It's inescapable: the utter desperation of most of Bombay's citizens living situations. Whether they're sleeping on sidewalks or in slums, being turned away from hospitals or rounded up by the cops, a lack of resources is a major problem for the majority of the characters in Shantaram. The novel doesn't try to hide or sugarcoat this fact, either. The narrator, Lin, goes to live in a slum and shares the firsthand experiences he has there. The injustice of poverty is always lurking in the back of such descriptions, especially since Lin also has access to some of the city's richest and most powerful people.
Questions About Poverty
- How does Lin deal with the utter poverty most of his friends live in without just going nuts?
- Where do the differences between the poor and the rich show up in the novel?
- Why does the slum exist right next to the fancy World Trade Centre? What's the connection between the two sites?
- How do the poorest characters in the novel get by?
Chew on This
In Shantaram, the poor people are portrayed as good and the rich as corrupt.
Lin chooses to live in the slum to experience the poverty of the people, but he can never really experience it because, if he wants, he can actually leave.