Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram is the novel written by Gregory David Roberts, a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict who escaped from Pentridge Prison and fled to India where he lived for 10 years.

Plot summary

Shantaram is a novel based on real events in the life of the author, Australian Gregory David Roberts, interwoven with fictional adventures featuring Roberts in the lead role. In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to nineteen years’ imprisonment in Australia after being convicted for a series of armed robberies of building-society branches, credit unions, and shops he had committed to feed a heroin addiction. In July 1980, he escaped from Victoria’s Pentridge Prison

in broad daylight, thereby becoming one of Australia’s most wanted men for the next ten years. This part of Roberts' life is known fact.

In the fictional story, Roberts (under the fictional name Lindsey or Lin) arrives in Mumbai (Bombay) from New Zealand. Mumbai was only a stopover on a journey that was to take Lin to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lin soon meets a local man named Prabaker, who becomes his best friend and renames him Linbaba. Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where the locals christen Lin with the name Shantaram, meaning Man of Peace. On their way back to Mumbai and after a night out, Lin and Prabaker are robbed. With all his possessions gone, Lin is forced to live in the slums, giving him shelter from the authorities and free rent in Mumbai. He sets up a free health clinic in the slums as a way to contribute to the community. He learns about the local culture and customs in this crammed environment, gets to know and love the people he encounters, and even becomes fluent in Marathi, the local language. He also witnesses and battles outbreaks of cholera and firestorms, becomes involved in trading with the lepers, and experiences how ethnical and marital conflicts are resolved in this densely crowded and diverse community.

The novel contains several other characters, notably a number of foreigners of varied origin and local Indians, highlighting the rich diversity of life in Mumbai. Lin falls in love with Karla, a Swiss-American girl, befriends local artists and actors landing him roles as an extra in several Bollywood movies, and is recruited by the Mumbai underworld for various criminal operations, including drug and weapons trade. This eventually lands him in Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail, where he endures severe beatings and other physical and mental abuse by guards, while existing under extremely squalid conditions, along with hundreds of other inmates. However, thanks to the protection of Afghani mafia don "Abdel Khader Khan", Lin is eventually released, and works in black market currency exchange and passport forgery. Having travelled as far as Africa on trips commissioned by the mafia, Lin later goes to Afghanistan to smuggle weapons for mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan. When his mentor Khan is killed, Lin realizes he became everything he grew to loathe and falls into depression after he returns. He decides that he must fight for what he believes is right, and build an honest life. The story ends with him planning to go to Sri Lanka which lays the premise for the sequel to this book.

A Prisoner of Birth - Jeffrey Archer

I recently read this book,
it was really AWESOME and i thought u should also know about it..


A Prisoner of Birth is a mystery novel by English author Jeffrey Archer, first published in 6 March 2008 by Macmillan

The novel concerns Danny Cartwright the protagonist, who after proposing to his childhood sweet heart Beth Wilson takes her and her brother Bernie Wilson to celebrate at a nearby pub. In the pub they are instigated by a group of four persons into a fight. Even though they attempt to leave the pub without getting involved in a fracas, one of the persons Spencer Craig follows them out of the pub along with his friends.

In the resulting fight, Bernie is stabbed and dies. His murder is blamed on Danny in a well orchestrated move by Spencer and his friends, a popular actor, an aristocrat, and the youngest partner in an established firm's history, resulting in Danny's arrest and conviction. Sentenced to 22 years in Belmarsh prison, the highest security jail in South-east London, he encounters two prisoners. Albert Crann, known as "Big Al," and Sir Nicholas Moncrieff.

The rest of the story involves the path that Danny has to follow to prove his innocence. In this, this story is quite similar to Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, which this book and the protagonist references many times.

This suspenseful novel takes the listener through so many twists and turns that no one will guess the ending, even the most ardent of Archer's many, many fans.

3 Mistakes of my Life - Chetan Bhagat

I recently read the book. It was a good book with a nice story.

So i thought that i should let u ppl know about it.

Overall rating out of 5 would be 2.5

Book Name : The Three mistakes of my life

Auther : Chetan Bhagat

Release Date : 8th may 2008

Price: Rs. 95/-

This one was long anticipated. The best-selling Indian novelist brings together another installment in showcasing the everyday life of some of the most common, unassuming and inconspicuous people of India. Titled 3 Mistakes of my Life, but disappointingly, has nothing to do with Mr. Bhagat’s life in itself. Anyway, its something fictional, but an entertainer in all. Before I consume your patience with vague descriptions like these, let me get started with the review…

The plot is pretty simple, 3 average students, Govind, Ish and Omi having a hard time living think of entrepreneurship. In middle come an entire big hoard of people, problems and pressures. Its about how they react, solve and live with those problems. Just like his older books, he chose a batch of people who truly represent a good proportion of urban India. This book is picturised in the older and slightly lesser developed part of Ahmedabad, Gujarat and features loads of Gujjus(Read: Hindi slang to refer to Gujaratis). Although no vernaculars could be observed in the book to make it funny in the slapstick sense, the very style of writing makes it really funny and entertaining. Many things that might feel Gujju there might be references to several places or locations in Ahmedabad, Gujju food, and of course, names that truly sound Gujju. But then, I really missed the name Jigness Kumar and a whole bunch of *readable* Gujju vernaculars there!

After reading the book, I kind of felt that it had just one major objective. Making the Indian youth vigilant and aware of some of the biggest problems that plague its society. The list of problems could be very long, but well, Wordpress’s tinyMCE editor does have a bullet/numbering functionality for some reason, right? Feel free to scroll down and continue reading the rest o the review. I just wanted to point out that Chetan covered the following problems in his book…

Expensive Education
Lack of development in smaller towns
Conservative mentality
Extremism in politics
Sick politicians
Religious extremism
Bias towards agnostics and atheists
Poverty amongst the brighter lower-middle class youth
Extreme competition in entrance exams for college admissions
Success is hard to get
Offbeat ideas receive suppression
Lack of sports education/infra-structure in schools, etc
Completely study oriented schools
Small-scale businesses are extremely risky
Advanced coaching for exams is expensive so only the upper-middle class receive that
Drift between religions, castes, etc
Conservative mentality of parents
Hypocrisy among public, politicians, and everyone alike
Lack of awareness, foresight and ideas due to lack of quality education
Smaller schools lack funds and money in everything, just bigger school students get everything
Bad quality contraceptive devices that don’t allow Indians to get bold early
Heavy mugger-friendly curriculum
Monotonous books, pathetic teachers, result oriented study
Lack of scientific temper
Students prejudiced about certain subjects and losing interest
People just want to earn, and passion for anything is dead
Prodigies and talented folks are mostly unrecognized and all that dies away as unharnessed potential
Expensive international air tickets, nice food and even good reference material
Stereotyped mentality of 99% of parents …. I had enough of it and I guess you did too. Just know that it had many more of it…

But then, I did find the book an entertainer, but not for the same reasons why I found his previous books, Five Point Someone and One Night@the Call Center. Story and setting did slack off at places, but the writing style simply caught my mind. A few things that he wrote in the book were such that, we might always have it in our mind, but then never have we ever managed to phrase that situation out into a clever statement… At times, he feels just so right. But then at times, it feels that parts of this book were just Chetan speaking out to the public and having his opinion read. And the pricing of the book makes it affordable for even those people documented in the book and even piracy-proof!

P.S. - The book doesn’t have as much of cricket or the fanatic kind of cricket you might assume after looking at the cover, which does look pretty neat.