Linbaba, as he came to be known on the hard streets of the city, arrived "a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison". Karla once described it as the worst good smell in the world." of perfumes, spices, incense and freshly cut flowers. the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals. even as I walked along the umbilical corridor that connected the plane to the airport. When fugitive "Lindsay" - taking the name from a stolen passport-arrived in Bombay, it was love at first sight. It is a thinly veneered autobiography, confession, apology and above all a eulogy to the country and its people in whom even he, The Bad Guy, was able to find friendship, love and sanctuary. Shantaram is Roberts' Indian adventure and reads like a travelogue, a thriller and a discourse on the nature of good and evil rolled into one. And for most of the 10 years before he was recaptured in Germany, Roberts roamed incognito in Bombay.
Within two years, however, he escaped in broad daylight. The "Gentleman Bandit", as he came to be known, was finally caught in 1978 and sentenced to 19 years in Victoria's maximum-security prison. But always, if reports are to be believed, he did it very politely, in a three piece suit and with a toy gun. To support his addiction, Roberts held up building societies, credit unions and shops. When you are handed a 900-page work of fiction, at first you may wonder at the impertinence of such a thing-who has time for these door stoppers anymore? Shantaram by Australian writer Gregory David Roberts is such a book-huge, heavy and difficult to hold.īut once you read the author's bio (husband, father, philosophy major-turned hero in addict and criminal) and the blurb (" does for Bombay what Lawrence Durrell did for Alexandria and Melville did for the South Seas") it is an entirely different type of book.
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