Shantaram

by Gregory David Roberts

But I was alone, and for two reasons. The mafia was theirs, not mine. For them, the organisation always came first. But I was loyal to the men, not the mafia; to the brothers, not the brotherhood. I worked for the mafia, but I didn’t join it. I’m not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.

New regulations at federal and state levels had tightened restrictions on the flow of capital, making it ever more difficult to launder black money. For many reasons—not least because of the irresistible glamour attached to the industry—politicians had exempted the movie business from many of those monetary and investment controls.

the good that I felt in those years of exile was locked in the prison cell of my heart: those tall walls of fear; that small, barred window of hope; that hard bed of shame. I do speak out now. I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare from heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.

There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you’re determined to dislike for no good reason.

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.

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.

As I greeted them, Farid swept the rubble of containers and paper towels from the roof of the car onto the gravel park space. I felt the wince of guilt that litter-conscious westerners invariably experience, and reminded myself that the mess on the road would be collected by rag-pickers who depended on the litter for their livelihood.

It is always a fool’s mistake, Didier once said to me, to be alone with someone you shouldn’t have loved.

Every human heartbeat, he’d said many times, is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he’d meant. He’d been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate.