The unbelievable tale of an Australian convict who escaped a maximum security prison and found refuge on the streets of Bombay.
I started this book back in 2009 and only now took the time to complete it. This delay was due somewhat to a dislike to the writing, but moreso to my terrible habit of getting distracted.
It does drag at some points, and becomes repetitive and redundant at others, but every few pages the reader is offered some gem of inspirational philosophy that makes the journey of reading worth it.
This story also has the best depiction of life in India that I’ve ever read. The good, the bad, the fascinating, and the boring. It’s all here.
Notable Excerpts
Suffering, Khaderbhai once told me, is the way we test our love,
…justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.’
Amchi Mumbai, Mumbai amchi!’ It’s our Bombay, and Bombay is ours!
I sometimes think that the size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.’
A politician is someone who promises you a bridge, even when there’s no river.’
It’s one of the five hundred things I love about Indians: if they like you, they do it quickly, and not by half.
The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering.’
I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.
‘The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards,’
You know the difference between news and gossip, don’t you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.’
And you know the old saying—a king is a bad enemy, a worse friend, and a fatal family relation.’
The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity.
…any Indian man will tell you that although love might not have been invented in India, it was certainly perfected there.
This is India, man. This is India. This is the land of the heart. This is where the heart is king, man. The fuckin’ heart.
Is love, yes, when a terrible feeling makes you happy? When you worry about a girl, more even than you worry about your taxi?
Happiness is a myth, Karla once said. It was invented to make us buy things.
Ye doonia, ye mehfil Mere kam, ki nahi… All the world, all its people Mean nothing to me
It’s peace that makes the deepest cuts, I thought.
When you know you’re going to die, there’s no comfort in cleverness. Genius is vain, and cleverness is hollow, at the end.
‘The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open.’
…both men were unmarried, in a country where that was unpatriotic at the least, and sacrilegious at worst.
I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.
And money, if the pile gets high enough, is something like a big political party: it does as much harm as it does good, it puts too much power in too few hands, and the closer you come to it the dirtier you get.
‘There is no man, and no place, without war…’