"Shantaram" author shows Madonna Mumbai's slums

MUMBAI (Reuters Life!) - Pop star Madonna toured the Mumbai slums on Tuesday with Gregory David Roberts, the convicted robber who turned his time spent there following an escape from an Australian prison into the best-selling novel "Shantaram".

The singer, who is on an extended New Year's break in India with family, walked around Cuffe Parade, a seafront neighbourhood where million-dollar high rises sit next to fishermen's huts, typical of the gulf between the city's richest and poorest.

Madonna was seen entering a fisherman's hut in Cuffe Parade with a woman companion and later walking into a roadside vegetarian restaurant, warding off eager journalists and photographers.

Her chaperone Roberts, who fled from an Australian jail in 1980 after being convicted of bank robbery, appeared to take them to places mentioned in his novel, which is due to be made into a film by Mira Nair, starring Johnny Depp.

They visited a motorcycle mechanic's garage and a market of old curios in a grimy Muslim quarter where she looked at the shops from inside her car. Roberts has set up a free health service for some of Mumbai's poor, and also does some teaching.

Madonna ushered in the New Year along with Guy Ritchie, her film director husband, and their children in the deserts of Rajasthan state before reaching Mumbai.