More dreams are realised and extinguished in Bombay than any other place in India.
Gregory David Roberts
'Shantaram' is the second in the series of a quartet of novels that I have planned about my life but is the first to be written. The third book is a sequel to 'Shantaram,' the first a prequel.
Nobody who has done business in any country with an Indian would doubt the shrewdness of Indians, but what Indian people bring to the world is something special and unique, which is the capacity for a loving interaction.
A city may be dirty on the outside but is clean on the inside. Many cities in the world are clean on the outside but dirty on the inside.
Once you love something, you can never stop loving it. Even after a divorce, the heart will not stop loving.
The choking humidity makes amphibians of us all, in Bombay, breathing water in air; you learn to live with it, and you learn to like it, or you leave.
Because my life has been so notorious and so bad, it can overshadow my work.
I've been to Delhi, Madras, Bangalore and a lot of other cities, but I have never seen a crime set-up like that in Bombay.
I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.
Sometimes, when you live a life at such a wild edge, an extreme edge of experience, you can come back into the world - if you come back at all - with some essence from that experience that people find useful.
Crime is stupid, lazy and weak. You can only exploit it and make money out of it.
