| MUMBAI:
His extraordinary life has encompassed being an internationally-sought fugitive
living in a Mumbai slum to a celebrated author with Hollywood calling. On this
week’s TALK ASIA, Gregory David Roberts, author of “Shantaram”
shares with host Anjali Rao his life in exile, touring one of India’s poorest
communities and the places which inspired the critically-acclaimed novel.
In his 57 years,
the Australian author has robbed banks, escaped from prison, been a doctor in
a Mumbai slum, joined the Mafia, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan and
married a princess. The experiences form the basis of “Shantaram”, a
novel loosely based on his life. Roberts
tells Anjali Rao his spiral down began when he lost custody of his daughter: “I
lost it all, lost my way completely, ended up taking a toy gun and doing a robbery
to get money for drugs, and I was arguably the most incompetent criminal in the
history of crime,” Roberts says. “I had a three piece suit. I showed
this toy pistol and said I’m terribly sorry…I just need a little bit
of money to get my heroin…they would look at you and say ok, put more money
on the counter and I would say no please stop giving me money."
In
1978 Roberts was sentenced to ten years in prison for armed robbery. He spent
some of his prison time teaching inmates how to read and write until his daylight
escape in 1980, making him one of the most wanted men in Australia at the time.
“I’ve been through many strange and deadly experiences. But escaping
from prison is the thing that puts everything else into a kind of context. There
is a moment, of course you are risking your life, if they see you they will shoot
you and they will kill you, but when you stand on that wall, there is the exhilaration
of freedom,” said Roberts. Fear
and loneliness were major themes in “Shantaram” based on real events
from his own lifetime and in it he draws on a range of his experiences; from being
tortured in prison to fighting alongside the mujahedeen. On his nearly 1,000 page
book he says: “Pretty much anybody can write a memoir and tell their own
story, but it takes a certain kind of writer to be able to create a novel and
that was for me the greatest challenge.” TALK
ASIA also visits some of the novel’s key locations, including the Haji Ali
Mosque and Leopold's Cafe, a target during last year's Mumbai attacks.
Roberts takes
Rao through the slums of India where he once lived and ran a medical clinic. He
shares with Rao what life was like living there: “I learned a lot about how
people of different faiths can live together really happily, without political
pressure, without social pressure.” | 