry well!—a string of dowry commitments sure to exhaust all but the sturdiest fortunes.

  Prabaker was so pleased and excited with the gift that the gravity he’d assumed in the role of the sober groom exploded in a whooping cheer. He leapt to his feet and danced a few pumps of his hip-thrusting sexy dance before the solemnity of the occasion overwhelmed him once more, and he sat down with his bride. I joined the thick, gyrating jungle of men in front of the stage, and danced until my thin shirt clung to me like seaweed in a shallow wave.

  Returning to my apartment that night, I smiled to think how different Vikram’s wedding had been. Two days before Prabaker and Johnny wed their sister-brides, Vikram was married to Lettie. Against the passionate and occasionally violent opposition of his family, Vikram had opted for a registry office ceremony. He’d responded to the tears and pleading of his loved ones with one formulaic phrase: This is the modern India, yaar. Few of his family members could bring themselves to face the agony of that public repudiation of the ancient, gorgeously elaborate Hindu wedding they’d long planned for him. In the end, it was only his sister and his mother who joined the little circle of Lettie’s friends, and watched as the bride and groom promised to love and honour one another for the rest of their days. There was no music, no colour, and no dancing. Lettie wore a burnt-gold suit, with a broad, gold straw hat bearing organdie roses. Vikram wore a three-quarter-length black coat, a black-and-white brocade vest, black gaucho pants with silver piping, and his beloved hat. The ceremony was over in minutes and then Vikram and I half-carried his grief-stricken mother to her waiting car.

  On the day after their wedding, I drove Vikram and Lettie to the airport. Their plan was to repeat the ceremony in London with Lettie’s family. While Lettie phoned her mother to confirm their arrival time, Vikram seized the opportunity for a heart-to-heart with me.

  ‘Thanks for the work you did on my passport, man,’ he grinned. ‘That fuckin’ drug conviction in Denmark—it’s only a little thing, but it could’ve given me a big headache, yaar.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And the dollars. That was a fuckin’ good rate you got for us. I know you did a special deal on that, yaar, and I’ll return the favour, somehow, when we get back.’

  ‘It’s cool.’

  ‘You know, Lin, you really ought to settle down, man. I don’t mean to jinx up your scene or anything. I’m only saying it as a friend, as a friend who loves you like a brother. You’re heading for a big fall, man. I got a bad feeling. I … I think you should settle down, like.’

  ‘Settle down …’

  ‘Yeah, man. That’s the whole point of it, yaar.’

  ‘The whole point of … what?’

  ‘That’s what the whole fuckin’ game is all about. You’re a man. That’s what a man has to do. I don’t mean to get into your personal shit, but it’s kind of sad that you don’t know that already.’

  I laughed, but he held the serious frown.

  ‘Lin, a man has to find a good woman, and when he finds her he has to win her love. Then he has to earn her respect. Then he has to cherish her trust. And then he has to, like, go on doing that for as long as they live. Until they both die. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the most important thing in the world. That’s what a man is, yaar. A man is truly a man when he wins the love of a good woman, earns her respect, and keeps her trust. Until you can do that, you’re not a man.’

  ‘Tell that to Didier.’

  ‘No, man, you’re not getting it. It’s just the same for Didier, but with him it’s a good guy he has to find and love. It’s the same for all of us. What I’m trying to tell you is that you found a good woman. You found her already. Karla is a good woman, man. And you earned her fuckin’ respect. She told me a couple of times, man—about the cholera and all that in the zhopadpatti. You knocked her out with all that Red Cross shit, man. She respects you! But you don’t cherish her trust. You don’t trust her, Lin, because you don’t trust yourself. And I’m afraid for you, man. Without a good woman, a man like you—men like you and me—we’re just asking for trouble, yaar.’

  Lettie approached us. The grim purpose dimmed in his eyes, washed away by the look of love he turned on her.

  ‘They’re calling our flight, Lin, me darlin’,’ she said. Her smile was sadder than I’d expected, and wounding, somehow, because of it. ‘We better go. Here, I want you to have this, as a present from both of us.’

  She handed me a folded strip of black cloth, about a metre long and a hand-span wide. When I opened it out I found a small card in the centre.

  ‘It’s the blindfold,’ she said. ‘You know, from the train, on the roof, the day Vikram proposed. We want you to have it—as a souvenir, you know. And on the card, that’s Karla’s address. She wrote to us. She’s still in Goa, but in a different part. Just, you know, if you’re interested. Goodbye, darlin’. Take care.’

  I watched them leave, happy for them, but too busy with Khader’s work and the preparations for Prabaker’s wedding to give much thought to Vikram’s advice. Then the visit to Anand, the last visit, had pushed Vikram’s voice even deeper into the choir of competing s
peeches, warnings, and opinions. But as I sat alone in my apartment on the night of Prabaker’s wedding, and took the note and the black strip of the blindfold from my pocket, I remembered every word he’d said to me. I sipped at a drink and smoked cigarettes in a silence so profound that I could hear the susurrus of the blindfold’s soft fabric rustle and slip between my fingers. The seductive, bell-bejewelled dancers had been escorted to their bus, and paid a respectful bonus. Prabaker and Johnny had led their brides away to taxis that waited to take them to a simple but comfortable hotel on the outskirts of the city. For two nights they would know the joys of private love before their public loves in the crowded slums resumed. Vikram and Lettie were already in London, preparing to repeat the vows that meant everything to my cowboy-obsessed friend. And I was sitting in the armchair, fully dressed and alone, not trusting her, as Vikram said, because I didn’t trust myself. Then at last, when I drifted to sleep, the note and the strip of blindfold slipped from my fingers.

  And for three weeks, after that night, I tried to lose the loneliness that their three happy marriages had pulled from my heart by taking every job I was offered, and cutting every deal I could devise. I flew one passport run to Kinshasa staying, as instructed, at the Lapierre Hotel. It was a nearly squalid three-storey building in a laneway parallel to Kinshasa’s long main street. The mattress was clean, but the floor and the walls seemed to be made from recycled coffin-wood. The grave-like smell was overpowering, and a sweating damp filled my mouth with gloomy, unidentifiable tastes. I chain-smoked Gitanes and gargled Belgian whisky to kill them. Rat-catchers patrolled the corridors, dragging conspicuous hessian sacks that bulged with writhing, fat animals. Cockroach colonies had claimed the drawers of the dresser, so I hung my clothing and toiletries and other personal items from hooks and thick, crooked nails conveniently hammered into every surface that would endure them.

  On my first night I was ripped from a light sleep by gunshots in the corridor beyond my door. I heard a crumpling thump, as of a body falling, and then shuffling footsteps pulling something heavy, backwards, along the bare wooden floor of the hallway. I clamped a fist around my knife and opened the door. Men were standing at three other doors in the corridor, drawn as I was by the sounds. They were all Europeans. Two of them held pistols in their hands, and one held a knife similar to my own. We all looked at one another, and then at the trail of blood that smeared its way down the corridor out of sight. As if in response to a secret signal, we all closed our doors again without a word.

  When I followed the Kinshasa run with a mission to Mauritius, my hotel on the island-nation provided a welcome and agreeable contrast. It was called the Mandarin, and it was in Curepipe. The original structure was built as a small-scale reproduction of a Scottish castle. The turreted resemblance was clear enough, on the winding approach through a neat English garden. Inside the building, however, the guest entered a kingdom of Chinese baroque designed by the Chinese family who were the new owners of the hotel. I sat beneath huge, fire-breathing dragons and ate Chinese broccoli with snow peas, garlic spinach, fried bean curd, and mushrooms in black bean sauce by the light of paper lanterns, while the windows gave a view of castellated battlements, gothic arches, and rosestudded topiary.

  My contacts, two Indians from Bombay who lived in Mauritius, arrived in a yellow BMW, as had been arranged. I got into the back of the car and had barely spoken a greeting when they took off at such tyre-torching speed that I was hurled backwards into a corner of the seat. We screamed along back roads at four times the speed limit for fifteen knuckle-whitening minutes and then they pulled into a silent, deserted grove. The overheated car cooled down with little clinks and clunks of sound. There was a strong smell of rum on both men.

  ‘Okay let’s have the books,’ one of the two contacts said, leaning around from the driver’s seat.

  ‘I haven’t got them,’ I snarled at him through clenched teeth.

  The contacts looked at one another and then back at me. The driver raised his mercury-lens glasses, revealing eyes that looked as though he kept them in a glass of brown vinegar beside his bed at night.

  ‘You don’t got the books?’

  ‘No. I was trying to tell you that on the way here—wherever the fuck we are—but you kept saying, Keep cool! Keep cool! And not listening to me. Well, are we cool enough now? Huh?’

  ‘I’m not cool, man,’ the passenger said.

  I saw myself in the lenses of his glasses. I didn’t look happy.

  ‘You idiots!’ I growled, switching to Hindi. ‘You nearly killed us all for nothing! Driving like a speed-freak-arsehole-Bombay-taxi-driver with the cops up his arse! The passports are back at the sister-fucking hotel. I stashed them because I wanted to be sure of you two motherfuckers first. Now the only thing I’m sure of is that you guys haven’t got the brains of two fleas on a pariah dog’s balls.’

  The passenger lifted his glasses, and they both smiled as widely as their hangovers would allow.

  ‘Where the fuck did you learn to speak Hindi like that?’ the driver asked. ‘It’s fuckin’ great, yaar. You’re speaking like a regular Bombay sisterfucker. It’s fantastic, yaar!’

  ‘Damn impressive, man!’ his friend added, wagging his head admiringly.

  ‘Let me see the money,’ I snapped.

  They laughed.

  ‘The money,’ I insisted. ‘Let me see it.’

  The passenger lifted a bag from between his feet and opened it to reveal many bundles of cash.

  ‘What’s that shit?’

  ‘It’s the money, brother,’ the driver replied.

  ‘That’s not money,’ I said. ‘Money is green. Money says, In God We Trust. Money has the picture of a dead American on it because money comes from America. That’s not money.’

  ‘It’s Mauritian rupees, brother,’ the passenger sniffed, wounded by the insult to his currency.

  ‘You can’t spend that shit anywhere but in Mauritius,’ I scoffed, recalling what I’d learned about restricted and open currencies while working with Khaled Ansari. ‘It’s a restricted currency.’

  ‘I know, of course, baba,’ the driver smiled. ‘We arranged it with Abdul. We don’t have the dollars just now, man. All fuckin’ tied up in other deals. So we’re paying in Mauritian rupees. You can change them back to dollars on your way home, yaar.’

  I sighed, breathing slowly and forcing calm into the little whirlwind that my mood was making out of my mind. I looked out the window. We were parked in what seemed to be a green forest fire. Tall plants as green as Karla’s eyes whirled and shuddered in the wind all around us. There was no-one and nothing else in sight.

  ‘Let’s just see what we got here. Ten passports at seven thousand bucks apiece. That’s seventy thousand bucks. At the exchange rate of, say, thirty Mauritian roops to the dollar, that gives me no less than two million, one hundred thousand rupees. That’s why you got such a big bag. Now, forgive me for seeming obtuse, gentlemen, but just where the fuck am I going to change two million rupees into dollars without a fuckin’ currency certificate!’

  ‘No problem,’ the driver responded quickly. ‘We’ve got a moneychanger, yaar. A first-class guy. He’ll do the deal for you. It’s all set up.’

  ‘Okay,’ I smiled. ‘Let’s go and see him.’

  ‘You’ll have to go there alone, man,’ the passenger said, laughing happily. ‘He’s in Singapore.’

  ‘Singa-fuckin’-pore!’ I shouted, as that little whirlwind flared in my mind.

  ‘Don’t be all upset, yaar,’ the driver replied gently. ‘It’s all arranged. Abdul Ghani is cool about it. He’ll call you at the hotel today. Here, take this card. You go to Singapore, on your way home—okay, okay, Singapore is not exactly on the way home to Bombay, but if you fly there first, then it will be on the way, isn’t it? So when you get down in Singapore, you go and see this guy on the card. He’s a licensed moneychanger. He’s Khader’s man. He’ll change all the roops into dollars, and you’ll be cool. No problem. There’s
even a bonus in it for you. You’ll see.’

  ‘Okay,’ I sighed. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel. If this checks out with Abdul, we’ll do the deal.’

  ‘The hotel,’ the driver said, sliding his glasses down over the dartboards of his eyes.

  ‘The hotel!’ the passenger repeated, and the yellow Exocet hurtled back along the winding roads once more.

  The trip through Singapore passed off without a hitch, and the Mauritian currency fiasco provided a few unexpected benefits. I made a valuable, new contact in the Singapore moneychanger—an Indian from Madras named Shekky Ratnam—and I took my first look at the profitable smuggling run of duty free cameras and electrical goods from Singapore to Bombay.

  When I rode out to the Oberoi Hotel to meet Lisa Carter, after handing the dollars to Abdul Ghani and collecting my fee, I felt positive and hopeful for the first time in far too long. I began to think that I might’ve thrown off the dark moods that had settled on me after Prabaker’s wedding night. I’d travelled to Zaïre, Mauritius, and Singapore on forged passports without raising the vaguest suspicion. In the slum, I’d survived from day to day on the small commissions I made from tourists, and I had only my compromised New Zealand passport. Just a year later I lived in a modern apartment, my pockets were bulging with freshly ill-gotten gains, and I had five passports in five different names and nationalities, with my photograph on every one of them. The world of possibility was opening up for me.

  The Oberoi Hotel stood at Nariman Point, on the handle of Marine Drive’s golden sickle. Churchgate Station and Flora Fountain were a five-minute walk away. Ten minutes more in one direction led to Victoria Terminus and Crawford Market. Ten minutes in the other direction from Flora Fountain led to Colaba and the Gateway Monument. The Oberoi lacked the postcard recognition that the Taj Hotel inspired, but it compensated for that with character and flair. Its piano bar, for example, was a small masterpiece of light and cleverly private spaces, and its brasserie vied determinedly for the title of the best restaurant in Bombay. Walking into the dark, richly textured brasserie from the brilliant day, I paused and blinked until my eyes found Lisa and her group. She and two other young women were sitting with Cliff De Souza and Chandra Mehta.