by Deepa BHOOKHUN

?Shantaram? is the name of the most beautiful - and at times disturbing - book that you will probably ever read - if ever you can get your hands on it, that is. You will not find it in any bookstore on the island. I digress to mention the fact that bookstores in this country we want to open up to foreigners are so poor in books and so unimaginative that it makes you want to cry.

Thank God for Amazon.com!

Anyway. I guess we should be thankful we have access to the Internet and that the postal service is reasonably serviced. ?Shantaram? is a novel based on the incredible life of a runaway Australian, Gregory David Roberts, who escaped from a maximum-security prison in Australia and became his country?s most wanted criminal. He was on the run for 10 years. He ran to Mumbai where he lived in the slums and worked with the Mafia. Interestingly he came to Mauritius in the 1980s on a fake passport, in the course of his mafia business. He was eventually caught in Germany and sent back to Australia where he spent the rest of his time. The book, a 600-page riveting account of his experience was written three times. Prison guards destroyed the first two drafts of the book, a book that the author says ?was written in tears and blood?.

No, I am not making a book review nor have I been appointed Robert?s agent. I have told you all this because I want to place what Roberts said about being beaten up by prison guards and policemen in their context. Getting beaten up by people in uniform - who represent authority, who represent the State - getting beaten up by the very people who are paid to protect you, he says, is the worse thing that could happen to a person. The anger it creates dehumanises one. The need to get even - against one?s country, against one?s people - blurs all the lines between right and wrong.

Roberts escaped from prison because he could endure torture no more. Death would have been a better and more humane alternative. In the event, the author didn?t die but every time he started thinking about being caught and sent back, he injected himself with some heroin to waste his life away some more. Yes, Roberts was guilty of being an armed robber and of countless other things he candidly talks about in his book. Yes, he was a criminal. Yes, he survived. But he probably wouldn?t have survived had he not escaped from prison. Ironic, huh?

This is what we do to people when we allow policemen and prison guards to beat them up. This is what we do every time we abuse innocent as well as guilty people?s human rights. This is how damaging it is when the people who do this, do it in the name of the government, in the name of the State, in the name of the country.

Police brutality takes place practically everyday in this country; but we only hear about it once in a while. Prison brutality as well. Authorities know it and yet they turn a blind eye to it.

And then they wonder why law and order is turning into lawlessness and disorder.