Shantaram: A Novel

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘Where to?’ I asked Johnny.

  ‘World Trade Centre,’ he told the driver, smiling at me but clearly concerned about something.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘There is a problem at the zhopadpatti,’ he answered me.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, knowing that he wouldn’t say anything else about the problem until he thought the moment was right. ‘How’s the baby?’

  ‘Fine, very fine,’ he laughed. ‘He has such a strong grab on my fingers. He will be big and strong—bigger than his father, sure. And Prabaker’s baby, from the sister of my Sita, Parvati, that baby is also very beautiful. He is very much like Prabaker … in his face and his smiling.’

  I didn’t want to think about my dead, beloved friend.

  And how’s Sita? And the girls?’ I asked.

  ‘They are fine, Lin, all fine.’

  ‘You’ll have to watch out, Johnny,’ I warned him. ‘Three kids in less than three years—before you know it, you’ll be a fat, old guy with nine kids climbing all around you.’

  ‘It is a fine dream,’ he sighed happily.

  ‘How’s work? How are you … how you doing for money?’

  ‘Also fine, very fine, Lin. Everybody pays taxes, and nobody likes it. My business is good. Sita and me, we decided to buy the house next to ours, and make a bigger house for the family.’

  ‘That’s fantastic! I can’t wait to see it.’

  There was a little silence and then Johnny turned to me with an expression of worry, almost of torment.

  ‘Lin, that time when you asked me to work for you, to work with you, and I refused—’

  ‘It’s okay, Johnny.’

  ‘No, it is not okay. I want to tell you, I should have said yes, and I should have worked beside you.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’ I asked, not understanding him. ‘Is business not as good as you said it was? Do you need money?’

  ‘No, no, everything is fine with me. But if I was with you that time, watching you, maybe you would not still be working for all these months at the black business, with those goondas.’

  ‘No, Johnny.’

  ‘I blame myself every day, Lin,’ he said, his lips pulled wide in an anguished grimace. ‘I think that you asked me to work with you, to be your friend, because you did need a friend at that time. I was a bad friend, Lin, and I blame myself. Every day I feel bad about it. I am so sorry that I refused you.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder, but he wouldn’t meet my eye.

  ‘Look, Johnny, you’ve got to understand. What I do, I don’t feel good about it, but I don’t feel bad about it, either. You do feel bad about it. And I respect that. I admire it. And you’re a good friend.’

  ‘No,’ he murmured, his eyes still downcast.

  ‘Yes,’ I insisted. ‘I love you, man.’

  ‘Lin!’ he said, grabbing my arm with sudden, urgent concern. ‘Please, please, be careful with these goondas. Please!’

  I smiled, trying to put him at ease.

  ‘Man,’ I protested, ‘are you ever gonna tell me what this damn trip is about?’

  ‘Bears!’ he said.

  ‘Bears?’

  ‘Well, actually, you know, only one bear is our problem. You know Kano? Kano the bear?’

  ‘Sure I know him,’ I muttered. ‘Bahinchudh bear—what’s happened? Has he got himself put in jail again?’

  ‘No, no, Lin. He is not in the jail.’

  ‘Good. At least he’s not a recidivist.’

  Actually, you know, he escaped from the jail.’

  ‘Shit …’

  ‘And now he is a fugitive bear, with a reward price on his head, or his paws, or any part of him they can catch.’

  ‘Kano’s on the run?’

  ‘Yes. They even have a wanted poster.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A wanted poster,’ he explained patiently. ‘They took a photo of him, that Kano, with his two blue bear-wallahs, when they arrested them again. Now, they are using that photo for the wanted poster.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘The state government, the Maharashtra police, the Border Security Force, and the Wildlife Protection Authority.’

  ‘Christ, what did Kano do? Who did he kill?’

  ‘Not killed anyone, Lin. The story, what happened, the Wildlife Authority has a new policy, to stop cruelty to the dancing bears. They don’t know that Kano’s bear-wallahs, they love him so much, like a big brother, and he loves them also, and they would never hurt him. But the policy is the policy. So, the Wildlife-wallahs, they captured Kano, and they took him to the animal jail. And he was crying and crying for his blue bear-wallahs. And the bear-wallahs, they were outside the animal jail, and they were also crying and crying. And two of those Wildlife-wallahs, two watchmen on duty, they got very upset about all the crying, so they went outside, and they started beating Kano’s blue men with lathis. They gave them a solid pasting. And Kano, he saw his two blue men getting that beating, and he just lost his control. He broke down that cage and made an escape. The two bear-wallahs got a big feeling of courage, and they beat up the Wildlife fellows and ran away with Kano. Now they are hiding in our zhopadpatti, in the same hut that you used to have as your house. And we have to try to get them out of the city without getting captured. Our problem is how to get that Kano from the zhopadpatti to Nariman Point. There is a truck waiting there, and the driver has agreed to take Kano away with his bear-wallahs.’

  ‘Not easy,’ I murmured. ‘And with a goddamn wanted poster for the blue guys and the bear. Jesus!’

  ‘Will you help us, Lin? We feel very sorry for that bear. Love is a special thing in the world. When two men have so much love in their hearts, even so it is for a bear, it must be protected, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure it is,’ I smiled. ‘Sure it is. I’ll be glad to help, if I can. And you can do me a favour as well.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Try to get me one of those wanted posters with the picture of the bear and the blue guys. I gotta have one of those posters.’

  ‘The poster?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a long story. Don’t worry about it. Just, if you see one, grab it for me. Have you got a plan?’

  The taxi pulled up outside the slum as the evening, emptied of its sunset and pale enough to unveil the first few stars, drew squealing, playing faronades of children back to their huts, where plumes of smoke from cooking fires fluttered into the cooling air.

  ‘The plan,’ Johnny announced as we walked quickly through the familiar lanes, nodding and smiling to friends along the way, ‘is to dress up the bear in a disguise.’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said doubtfully. ‘He’s real tall, as I remember, and kinda big.’

  ‘At first, we put a hat and a coat on him, and even an umbrella hanging from his coat, like an office-working fellow.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘Not so good,’ Johnny replied without a trace of irony or sarcasm. ‘He still looked quite a lot like a bear, but a bear with clothes.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Yes. So, now the plan is to get a big Muslim dress, you know the one? From Afghanistan? Covering all the whole body, with only a few holes to see out of it.’

  ‘A burkha.’

  ‘Exactly. The boys went to Mohammed Ali Road to buy the biggest one they could find. They should be—ah! Look! They are here already, and we can try it, to see how does it look.’

  We came upon a group of a dozen men and a similar number of women and children gathered near the hut where I’d lived and worked for almost two years. And although I’d left the zhopadpatti, convinced that I could never live there again, it always gave me a thrill of pleasure to see the humble little hut, and stand near it. The few foreigners I’d taken to the slum—and even the Indians, such as Kavita Singh and Vikram, who’d visited me there—had been horrified by the place and aghast to think that I’d chosen to stay there so long.
They couldn’t understand that every time I entered the slum I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts. They couldn’t understand what I meant when I talked about the purity of the slum: they’d been there, and seen the wretchedness and filth for themselves. They saw no purity. But they hadn’t lived in those miraculous acres, and they hadn’t learned that to survive in such a writhe of hope and sorrow the people had to be scrupulously and heartbreakingly honest. That was the source of their purity: above all things, they were true to themselves.

  So, with my dishonest heart thrilling at the nearness of my once and favourite home, I joined the group and then gasped as a huge, shrouded figure emerged from beside the hut and stood among us.

  ‘Holy shit!’ I said, gawking at the towering, immense form. The blue-grey burkha covered the standing bear from its head to the ground. I found myself wondering at the size of the woman that garment had been intended to cover, because the standing bear was a full head taller than the tallest man in our group. ‘Holy shit!’

  As we watched, the shapeless form took a few lumbering steps, knocking over a stool and water pot as it swayed and lurched forward.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jeetendra suggested helpfully, ‘she is a very tall, fat … clumsy kind of a woman.’

  The bear suddenly stooped and then fell forward onto its four paws. We followed it with our eyes. The blue-grey, burkha-clad figure trundled forward, all the while emitting a low, grumbling moan.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jeetendra amended, ‘she is a small, fat … growling woman.’

  ‘A growling woman?’ Johnny Cigar protested. ‘What the hell is a growling woman?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jeetendra whined. ‘I am only trying to be helping.’

  ‘You’re going to help this bear all the way back to jail,’ I muttered, ‘if you let it go out of here like that.’

  ‘We could try the hat and coat again,’ Joseph offered. ‘Maybe a bigger hat … and … and a more fashionable coat.’

  ‘I don’t think fashion’s your problem,’ I sighed. ‘From what Johnny tells me, you have to get Kano from here to Nariman Point without the cops spotting you, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, Linbaba,’ Joseph answered. In the absence of Qasim Ali Hussein, who was enjoying a six-month holiday in his home village with most of his family, Joseph was the head man of the slum. The man who’d been beaten and disciplined by his neighbours for the brutal, drunken attack on his wife had become a leader. In the years since that day of the beating, Joseph had given up drinking, regained his wife’s love, and earned the respect of his neighbours. He’d joined every important council or committee, and worked harder than any other in the group. Such was the extent of his reform and his sober dedication to the well-being of his family and his community that, when Qasim Ali nominated Joseph as his temporary replacement, no other name was tendered for consideration. ‘There is a truck parked near to the Nariman Point. The driver says that he will take the Kano and carry him out of the municipality, out of the state, also. He will put him and the bear-wallahs back in their native place, back in U.P., all the way back to Gorakhpur side, near to the Nepal. But that truck driver, he is afraid to come near this place to collect the Kano. He wants that we take that bear to him only. But how to do it, Linbaba? How to get such a big bears to that place? Sure thing a police patrol will see Kano and make an arrest of him. And they will be arresting us, also, for the help of escaping bears. And then? What then? How to do it, Linbaba? That is the problem. That is why we were thinking about the disguises.’

  ‘Kano-walleh kahan hey?’ I asked. Where are Kano’s handlers?

  ‘Here, baba!’Jeetendra replied, pushing the two bear-handlers forward.

  They’d washed themselves clean of the brilliant blue dye that usually covered their bodies, and they’d stripped away all of their silver ornaments. Their long dreadlocks and decorated plaits were concealed beneath turbans, and they wore plain white shirts and trousers. Unadorned and decolourised, the blue men seemed spiritless, and much smaller and slighter than the fantastic beings I’d first encountered in the slum.

  ‘Tell me, will Kano sit on a platform?’

  ‘Yes, baba!’ they said with pride.

  ‘For how long will he sit still?’

  ‘For an hour, if we are with him, near him, talking to him. Maybe more than one hour, baba—unless he needs to make a wee. And if so, he is always telling first.’

  ‘Okay. Will he sit on a small, moving platform—one on wheels—if we push it?’ I asked them.

  There was some discussion while I tried to explain what kind of platform or table I had in mind: one mounted on wheels for carrying fruit, vegetables, and other goods around the slum and displaying them for sale. When it was clear, and such a hawker’s cart was found and wheeled into the clearing, the bear-handlers waggled their heads excitedly that yes, yes, yes, Kano would sit on such a moving table. They added that it was possible to steady him on the table by using ropes, and that he wouldn’t find that secure fastening objectionable if they first explained its necessity to him. But what, they wanted to know, did I have in mind?

  ‘On my way in with Johnny just now, I passed old Rakeshbaba’s workshop,’ I explained quickly. ‘The lamps were lit, and I saw a lot of pieces from his Ganesh sculptures. Some of them are pretty big. They’re made from papier-måché, so they’re not very heavy, and they’re all hollow inside. They’re big enough, I think, to fit right over the top of Kano’s head, and to cover his body if he’s sitting down. With a bit of silk for trimming, and a few garlands of flowers for decoration …’

  ‘So … you think …’ Jeetendra stammered.

  ‘We should disguise Kano as Ganesh,’ Johnny Cigar concluded, ‘and push him on the trolley, like a Ganpatti devotion, all the way to Nariman Point, right down the middle of the street. It’s a great idea, Lin!’

  ‘But Ganesh Chaturthi finished last week,’ Joseph said, referring to the annual festival where hundreds of Ganesh figures—some small enough to hold in the hand, and others towering ten metres tall—were pushed through the city to Chowpatty Beach and then hurled into the sea amid a crowd of close to a million people. ‘I myself was in the mela at Chowpatty. The time for it has finished, Linbaba.’

  ‘I know. I was there, too. That’s what gave me the idea. I don’t think it’ll matter that the festival is over. I wouldn’t think twice if I saw a Ganpatti at any time of the year. Would any of you ask questions if you saw a Ganesha, on a trolley, being wheeled down the street?’

  Ganesh, the elephant-headed God, was arguably the most popular in all the Hindu pantheon, and I was sure no-one would think to stop and search a little procession featuring a large sculpture of his form on a moving trolley.

  ‘I think he is right,’ Jeetendra agreed. ‘Nobody will say anything about a Ganesha. After all, Lord Ganesha is the Lord of Obstacles, na?’

  The elephant-headed god was known as the Lord of Obstacles and the Great Solver of Problems. People in trouble appealed to him with prayers in much the same way that some Christians appealed to their patron saints. He was also the divine ministrant of writers.

  ‘It will be not a problem to push a Ganesha to Nariman Point,’ Joseph’s wife, Maria, pointed out. ‘But how to put that Kano bear into the disguise—that is a problem. Just putting him in the dress was a very difficult job.’

  ‘He did not like the dress,’ one of the bear-handlers declared reasonably. ‘He is a man bear, you know, and sensitive about such things.’

  ‘But he will not mind the Ganesha disguise,’ his friend added. ‘I know he will think it is very good fun. He is very greedy for attention, I have to say. That is one of his two bad habits: that, and flirtations with girls.’

  We were speaking in Hindi, and the last exchange was too swift for me to follow.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked Johnny. ‘What was Kano’s bad habit?’

  �
�Flirtations,’ Johnny replied. ‘With girls.’

  ‘Flirtations? What the hell do they mean?’

  ‘Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I think—’

  ‘No, don’t!’ I interrupted him, disowning the question. ‘Please … don’t tell me what it means.’

  I looked around me at the press of expectant faces. For a moment I felt a thrill of wonder and envy that the little community of neighbours and friends worried so much about the problems of two itinerant bear-handlers—and the bear, of course. That unequivocal involvement, one with another, and its unquestioning support—stronger and more urgent than even the co-operation I’d seen in Prabaker’s village—was something I’d lost when I’d left the slum to live in the comfortable, richer world. I’d never really found it anywhere else, except within the high-sierra of my mother’s love. And because I knew it with them, once, in the sublime and wretched acres of those ragged huts, I never stopped wanting it and searching for it.

  ‘Well, I really can’t think of another way,’ I sighed again. ‘If we just cover him with rags or fruit or something and try to push him there, he’ll move and make a noise. And if they see us, we’ll get stopped. But if we make him look like Ganesh, we can chant and sing and crowd around him and make our own noise—as much noise as we want. And I don’t think the cops would ever stop us. What do you think, Johnny?’

  ‘I like it,’ Johnny said, grinning happily in appreciation of the plan. ‘I think it’s a fine plan, and I say we give it a try.’

  ‘Yes, also I like it,’ Jeetendra said, his eyes wide with excitement. ‘But, you know, we must better hurry—the truck will only wait for one or two hours more, I think so.’

  They all nodded or wagged their heads in agreement: Satish, Jeetendra’s son; Maria; Faroukh and Raghuram, the two friends who’d fought and been tied at the ankle by Qasim Ali as a punishment; and Ayub and Siddhartha, the two young men who’d run the free clinic since I’d left the slum. Finally, Joseph smiled and gave his assent. With Kano trundling along on all fours beside us, we made our way through the darkening lanes to the large double-hut that was old Rakeshbaba’s workshop.