Following a book

Tourism with Tommy was really helpful. He had already been in Mumbai and so he knew what he wanted to see and showed me in the way some interesting places worth visiting. Not to mention how handy it was for my economy to share expenses. Not only the room, but taxis.

Among those places to visit where some places mentioned on the Shantaram book. The story of an Australian guy who had been in prison in Australia for robbery, escaped and lived in India for 10 years. A film is being made with Johnny Depp as the main character.

On his arrival to Mumbai, he stayed at the India Guest House, just below the hotel I was staying at with Tommy, and where I would end up staying for 300 Rs. a night. A shit hole. A bed and a square meter space was the only thing available. The upper parts of the walls where opened to the contiguous rooms. Music, coughing, whispering, the pass of pages while you read, sex, everything was heard. There was no privacy. But when you stepped into the hall, there was no sense of lack of privacy. Everyone acted as if the walls were of concrete and soundproof.

Leopold, a bar where the Shantaram guy, Gregory David Roberts, used to go, and that apparently, still goes, was second on scene. It was been repainted to Tommy's displeasure. The charm was lost. That charm wrecked old places have, with its usual costumers, creating an atmosphere of nostalgia of old times that will disappear the moment you step out in the bustling city. I went there almost every night. It was a good place to know new people as you were seated where available. If you occupied a table alone, it didn't matter, it would be fitted with other totally alien costumers.

Another of the places that appeared in the book, and that, of course, we visited, was a restaurant with a hanged photo of Madonna in the restaurant. Tommy just wanted to seat there while having a Lassi. Ok then.

And so, as if when in Paris taking a glimpse at the places that had appeared in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code", here, we were doing the same with Shantaram. And I hadn't even read it. Yet.