John Gerard Fagan's story about Shantaram

It was three days after my twenty-third birthday when I heard the news. I was living in Australia: a trip of a lifetime was turning into a living nightmare.

I’d finished my degree and headed to Australia with Mikey, Bob, Tony and Phil: friends I’d known since primary school. We crammed into a tiny Sydney apartment and had a fantastic time. We later got jobs in Home-Hill, a town just outside the city of Townsville.

Phil was violently attacked in Home-Hill. He had to have an emergency operation to let blood out of his brain. It left him in a coma.

I’d worked thirty days in a row and left a few weeks earlier, heading down the coast with Bob and Mikey. Phil was short on cash and stayed.

After Brisbane, Mikey went to Melbourne while Bob and I headed to Byron Bay. Mikey phoned at five a.m. He said Phil had been attacked. He didn’t know any details and couldn’t get to Townsville for three days. I got the first bus and stayed on it for twenty-eight sleepless hours.

At the hospital I saw Phil in intensive care. His face was twice the normal size and part of his skull was missing. It was the most horrific sight I have ever witnessed.

I remember waiting on the eleventh of July 2006 for Phil’s parents to arrive from Scotland. How do you tell your friend’s mum that her twenty-year-old son is dying; might even be dead? I can still hear his mum’s scream. I was frozen, numb, staring at the floor. The doctors said he was still alive but effectively brain dead.

Everything was crumbling around me. That night Tony gave me Shantaram, a novel by Gregory David Roberts. I remember looking at this 936 page book, with a red silhouette of Indian buildings over a blue background. It looked like some torturous new age, self-help book. Shantaram is a fictionalised autobiography. Roberts escaped from an Australian prison, acquired a new identity and ended up in India. From the very first page I knew this book was something special.

Three days later Phil showed his first signs of life: he moved his right hand and his brain signals improved. We finally allowed ourselves some hope.

Phil ‘died’ another seven times in hospital. Bob, Mikey and Tony had left now. At night I wasn’t alone. I was hundreds of miles away on the run with Linbaba. I read how Linbaba dealt with the death of his closest friend. Each night that book took me far away and kept me there until I finally fell asleep.

Phil recovered enough to get a flight back home with his mum. The doctors said it was a miracle. I still can’t believe how lucky we are that he’s still here.

Shantaram helped me cope with the most difficult period of my life. It was also the first book that made me want to be a writer. Shantaram was the book that changed my life.