Shantaram

Karla Saaranen is a beautiful, cultured Swiss woman who is Lin’s primary love interest. He meets her when she pulls him out of the path of a bus, and he thinks, “The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there, right from the start, in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was a pride in that smile, and confidence in the set of her fine nose” (23). Karla is a useful foil for Lin, who seems capable of overcoming any obstacle except winning her love. However, she does not pretend to be anything other than what she is. Early on, she tells him, “I could never respect a man who didn’t have the good sense to be at least a little afraid of me” (98). This fits neatly with Didier’s remark to Lin that Karla is “reasonably good at being a friend, but she is stupendously good at being an enemy” (55). Her conflict with Madame Zhou confirms this.

Like Lin, Karla is a fugitive from her past. However, unlike Lin, Karla is cynical, is disillusioned with love, and often borders on misanthropy. She is witty and educated, but her abilities have not protected her from grief. Her parents were artists who died within a year of each other in her youth. Later in the novel, Lin learns that she killed the man who raped her when she was 15.

Karla is not the only woman in the novel, but she is the only woman who serves as a fleshed-out character, despite her nature as a cipher. She appears to care for Lin but also disappears when he goes to prison, and she breaks his heart more than once. Ironically, her final rejection of his love is what grants Lin his freedom. She says, “I’m cold inside, Lin. I like people, and I like things, but I don't love any of them—not even myself—and I don’t really care about them. And you know, the strange thing is, I don't really wish that I did care” (927). She does not experience a major narrative evolution because she is not interested, according to her own words, in trying to change her nature.

Prabu embodies the theme of friendship and is the perfect exemplar of a selfless love for his country and his people. Prabu is so purely good that he almost seems like a caricature. Lin likes him instantly and says, “I’ve never known a man who had less hostility in them […] he was incapable of raising his voice or his hand in anger, and I sensed something of that even then, in the first minutes with him” (13). Throughout the novel, Lin describes Prabu’s smile as irresistible and capable of defusing great hostility. He is often played for comic affect as a sidekick, speaking in malapropisms and broken English and possessed by profound sexual lust that is never far from his thoughts.

Prabu is Lin’s first and closest friend in India, as well as his guide to both Mumbai and the culture. He also represents openness and generosity in the face of otherwise humble experiences in the overcrowded slum and his destitute hometown, where Lin has his most peaceful interlude in the story. Prabu is a symbol of everything that Lin comes to love about India, which makes his brutal death—in the taxi that Lin bought for him, no less—that much more devastating and transitional. The fact that it is Lin’s affluence and intrusion that afforded Prabu the instrument of his death is metaphorical for Western influences on traditional cultures and political systems—a point echoed by Russian and US involvement in the mujahedeen war in Afghanistan­.

Didier is probably the novel’s most quotable character. Although he is typically drunk, he speaks primarily in epigrams and aphorisms, treating every casual interaction as a clash of wits. Lin observes Didier and says, “They all knew there was a line you could cross with him, a limit to his tolerance, and he was a dangerous man if you crossed it” (84). He is loyal, which he demonstrates when he goes to the Palace with Lin for the final confrontation with Madame Zhou: “Didier’s line was drawn through the hearts of the people he loved. If you hurt them, in any way, you roused him to a cold and deadly rage” (84).

The author uses Didier as a symbol for international relations, government corruption, regret over abandoning those one loves, and the power of India to accept those who may not fit in elsewhere. Didier tells Lin, “I am French, I am gay, I am Jewish, and I am a criminal, more or less in that order. Mumbai is the only city I have ever found that allows me to be all four of those things, at the same time” (50). Through Didier, Roberts illustrates India’s cosmopolitan ethos while balancing a firm sense of justice, which is embodied through Didier’s actions defending those he loves and through the mob’s actions against those who cause traffic accidents. Both acts are retributive and taken as a matter of course, showing the communal nature of social bonds.

Khan—known to most as “Khaderbhai”—is one of the most powerful crime bosses in Mumbai. He is a mentor and father figure for Lin, who says, “He was the most imperial human being I’d ever met” (192). An early introduction describes Khan as a man who

was admired and feared by the rich. He was respected and mythologized by the poor. His discourses on theology and ethics, held in the courtyard of the Nabila Mosque in Dongri, were famous throughout the city, and drew many scholars and students from every faith. No less famous were his friendships with artists, businessmen, and politicians. He was also one of the lords of Bombay's mafia (182).

Khan is therefore a theologian as well as the tip of power over his colleagues running parts of Mumbai, giving him both moral and actual influence over the people. In this way, his sway, criminal or otherwise, keeps peace in the city.

Khan surrounds himself with people who are dependent on him, but he rewards them so richly and treats them with such warmth that they gladly join him. He is a cunning and ruthless criminal, but he is also philosophical and poetic. He enjoys rhetorical debates and is an idealist in his pursuit of justice in Afghanistan—a passion that will ultimately cost him his life and the harmony so hard-won in Mumbai.

Khan serves as the father that Lin never had. He is also a mass of contradictions that allows the author to explore the themes of justice, loyalty, friendship, suffering, and the idea that one can do the wrong things for the right reasons. This is how he justifies the necessity of killing and running illegal operations, despite claiming a devotion to God and showing charity to many. He tells himself that “[t]here are no good men, or bad men […] It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men—it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil” (199). Ultimately, he reveals that he has used Lin, although he claims that his feelings were always sincere. His prioritizing ideals over individuals places him at odds with Lin, who prioritizes people over ideals. Though Lin never gains the type of authority Khan has, Lin remains alive and at peace at the end of the story, illustrating the costs of giving precedence to principles over people.