Thanks to Cynth, I'm reading Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts) - a gripping, sweeping read. It's one of C's fave books - so it comes highly recommended by one whose taste I trust, plus, I got hooked when she quoted one of the most beautiful writing in the book so far. At first I was intimidated by the size (930 pages, hello?) but then thought, oh hey, I'm unemployed, right?
It's a fiction based on the author's life - a fugitive who ran to and stayed in Bombay; a book full of astute and endearing observations of the culture; struggle, suspense and mysteries; and a language so melodic and precise.
Here's another snippet that I wish I'd written since it's an oft-thought notion:
As exhaustion finally claimed me, submerging my doubts and confusions, the shrewd clarity of near-sleep suddenly showed me what it was that those new friends – Khaderbhai, Karla, Abdullah, Prabaker, and all the others – had in common. They were all, we were all, strangers to the city. None of us was born there. All of us were refugees, survivors, pitched up on the shores of the island city. If there was a bond between us, it was the bond of exiles, the kinship of the lost, the lonely, and the dispossessed.
Realising that, understanding it, made me see the hard edges of the way I’d treated the boy, Tariq, himself a stranger in my raw and ragged fragment of the city. Ashamed of the cold selfishness that had stolen my pity, and pierced by the courage and loneliness of the little boy, I listened to his sleeping breath, and let him cling to the ache in my heart. Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until the dawn.
In other news:
- I leave for Melb. next week. Yah! Wish me luck.
- My brother's dog is the cutest dog in the world.
- Facebook is much more fun than MySpace.
- Check out photos from my travel blog. I added another album.
