Shantaram: A Novel

‘The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering.’

bivouac

‘But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a li

Sadiq Khan.

And because they judged my nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness, Rukhmabai concluded, the women had agreed with her choice for my first name. It was Shantaram, which means man of peace, or man of God’s peace. They nailed their stakes into the earth of my life, those farmers. They knew the place in me where the river stopped, and they marked

assiduously

I’m a people person, if you know what I mean. If the people in it were interesting, I’d prefer a tin shed to the Taj Mahal—not that I’ve seen the Taj Mahal yet.’

For a tiny moment in the infinitude of his suffering I almost felt it, what the human will can drive the human body to endure and achieve. I almost understood it, that smile of his, driven insane by the will that forced it to shine.

Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.