Shantaram (Part Five) - Gregory David Roberts

.. I broke off, the words failing, and the thought of Khaled Ansari momentarily bleaching my mind with the mention of his name. It was a white blizzard of emotion storming from the last memory, the last image of him, walking away from the night and the snow.

- On Remembering (800)

The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open

- Origin Undetermined (Karla or Didier) (805)

I heard someone calling me, calling me, calling me back from the edge of the abyss into which Habib, and all those like him, had plunged.

- About the finish the fight with the twin Rajan's. A significant moment (812)

That was the real man, the steel blade within the shabby, rusting scabbard.

- On Didier Levy (813)

Yet that little phrase thundered in my heart, and an avalanche of grieving began to tremble, shift and slide.

- Lin finally grieves at the loss of Kader (833)

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss.

- Assassin Grief (834)

I turned to look at her. The sky in her eyes held tiny storms. Her lips, embossed with secret thoughts, were swollen to the truth she way trying to tell me.

- Lisa Carter confessing her desire to Lin (841)

Evening dimmed the afternoon's bright halo. A haze of dusty smoke and vapour misted the horizon, sizzling soundlessly, as if the sky at the distant wall of the world was dissolving into the waters of the bay. Most of the boats and ferries were safely tied to their mooring posts at the dock beneath me. Others rose and fell and rose again, swaying on the secure tethers of their sea anchors. High tide pushed the swollen waves against the long stone wall where i stood. Here and there along the boulevard, frothy plumes, like gasps of effort, slapped up, over and onto the white footpaths.

- Lin's view from Gateway (851)

I let my heart break on my father's love, like the tall waves beside me that hurled their chests against the wall, and bled onto the wide , white path.

- Lin surrenders to the assassin grief (851)

Fate always gives you two choices, Scorpio George once said: the one you should take, and the one you do (858)

The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance; its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dreaded and hated enemies, suffering and failure. have their reason and their right to be.

- Lin, relieving himself of some of the guilt he carries (872)

The more happiness I get from it, the more thoroughly I have to wash my hands afterwards.

- Didier on Money (873)

She once told me that heroes only come in three kinds: dead, damaged or dubious

- Karla once said (882)

There are few things more discomfiting that a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you're determined to dislike for no good reason

- Lin's first meeting with "Jeet" (883)

Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting

- Karla Once said (919)

It is always a fool's mistake, to be alone with someone you shouldn't have loved

- Didier (921)

Every human heartbeat, he'd said many times, is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he'd meant. He'd been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuits of the stars. But i suddenly realized that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.

- Lin beginning another cycle of life (932)

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world.

- This is what we do (933)

- The End -