APPLE TV MAGIC
My Third Eye Has Cataracts
Shantaram is a nostalgic search for self by a flawed man
The story happens in India, and it’s playing most nights in my living room. Even though the hero lands in Bombay, circa 1982, it feels like I’m back in college reading Carlos Castenada and viewing a world through a magical if wobbly 20-something lens.
I read Shantaram years ago and fell under its spell, quickly, like millions of others. This man’s life story is an epic tale told in exotic settings: a guilt-ridden criminal flees his homeland and discovers himself through romance, danger, and living in Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) slums.
In the novel, a lost soul grows up and gains insight into his character defects.
The writing reminds me of The Magus, with an otherworldly and romantic flow difficult to describe or capture — so far, the film is getting it right.
The story is at once deeply relatable — because we’ve all been young and confused — and strangely foreign because few of us masterminded a prison break to become a slum doctor while living halfway around the world.
And that’s only the first three episodes.
If you live in safe suburbia, where your biggest brush with danger is whether to purchase season theatre tix even though you’ll be gone for five weeks, Shantaram is bittersweet because it captures the worst moments you survived that were also the fullest emotional peaks.
We can all remember those instances when we felt tested by destiny, as if the decision before us would alter everything.
As a female, I envy how the lead character, scarred and wounded, walks the streets of Bombay at night all by himself. Lucky bastard.
Spoiler: this behavior is just as stupid as it sounds, and it led him to the kind of trouble you’d expect from outlaws and police alike.
Growing Up Is Trial and Error
How did his life fall into the gutter? How did he end up alone, exiled from his country and the promise of ordinary life in a wealthy nation?
We don’t know the whole story, but it’s obvious he’s part criminal, part dreamer, part philosopher — and all hunk.
He’s smokin’ hot and mysterious, the dream of every gal from nine to ninety, which is why it’s all the more puzzling he can’t get the girl he wants.
I can’t remember the plot of the book, but I recall the gist. The central figure is growing into a moral being, trying to figure out who is good and who is evil — or if everyone has a little bit of both.
He was in his 20s when he arrived in Bombay, and immediately found a cohort of shady characters to hang out with, but it didn’t help him answer the bigger questions about life.
He does what you do in your twenties: have fun and meet lots of people. Some mysterious force leads him to confront his past drug addiction, and he ends up saving or trying to save others from the same fate.
On the surface, this guy wants to redeem himself because he believes he is still a criminal. His trajectory of college, career, and family is lying in a ditch but that isn’t what he wants anyway.
He wants to be free.
He is faced with a dilemma. How can a person be free and simultaneously detached from other people’s problems and pain? And what if you are someone who has a gift to help others?
No one needs a prison break story to relate to his dilemma, because we all are searching for redemption.
We all want to know we are okay and on the right path, and we are all called to do the right thing and often chose not to out of fear.
The Spiritual Message
It’s been two decades since I read Shantaram and I haven’t yet watched the whole film, but I recall the message was to grow by doing the right thing.
The trouble is, the right thing is hard to figure out in the moment.
Only in retrospect do we know what the right decision is (and sometimes not even then), but what this man stopped doing was running away. He had every reason and plenty of opportunity to live a life free of responsibilities, a stranger in a strange land being a tourist and a beach bum.
He decided to stay where he landed by mistake, and he found himself in one of the most objectively horrible places on the planet, Bombay’s slums.
He was given a gift. By witnessing the lives of people who are so poor they have no choice but to help each other, he realized he had no choice but to help others.
They cannot run away, and are forced to face the worst hardships of life with grace.
The surprise is how the slums are a community, and how goodness permeates most of its maze of dirt streets and shelters in its ramshackle homes.
Meanwhile, of course, he is tempted by money in the form of a successful businessman and criminal who wants to mentor him.
Life’s Fears Never End
Growing up is largely a matter of acknowledging how to use our gods-given skills. To do that, we must stay put long enough to practice them.
Lucky people have a calling — and it can be small and obscure. You can be called to be an actress and only ever do community theatre.
You can be called to be a writer like Emily Dickinson, who never left her house and knew no fame during her life.
You can be called to help others even though you are used to being a selfish bastard.
As we get older, our calling might make itself known or might get buried under layers of false moves and wrong paths. The feeling of having something momentous to do, of facing a test, never fully disappears.
That’s what makes Shantaram a touching and authentic story. It brings you back to the spirit of risk and stretching your wings in a search for the real self.
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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.
