bok of the day

shantaram - by gregory david roberts. a book that brings alive the soul of bombay, and indians in general. here's an excerpt from the 1st chapter -

The first thing i noticed about bombay, was the smell of the different air. i could smell it before i saw or heard anything of india....i was excited and delighted by it, in that first bombay minute, escaped from prison and new to the wide world, but i didn't and couldn't recognise it. i know now that it's the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. it's the smell of gods, demons,empires and civilisations in resurrection and decay. it's the blue-skin smell of the sea...and the blood-metal smell of machines. it smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. it smlls of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and loves that produce our courage. it smells of ten-thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churchjes and mosques, and of a hundred bazaarsdevoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. karla once called it the worst good smell in the world...But whenever i return to bombay now, it's my first sense of the city - that smell, above all things - that welcomes me and tells me i've come home.