There was Modena all but dead after Maurizio worked him over with the knife. He was just left, tied to the bed. Maurizio is all wrapped in plastic. Ulla is there........

Lin, Hassan Obikwa, Abdullah...........all there to help out.

Why did this scene happen? How did Greg use it to move the story along? What do you think was the important thing (or things) that happened?

Maybe the Lettie/Vikram love is a blind love, a good love.
and the Ulla/Modena love is a love gone bad.
Hmmm? :blink: ...stuck on the love theme. I'll come back later to see what others have written.

Ugh! I didn't like this part one bit!! Love gone bad...very, very bad. The image of Modena watching Ulla walk away from him in that room makes me furious-crazy-sick. People use each other and call it love. Maybe GDR was trying to show that, or that certain kinds of love are corrupt.

I actually found the mental image of Ulla walking away from Modena even more horrific than the torture/jail sections.

I was willing to give Ulla a break for her role in Lin's arrest, but this goes to far and I lost all compassion for her at this point.

I wonder, does GDR use this scene to remind us that many of the people Lin is dealing with are really not good people? Some people have the ability to pull themselves out of the depths of badness (Lin, for example) but others are too far gone?

Not enough coffee yet! I'll try to get back later with a better thought out answer.

So you think this is a necessary part of the book? Could it be cut out?

This is a part of the story I think could easily be cut out of the movie...unless Roman Polanski was directing! :lol:
These three characters definitely seem to represent the dark side of life anywhere. I agree that GDR might have included them to show what low-lifes Lin's 'friends' were, or could be. To me, those characters and that final scene read like something that really happened to Greg ~ who could make something like that up? As a story point, it tends to show that the people Lin felt he could count on were the mafia guys, as they were the ones who knew what to do with the body and the crime scene, etc.. They came to his aid in a time of need with efficiency and no questions asked, very much the same way Lin himself operated. There's a sense of honor and trust there, which is so glaringly absent in Ulla and her ilk. It probably made Lin even more convinced he should throw in his lot with Khader and his network.

Parlez, I agree. Nicely put. :thumbsup

When push comes to shove, it's the mafia buddies that are there to help.
Also, Ulla resents men, I think.

It could also be there to show that people get killed for money. And that loving someone for money is the wrong way to go about things.

I definitely think it could be cut...

There is enough that would accurately show that Lin is someone who can be relied upon to "fix" things and the type of people with whom he is associating.

Every day.

I think GDR wanted to show the nature of some of the desperate people he was dealing with in India. What would have happened if he tried to associate with honest and normal people living clean lives? He chose not to stay with them. He needed to stay underground and somewhow support himself in a decent manner.
I think he had no real plan, of course, to survive one day to the next.
He grabbed on to the first thing that cam along to keep him going and the people attached to those things. Courting danger is an adrenaline rush--substituting one addiction for another.

Anyone who chooses to get involved with heroin doesn't really love themself and wants to "check out".

I'm so glad he got through all that. He's simply astonishing.

Aha! Interesting. Now that you mention it, he does tip toe through the fields...avoiding one disaster after another, doesn't he ! I never really noticed that before! :thumbsup

Good points ~ luck was definitely on Lin's side...or fate, or karma, or whatever. He had the survivor instinct for sure, despite all his questionable choices and behavior. I agree, amp, about courting danger and the adrenaline rush being addictive. It really brings life down to basics. Playing it safe didn't seem to be part of Lin's personality, ever. Plus I think he had a sort of hero thing going on. A lot of what he did was truly heroic, but a lot seemed foolhardy, like someone who was just spoiling for a fight without really questioning their motives.