Shantaram - Not a Review

I just finished reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts and couldnt resist writing about it. Please note this is not a review of the book.
All those who would have read this book would agree that this is not just a novel. To start with, I would say its like a saga, a biography, or may be a long TV Series something which I had experienced earlier with Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel or with Eric Seagal’s Doctors or even his other famous one ‘Prizes’.
While Kane & Abel, Doctors or Prizes moves fast and has a single direction in terms of its story, Shantaram moves in multiple angles, it deviates extensively from its theme. The story sometimes involves you and engrosses you totally, at other instances, it drags you quite a lot.
It’s a like a flashback story where the anchor keeps recollecting multiple things and cant contain himself of penning them down simultaneously. Its obvious that the author has so much to write that he sometimes mixes them. I feel Gregory wanted to vent out his feelings and never imagined this will turn out to be one of the international best sellers. It was supposed to be an outlet for his emotions built through his innumerable experiences and sometimes adventures.
It’s also to be kept in context that he was writing this book in jail and his first two copies were trashed by the prison authorities.
Many times during the story, you also wonder whether all that Gregory has written is truth or is some sort of his fantasy. The accounts of Afghanistan, Prabhaker’s village and Arthur Road Jail fall into this category. The moments with Karla will also fold under the same fantasy.
In fact his accounts with Karla and Khader (the two central characters of this epic drama apart from the author himself) gets frustrating to me at times. Can anyone continue to have the same emotions with these two characters inspite of all that he receives from them?

This reminds me of a Hindi movie Dil Se. (I know I am deviating but please hear me out). In the movie, Manisha’s character continuously betrays Shahrukh’s character but he continues to blindly believe in her, trust her and love her limitlessly to the extent that in the end he dies with her.
Coming back to Shantaram, I felt a similar emotional frustration for Lin’s story with Karla and Khader. I also read somewhere that Gregory once admitted Karla and Prabhaker to be fictional characters (borne out of his imagination). That can be considered true because the way author describes Karla’s subtle beauty and pearls of wisdom, you crave for a real-life meeting with her. In fact, those Karla and Khader’s thoughts and proverbs are so superb and worth collecting that they can form a separate compilation in itself.
You also wonder with the end if there is going to be a sequel to Shantaram. So many questions are left unanswered and make you curious and craving for more. What happens to the Sri Lanka journey? What happens to Khaled? Why does he end up in jail for 6 years? When does he get caught? What happens to the mafia and gang wars post Sanjay and Chuha? Imagine this appetite to read more in the book is still alive after you have just finished almost 1000 pages of his book. Now that’s some journey and reading experience. Daily mail has aptly summed it as ‘a gigantic, jaw-dropping, grittily authentic saga’.
In the end, if the story is all true, it also surprises me of Mumbai’s (that time Bombay) criminal history. Its so easy for foreigners to overstay here, work as a professional in Bollywood (like Lisa) without any work permit credentials, get involved in serious crime without getting noticed by police department or may be they continue to ignore the fact that there are illegal immigrants from countries around the globe including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria and others. While the author takes this as an open spirit of Mumbai. In today’s context after the 26/11 blasts, it scares me totally…