Few novels in recent years have seen such success as Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram. Published in 2003, the epical work got instant fame as much for its content as for the author. The romance of an escaped and wanted convict living to tell his tale grabbed the attention of readers the world over. Roberts while serving a 19-year sentence for robbery in Australia escaped prison and fled to India before he was caught again and sent back. Shantaram was a fictionalised account of Roberts’ sojourn in Bombay, the adventures and dangers of a life lived of the edge and uncertainty.
The protagonist Linbaba, who cohorts with a rag tag army of petty criminals, mafia dons and shadowy figures who live in alley ways and smoke-filled slum corners, is a fascinating figure based heavily on the life of the author. The action-packed narrative is girded by deep philosophical questions on the nature of morality, mortality and meaning or meaninglessness of human existence. Meandering through the dense mesh of the Bombay underbelly, Lin finally finds a community with a mafia band and goes for an expedition to Afghanistan. Shantaram, despite its volume, was a huge entertainer and deserved every bit of the success it received. The Mountain Shadow, the ambitious sequel to Shantaram, however, loses its plot right from the start.
Lin comes back to Bombay after having lost his two most loved people—Khaderbhai, the man who was like his father, and Karla, his love-mate who is now betrothed to a media tycoon. The novel begins on a philosophical note alluding to loss and luminescence. The metaphysical ambition of the author not only muddles the already confusing plot but also makes for torturous reading. The conversations between the various characters in the novel are leaden with trite maxims, revealing neither the plot nor psychological intentions. Lin arrives in Bombay after a hiatus to resume his job as a passport forger. Lin, disappointed and lost in his old haunts, tries to find his feet in the now changed underworld in his city of refuge. His old friends are either dead or lost and the old tricks of the trade no longer deliver. This new order is bloody, and survives on deceit and betrayals. The city’s underbelly is no longer the place where Lin had found a family. Lin receives a cryptic message from Khaderbhai and thus begins a series of unexpected adventures and encounters that make him move with and through a gallery of characters none of whom leave any mark on the reader.
The dizzying plethora of overstatements and metaphysical tripe nags and gnaws at the plot that seems to be going nowhere. Sentences such as “Stories from the wounds of seven wars and power struggles gushed across the blotter on my desk in the passport counterfeiting factory.” And this goes on for over 800 pages! And added to this agony is the story of unfulfilled love between Lin and Karla. The passion is drowned in the sea of clichés expressions and prosaic declarations.
Any sensitive and political reading of Shantaram would throw up an abundance of western stereotypes about India—the dust and the grime, the crimes and the injustices, the poverty and its romance. Nevertheless, Shantaram, despite the western arrogance of its narratorial perspective, still worked. The sequel on the other hand is nothing but a mountain of clichés. The exploits of the escaped convict that brought charm to the first book have lost sheen completely in this next journey. Roberts’ assumption of a native avatar, the anonymity that he expects and in fact gets as a white man in a differently-coloured India speaks of a curious innocence about matters of race.
While Shantaram cashed in on the obvious and stated similarity between the protagonist and the author, The Mountain Shadow cannot work on the same ticket. The earlier tale is exhausted, and this one is exhausting.