Why Shantaram makes me mad

Call a bar Thatrsquos what it sounded like The person speaking was an underworld don of Mumbai and he was referring to one of his territories called apparently Callabar I had a moment of cognitive dissonance before realising that he was referring to ColabaOn the TV in front of me was Apple TVrsquos blockbuster TV series Shantaram based on the eponymous book by Gregory David Roberts that was quite the sensation in the early 2000sI havenrsquot read the book Irsquom only a little embarrassed to say Still I know what the story was about Lin an Australian exaddict prison escapee on the run comes to India to go underground gets involved in crime drugs and starts living in a slum where his minor paramedical skills make him legendary as a healer Falsely accused of a crime he did not commit Lin is a good guy in search of his essential goodness As a review put it Shantaram is a mix of ldquocrime humanity and redemptionrdquoThat would make it box office material They say Johnny Depp wanted to play the star role once But itrsquos taken two decades for Shantaram to become a TV seriesPerhaps they should have waited a few decades more Shantaram not only presses all my buttons but it is also one of the few eggs Apple TV has laid after a string of awardwinners like Ted Lasso and Coda I first watched it with some detachment the way you watch a James Bond movie showing us what oriental exotic India looks likeThen I heard the crime boss Khaderbhai say lsquoCallabarrsquo and a switch flipped inside me There are few things more cringeworthy than a foreigner trying to speak like a local and flubbing it But a 55million movie in which they couldnrsquot be bothered to pronounce the name of the main location correctlySomething is seriously wrong And it has everything to do with the politics of trying to tell someone elsersquos storyFirst question how could an Indian director get an Indian name wrong Bharat Nalluri sounds about as native as you can get Hersquos not He grew up in Newcastle and attended the Royal Grammar School there Hersquos thoroughly BritishAll right then What about the underworld don Khader Khan Surely he would have known how to say Colaba Ermm no Alexander Siddig who plays the role was born Siddig El Fadil in Sudan and is an English actor better known as Dr Julian Bashir in Star TrekGo through the cast list of Shantaram and yoursquoll see another odditymdashnot a single Indian from India stars in a major role They are lookalike Indians either of British or Australian nationality who have lived away long enough to lose any lingering Indian sensibility or accent Even Ravi the slum boy who nurses anger against Lin for his motherrsquos death is an Australian actor of Keralite origin Matthew JosephItrsquos possible they were trying to circumvent the politics and bureaucracy of Bollywood unions Or perhaps they didnrsquot think Indianborn Indians could act as well as foreignborn onesThe slums in Shantaram are sanitised and recreated in Thailand the genuine ones in Mumbai being judged too grisly for western tastes Real Indians and real India are merely the blurred backdrop for this TV series by nonIndians for a foreign audienceClearly realistic accents and pronunciations couldnrsquot matter less in such a film Behind it is the same profound indifference and insolence that makes an American call Iraq lsquoEyeRackrsquo and say lsquoEyeRainIanrsquo for IranianTherersquos a difference between movies that try to explain India and those like Slumdog Millionaire and Shantaram that exploit it Being a clever writer Gregory David Roberts understood that he wasnrsquot writing for Indians but for a white western audience who liked their oriental spirituality and mysticism shaken and stirred with some crime sex violence and hard knocks If life kicks you about a little you can claim to have seen the divine light and people will believe youYou couldnrsquot say it better than reviewer Sandipan Deb did ldquowrite a book make money get stoned babble about nirvanardquoTurns out thatrsquos exactly what G D Roberts did In 2015 he tried his hand at a 900page Shantaram sequel called The Mountain Shadow It landed with a squelch and was never heard of againRealising that he had written the only bestseller he would ever write Roberts did what every selfrespecting hippie entrepreneur doesmdashshaved himself bald applied a vivid red tika on his forehead put on saffron robes and wrote a book called The Spiritual Path with gems like ldquohonesty is the river flowing into the sea of trustrdquo and ldquosuccess is the full expression of personal fulfilmentrdquoPerhaps one day Swami Gregory will deliver a free sermon at Mondegar Cafeacute You know the one at CallabarYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper