Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

A friend about to travel to India enthused about Roberts’s bestselling story of life on the run in Bombay, and I felt compelled to find out more. There is something of a challenge to reading an autobiographical novel about a man who escaped a high security prison in Australia, entered India illegally, learned Hindi and Marathi, lived in a slum, established a health clinic, got involved with both the Bollywood film industry and the Bombay mafia and ended up fighting alongside the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan... Somehow, Roberts manages to fit all this along with a tale of personal redemption into only 900 pages.


Straight off the plane and pretending to be a New Zealander called Lindsay, he sets off to find somewhere to stay in Bombay. He’s accosted at the airport by a young tout called Prabaker, who procures him a good room and some marijuana. Roberts opens up the duty free and offers his guide a drink in return:

I pulled a bottle of whisky from my pack and cracked the seal. It was another ritual, another promise to a friend in New Zealand, a girl who’d asked me to have a drink and think of her if I managed to smuggle myself safely into India with my false passport. The little rituals – the smoke and the drink of whisky – were important to me... I was about to take a sip from the bottle, but an impulse made me offer it to Prabaker first. “Thank you very much, Mr. Lindsay,” he gushed, his eyes wide with delight. He tipped his head backward and poured a measure of whisky into his mouth without touching the bottle to his lips. “Is very best, first number, Johnnie Walker. Oh, yes.” “Have some more if you like.” “Just teeny pieces, thank you so.” He drank again, gluggling the liquor down in throat-bulging gulps. He paused, licking his lips, then tipped the bottle back a third time. “Sorry, aaah, very sorry. Is so good this whisky, it is making a bad manners on me.” “Listen, if you like it that much, you can keep the bottle. I’ve got another one. I bought them duty free on the plane.” “Oh, thank you...” he answered, but his smile crumpled into a stricken expression. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want it?” “Yes, yes, Mr. Lindsay, very yes. But if I knew this was my whisky and not yours, I would not have been so generous with my good self in the drinking it up.”

Over the next few weeks Prabaker and Linbaba become close as the guide shows him around Bombay. Eventually, Prabaker honours Roberts with the offer of a visit to his family in upstate Maharashtra. They stay there six months and Roberts picks up the Marathi language and is introduced to rural Indian life. He is also given the name Shantaram, meaning man of peace, by Prabaker’s mother.

On their way home, they decide to go out for a drink in a small town on the road back to Bombay.

As good as his word, Prabaker directed us to a hovel, about an hour’s walk past the last bus stop on the outskirts of the town. With a round of drinks for the house, we insinuated ourselves into the crush of the dusty, determined drinkers who occupied the bar’s one narrow stone bench. The place was what Australians call a sly grog shop: an unlicensed bar, where men buy over-proof alcohol at under-the-counter prices. The men we joined in the bar were workers, farmers and a routine assortment of lawbreakers. They all wore sullen, persecuted expressions. They said little, or nothing at all. Fierce grimaces disfigured them as they drank the foul-tasting, homemade alcohol, and they followed each glass with a miscellany of grunts, groans, and gagging sounds. When we joined them, Prabaker and I consumed the drinks at a gulp, pinching our noses with one hand and hurling the noxious, chemurgic liquid down our open throats. By means of fierce determination, we summoned the will to keep the poison in our bellies. And when sufficiently recovered we launched ourselves, with no little reluctance, into the next venomous round. It was a grim and pleasureless business. The strain showed on every face. Some found the going too hard and slunk away, defeated. Some faltered, but were pressed on by the anguished encouragements of fellow sufferers. Prabaker lingered long over his fifth glass of the volatile fluid. I thought he was about to admit defeat, but at last he gasped and spluttered his way through to empty the glass. Then one man threw his glass aside, stood up, and moved to the centre of the shabby little room. He began to sing in a roaring, off-key voice, and because every man of use cheered our passionate and peremptory approval, we all knew that we were drunk.

Drunk and vulnerable, unfortunately. Walking back to the hotel, they are mugged and the remains of Roberts money is taken. His visa has also expired and realising that he risks deportation back to Australia and imprisonment if the authorities discover who he is, Roberts now has the problem that he has nowhere to stay. His only option is to move to slum where Prabaker lives, and his long journey from violent criminal on the run to a man of peace begins.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Like the Cold War in previous decades, the post 9/11 years have produced their own fiction dealing with its various themes and conflicts, of which The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a fine example.

Hamid’s second novel is written in the form of a long conversation between Changez, a young Pakistani man, educated in at University in the US and once employed in a high flying New York firm, and an unnamed American who gets increasingly jumpy as the evening goes on.

Scion of a once wealthy family in Lahore, Changez graduates from Princeton and is soon interviewed for prestigious valuation firm Underwood Samson. This is not before he and his fellow graduates set out for a holiday on the Greek Islands. Among their group is Erica, whom Changez falls for. She tells him that she is grieving for her boyfriend who died about a year before. He tells her about his life growing up in Lahore:

She ordered a beer; I did the same. “So what’s Pakistan like?” she asked. I told her Pakistan was many things, from seaside to desert to farmland stretched between rivers and canals; I told her that I had driven with my parents and my brother to China on the Karakoram Highway, passing along the bottoms of valleys higher than the tops of the Alps; I told her that alcohol was illegal for Muslims to buy and so I had a Christian bootlegger who delivered booze to my house in a Suzuki pickup.

Life soon takes over after their return to New York and Changez is scooped up into the high spending lifestyle of Underwood Samson. He is amazed that spending a large amount of company money on drink is not only permitted, it is actively encouraged:

But for me, at the age of twenty-two, this experience was a revelation. I could, if I desired, take my colleagues out for an after-work drink – an activity classified as “new hire cultivation” – and with impunity spend in an hour more than my father earned in a day! As you can imagine, we new hires availed ourselves of the opportunity to cultivate one another on a regular basis. I remember the first night we did so; we went to the bar at the Royalton, on the Forty-Fourth Street. Sherman came with us on this occasion and ordered a bottle of vintage champagne to celebrate our induction... Sherman left when the champagne was done, but he told us to charge our bill to Underwood Samson. We did so, staggering out into the street around midnight.

Changez is a great success in the firm, a number one valuator, and he also meets up with Erica again. He is introduced to her friends and family and is served wine at home with her parents. He takes a moment to explain the relationship between Pakistanis and drink to his unnamed companion at the table:

You seem puzzled by this – and not for the first time. Perhaps you misconstrue the significance of my beard, which, I should in any case make clear, I had not yet kept when I arrived in New York. In truth, many Pakistanis drink; alcohol’s illegality in our country has roughly the same effect as marijuana’s in yours. Moreover, not all of our drinkers are western-educated urbanites such as myself; our newspapers regularly carry accounts of villagers dying or going blind after consuming poor-quality moonshine. Indeed, in our poetry and folk songs intoxication occupies a recurring role as a facilitator of love and spiritual enlightenment. What? Is it not a sin? Yes, it certainly is – as so, for that matter, is coveting thy neighbor’s wife. I see you smile; we understand one another, then.

The attacks on September 11th 2001 leave Changez feeling increasingly alienated and distracted as the world around him takes arbitrary positions. Erica, who had a severe bout of mental illness when her boyfriend died, becomes unwell again and their relationship disintegrates. As the America slides into conflict with Afghanistan his emotions become increasingly polarised:

My reaction caught me by surprise; Afghanistan was Pakistan’s neighbour, our friend, and a fellow Muslim nation besides, and the sight of what I took to be the beginning of its invasion by your countrymen caused me to tremble with fury. I had to sit down to calm myself, and I remember polishing off a third of a bottle of whiskey before I was able to fall asleep.

A trip home at Christmas causes him to finally take sides and he leaves his firm soon afterwards, and comes back to Pakistan on a permanent basis. There he lectures at the local university, encouraging students to break with the west. One of his protégés has been involved in an outrage and as the evening draws to a close, the identity of his American companion and why he is there becomes apparent...

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

A fantastic book that came my way by chance (the vagaries of choosing a title in a reading group to be precise...) The Help tells the story of three women in Civil Rights era Mississippi, two black maids, Aibileen and Minny, and local college girl Miss Skeeter.

What brings these women together is an idea that Skeeter has for a book, a factual report of what life is like in Jackson MS for black women working for the rich white ladies in the city. Initially reluctant and always fearing reprisal, the maids slowly tell Skeeter their stories and the book is written.

Stockett’s extremely moving and powerful novel flips between the three main characters, each of whom have more than their fair share of problems. Of the three, I found myself enjoying the chapters about Minny the most. A woman whose sassy tongue has lost her several jobs, her attitude to drink (hence the inclusion in 120 Units) is forthright. Thinking that she has discovered her new boss, Miss Celia, drinking shined whiskey in her bedroom, Minny boils over into a rage:

She’s sitting on the yellow twin bed by the window and she’s not smiling. The package I toted in from the mailbox is open sand on the bed are a dozen bottles filled with brown liquid. It’s a slow burn that rises up my bosoms, my chin, my mouth. I know the look of those flat bottles. I nursed a worthless pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life sucking daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears I my eyes I’d never marry one. And then I did. And now here I am nursing another goddam drinker. These aren’t even store-bought bottles, these have a red wax top like my Uncle Toad used to cap his moonshine with. Mama always told me the real alcoholics, like my daddy, drink the homemade stuff because it’s stronger. Now I know she’s as much a fool as my daddy was and as Leroy is when he gets on the Old Crow, only she doesn’t chase me with the frying pan. Miss Celia picks a bottle up and looks at it like it’s Jesus in there and she can’t wait to get saved. She uncorks it, sips it and sighs. The she drinks three hard swallows and lays back on her fancy pillows.

Worse still, it’s a case of mistaken identity – the bottles of brown liquid are a quack remedy that Celia has mailed off for in an attempt to ward off another miscarriage, sadly unsuccessfully. She does, however, make up for things on the booze front later on in the book. Come the society annual dinner that Celia is desperate to go to, she starts early:

“Miss Celia, now what is going on in here?” I mean, she’s got stockings dangling from chairs, pocketbooks on the floor, enough costume jewelry for a whole family of hookers, forty-five pairs of high-heel shoes, underthings, overcoats, panties, brassieres, and a half-empty bottle of white wine on the chifforobe with no coaster under it.

In fact, by the time she gets there she’s drunk as a Injun on payday:

Celia grabs for Johnny’s arm as they make their way into the room. She teeters a bit as she walks, but it’s not clear if it’s from the alcohol or the high heels... Johnny squeezes her hand, gets her another drink from the bar, her fifth, although he doesn’t know this.

Determined to fit in and make a good impression with the snooty queen bee, Hilly, Celia does everything wrong, from turning up half cut in a ghastly pink dress (Minny’s account of this is worth picking up the book for alone) to trying to corner Hilly and ask her why she won’t talk to her. Johnny runs into a friend and more drinks are procured:

Celia lets out a loud hiccup and she frowns, covers her mouth with a tissue. “You getting tipsy?” asks Johnny. “She’s just having fun, aren’t you, Celia?” Richard says. “In fact, I’m fixing to get you a drink you’re gonna love. It’s called an Alabama Slammer.” Johnny rolls his eyes at his friend. “And then we’re going home.” Three Alabama Slammers later...

Which is when Celia manages to get Hilly alone for a moment and disaster strikes. Not only does she managed to tear the cuff off Hilly’s dress, the combination of wine and Alabama Slammers finally catches up with Celia’s beleagaured digestion causing the dreaded anti-peristalsis and she parks a leopard in the middle of the party:

Celia stops, looks around like she recognises no one around her. She has tears in her eyes. Then she groans and convulses. Vomit spatters onto the carpet.

Needless to say, the subsequent hangover lasts for several days...

Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Redolent of The Grapes of Wrath in its scope and social commentary as much as its written style, Cry, The Beloved Country is Paton’s heartfelt work of protest about the problems facing South Africa in the late 1940s.


Rural pastor Stephen Kumalo travels to Johannesburg after receiving news that his sister Gertrude is unwell, also hoping to find his son Absalom while he is there. In the city he meets local priest Theophilus Msimangu who tells him the sad news that Gertrude’s illness is in fact a life of drinking and prostitution.

She lives in Claremont, not far from here. It is one of the worst places in Johannesburg. After the police have been there, you can see the liquor running in the streets. You can smell it, you can smell nothing else, wherever you go in that place. He leant over to Kumalo. I used to drink liquor, he said, but it was good liquor, such as our fathers made. But now I have vowed to touch no liquor any more. This is bad liquor here, made strong with all manner of things that our people have never used. And that is her work, she makes it and sells it. I shall hide nothing from you, though it is painful for me. These women sleep with any man for their price. A man has been killed at her place. They gamble and drink and stab. She has been in prison more than once.

Moonshine and bad beer are part of a raft of issues that Paton tackles, and despite the author’s overall spirit of optimism, history tells us that things got a lot worse before anything got better. Even today, South Africa is in the news again, the fragility of its social fabric under the spotlight once more.

Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard

I had the privilege of reviewing one of Elmore Leonard’s books a while back for the FT, so while leafing around the library looking for inspiration, I decided to pick up something from his extensive back catalogue.

Rum Punch is probably better known through Quentin Tarantino’s film adaptation Jackie Brown, which is a shame, because it’s a tightly written crime thriller that is more than worth investigating in its own right.

Odell Robbie sells guns to criminals, but his operation is under the surveillance of the feds and when they arrest Jackie Burke who ships his money into Miami from the Caribbean he’s under pressure to get her out of the picture, fast.

Unfortunately for Odell, some of his accomplices don’t work to his level of professionalism. Louis Gara, for example; a three time jailbird who knows Odell from Detroit. Louis has lost his edge since he’s been inside:

Four years staring at the walls and drinking shine, the man was burnt out, useless.

You see, in this business, you have to stay sharp:

Louis was thinking he should not drink rum. Or he should find a glass and have another one... He had started this afternoon in the bar at the Ocean Mall, Casey’s, hiding out from Melanie, thinking of her as a female cannibal. Bourbon this afternoon, rum this evening, nothing to eat in between...

So when the final pick up takes place and Louis has to get back to his car, he needs to remember where he’s left it:

Sometimes when he was living in South Beach and drinking a lot he’d forget where he parked and have to roam up and down the streets. He’d had a few pops this afternoon before he’d picked her up.

That kind of sloppiness will get you more than a hangover. Let’s just say, Louis doesn’t get to go to prison a fourth time...