This is a book that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time. Finally I got my hands on the book and have so far read the first of five parts the book is divided into. The first part is about 150 pages and it kind of feels like the intro to the remaining story, but at no point is it boring. Eventhough you follow an everyday life of an exscaped prisoner in the midst of Bombay meeting what seems like people that you do not want to bring home to your parents, it sounds more like an adventure than a way down.
The following text will contain spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
Halfway through the book before he actually start his criminal path in life. I don’t condone his way of life as a criminal, but he puts so much emotion into his story. His feelings about what he do, how he feels about the people around him and how important they are to him. He loves to wonder about life, philosophize with equal minded, loves the diversity that India offers him.
Trough the book he gets more and more invovled in crimes and ends up in war, nearly dying of hunger and wounds, coming back to Bombay and continueing his path in a more hard core violent criminal environment. In some way throughout the entire book he manages to write about his life in such a positive and loving way that I kinda forget how he gets through life. The love he has for the people he first met in Bombay – Prabaker – and the family he finds in the slum where he lived and worked as a doctor. The peace that he seeks when he sits by the seaside.
He seems a hard and distant man but at the same time he describes his feelings and emotions that he at the moment couldn’t find.
The book is some 850 pages but his writing is easy and at no point do you feel that it is too long. I especially enjoyed that he continued and respected his friendship with the Prabaker, Johnny cigar etc. in the slum. He takes in the Bombay life and feels it on his skin, in his head and in his heart. He feels he has found a family amongst these loving and embracing indian people.
So go find this book and read it, it’s a book about a mans journey to find himself again, finding his path in life, finding love again and allowing himself to feel.