Travel Trevor

One great thing about traveling is you actually have time to read for once. I took on the challenge of knocking out all 944 pages of Shantaram and got through it sooner than I expected. Despite being long, it’s a fairly easy read and quite captivating.

My take is that it’s a good book, definitely worth reading and just shy of being a great book. The best part is that it takes you inside India and it’s culture and contrasts it’s differences w/ the Western World. Now, of course, I want to travel in India! lol

Anyway, I scribbled out some notes when I started reading the book to help keep track of characters, etc. Upon finishing, i realized that they need to be updated to be more useful, but I’ll post them here anyway. Feel free to comment w/ updates, additions, fixes and suggestions!

Lord Abdel khader khan:
– aka Khaderbai, aka Elder Brother

Walidlalla: Mafia Council

Rafiq:
– Afghan
– controls garad (brown sugar)

Chuba:
– Rafiqs closests associate, most dangerous man in Bombay

Shiv Sena Party:
– Sainiks
– “future of Bombay”
– a Maharashtrian party
– controls police b/c most lower ranked police officers are Maharashtrian
– also controls slums, many unions and some press
– desperate to control the flow of guns

Parsees, Hindus (of other regions), Muslims:
– control industrial and black money

Sikhs:
– using weapons in Punjab

Muslim Separatists:
– using weapons in Kashmir
– poor Muslims are enemy of Shiv Sena

Posted on January 4th, 2009 under Uncategorized • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback