It was September 2006. I was at the Mumbai airport waiting to catch a flight to the UK. The flight had been delayed and so I went looking for something to do (after I ran out of battery on my phone talking to someone :-) I see a bookstore in the lobby and pop in to take a look. It's an eight hour flight to the UK and I am not carrying anything to entertain me. I start looking at some paperbacks thinking of picking one up for the journey. After flipping though some, I think I was pretty much decided on a Gabriel García Márquez. Don't remember which one but the blurb looked interesting. Was about to take it over to the checkout counter when a stranger behind me quipped, "I really wouldn't recommend that". I turn around to see a well dressed bespectacled man in his early thirties holding a briefcase in one hand and coffee in the other.
I was still trying to figure out if he was, in fact, addressing me when he reaches out to the book shelf in front of me and picks out this orange coloured tome of a book! It looked like it could easily run into a thousand pages if not more and I generally try to evade such volumes with the expectation of sheer dry prose within them. However, he continued, "You should read this one". Now, I don't normally read books recommended by strangers at airports but for some strange reason, I felt as if he knew what I like. And so I walked out of the store 5 minutes later lighter by around thousand bucks and heavier by around a kilo!
I boarded the flight and was planning to dive into the book when this cute girl came and sat down next to me. Turns out, she was going to the UK too (and the flight was going to the UK too!) and as we start chatting, also turns out she is close friends with a friend of mine. So I slid the book back in my backpack and spent the next 8 hours chatting away with an incredibly beautiful woman!
Ok, I am digressing here! About the third or the fourth night I spend in the UK, I am clearing out my backpack when I see this book again and decide I might as well give it a fair chance before dubbing it, "sheer dry prose". I started reading it at around 11 in the evening and I read through the night! And I would spend the next couple of weeks trying to squeeze in every minute I could spare between work, pubs and everything else just to continue reading the book. This book was unlike any other I had ever read! And that book was "Shantaram".
'Shantaram' has been one of the most influential books in my life not so much for the might interesting life 'Linbaba' spends in it but for the Gregory Robert's philosophy of life, love and the universe interspersed through the book both in the form of his discussions with Khaderbhai and his own monologues within his head.
Anyway, this post is not about the book or what it did to me. I am sure enough number of people have waxed eloquent and I would love to share my opinion with you over a cuppa coffee. This post is to bid adieu to Gregory Roberts as he leaves the shores of India for once and for all. It is mentioned that he will be visiting Mumbai regularly over the next couple of years as he spends time creating his story in celluloid.
But I would sure miss the feeling of living in the same city as Gregory, a city where 'Linbaba' experienced a beauty and a darkness that very few of us get/choose to.
Adios Gregory.
I was still trying to figure out if he was, in fact, addressing me when he reaches out to the book shelf in front of me and picks out this orange coloured tome of a book! It looked like it could easily run into a thousand pages if not more and I generally try to evade such volumes with the expectation of sheer dry prose within them. However, he continued, "You should read this one". Now, I don't normally read books recommended by strangers at airports but for some strange reason, I felt as if he knew what I like. And so I walked out of the store 5 minutes later lighter by around thousand bucks and heavier by around a kilo!
I boarded the flight and was planning to dive into the book when this cute girl came and sat down next to me. Turns out, she was going to the UK too (and the flight was going to the UK too!) and as we start chatting, also turns out she is close friends with a friend of mine. So I slid the book back in my backpack and spent the next 8 hours chatting away with an incredibly beautiful woman!
Ok, I am digressing here! About the third or the fourth night I spend in the UK, I am clearing out my backpack when I see this book again and decide I might as well give it a fair chance before dubbing it, "sheer dry prose". I started reading it at around 11 in the evening and I read through the night! And I would spend the next couple of weeks trying to squeeze in every minute I could spare between work, pubs and everything else just to continue reading the book. This book was unlike any other I had ever read! And that book was "Shantaram".
'Shantaram' has been one of the most influential books in my life not so much for the might interesting life 'Linbaba' spends in it but for the Gregory Robert's philosophy of life, love and the universe interspersed through the book both in the form of his discussions with Khaderbhai and his own monologues within his head.
Anyway, this post is not about the book or what it did to me. I am sure enough number of people have waxed eloquent and I would love to share my opinion with you over a cuppa coffee. This post is to bid adieu to Gregory Roberts as he leaves the shores of India for once and for all. It is mentioned that he will be visiting Mumbai regularly over the next couple of years as he spends time creating his story in celluloid.
But I would sure miss the feeling of living in the same city as Gregory, a city where 'Linbaba' experienced a beauty and a darkness that very few of us get/choose to.
Adios Gregory.
No response to "Adios my friend!"
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