Shantaram

Lin thinks about love and sex as he smokes. During a conversation, Johnny says that humans took the ocean with them when they crawled onto the shore. Lin is shocked and embarrassed by his own surprise at Johnny’s erudition, which makes him feel like a bigot.

Jeetendra interrupts them to tell Lin that Radha is sick. She is vomiting and feverish. Lin says she needs a hospital. Prabu arrives and says Parvati is sick. By evening, there are 10 cases of cholera in the slum. Radha dies the next day as the number of cases jumps to 60. The health department official is a man named Sandeep Jyoti. He talks with Qasim, Lin, Prabu, and Hamid. There are 15 infection sites, and the hospitals are overcrowded. He promises to bring rehydration tablets for the afflicted.

Karla arrives to help. She cares about Lin and won’t leave. She says she needs a “salvation ride” and believes that it’s easier to be brave for someone else (381). They spend 20 hours touring the slum and seeing patients. They go 40 hours without sleep, retching constantly at the smells of the victims. On the second night, as they walk back to sleep, Lin hears rats. Thousands of them swirl around their legs. Lin says they bite if you move, so they hold still until the pack passes.

As they lie down, Karla tells her story. She was born in Switzerland as an only child. Her parents were popular artists. One night, her father, Ischa Saaranen, didn’t return from an exhibition. He died in a car crash. Anna, Karla’s mother, took her life a year later. Karla then went to America with Mario Pacelli, her mother’s brother. He was loving and generous, but he died three years later in a climbing accident. His widow, Penelope (Penny), was jealous of Karla.

Karla worked at a restaurant and as a babysitter. The father of a child she watched raped her while drunk. Karla was 15. She moved to Los Angeles immediately, but she had lost the concept of romantic love. She went to night school and saved money to study English and German literature in college, but she couldn’t follow through. She was too damaged. She met an Indian man in Singapore, and her life changed.

Lin asks why she spends time at Leopold’s. She tells him about Ahmed and Christina. Ahmed was an Afghani friend. She helped nurse him after he was wounded in the war. He met and fell in love with a woman named Christina, an employee of Madame Zhou. Christina knew Ulla, who also worked there. Maurizio bought Ulla’s freedom with a loan from Ahmed. Maurizio then put her to work to repay Ahmed for lending him the money.

Before Ulla, no one had successfully left Zhou’s without an acid attack. Ahmed then when to the Palace to confront her about releasing Christina. Both of their bodies were found the next day in a car. The official report said they took poison. She says that when she cried at Zhou’s in front of Lin, Zhou was describing, in German, how she tormented them before killing them. Karla asks for Lin’s story but falls asleep before he talks.

Nine people die of the cholera, including six children. Karla stays for nearly a week. Lin’s savings run out during the outbreak, so he goes back to the black market to earn money from commissions. He sees his role as someone who connects tourists to relatively harmless vices.

Lin meets two men named George, who go by Scorpio George and Gemini George. They are both drug dealers with heroin addictions. The cops watch them all and let them do business because they profit as well.

Lin sees Vikram unexpectedly. He encourages Vikram to keep pursuing Lettie: He likes them both. Vikram says they are blood brothers and gives Lin his cowboy shirt before pulling him into a street dance as Lettie watches nearby.

Prabu’s cousin, Shantu, drives Lin to a fishermen’s settlement in his taxi. From there, a man named Vinod paddles to the Taj Mahal Hotel, where Karla gets into the boat with Lin. Vinod sings a love song and takes them to a taxi stand. Lin sees Rajan, the eunuch, glaring in the crowd.

A restaurant delivers food, and they eat on the beach with Vinod’s family. Anand greets him at his hotel when Lin returns. There is a 28-year-old Italian man there who has overdosed. Lin does CPR and revives the man. After cleaning up, Ulla pulls up in a taxi. She asks Lin to meet her at Leopold’s. She is afraid but doesn’t tell Lin exactly why she doesn’t want to be at Leopold’s alone. Lin agrees to meet her later.

He begins to run as he thinks about Karla, death, and the Italian couple at the hotel. He and Karla make love, and then Lin realizes he is almost late for his meeting with Ulla. Five cops stop him on the way to Leopold’s. They take him and six others to the police station, where they beat him savagely with canes. He knows that only Khan can help him. He will try to get a message to him.

Lin describes the inhuman conditions at the prison. There are 200 men in an area meant for 40. Prisoners eat once a day and use their plates as currency. He earns a spot in the second room of four, which holds fewer people, after he fights a man and wins by biting his cheek. A man named Mahesh tell him they are they’re going to Arthur Road Prison in three weeks. The guards tell everyone not to help Lin, so no one will help him deliver a message. Mahesh thinks they will succeed at Arthur Road, however. For three weeks, they protect each other.

At Arthur Road, overseers whip Lin with bamboo sticks as he walks through the gauntlet, refusing to run. In his block, there are 20 overseers to 180 prisoners. That night, he wakes to the bite of a kadmal, a bloodsucking parasite. The next day, Mahesh stops him from attacking an overseer who hits him. He begs Lin never to retaliate.