Dawood doesn’t
need any introduction. The man whom every Indian hate, despise, but beyond that
there is something more about his life awaiting to be revealed, the struggle he
made to rise in the mafia world. Despite all odds, people may admire his rise
to the power, the life he lived, the talent he developed to become something
from a very ordinary life. Well, the question is – what’s his real take? Was he
a genius in the world of crime, an entrepreneur by fluke, or a talent that went
totally in a wrong direction? Zaidi tried to answer many questions like these
in his book, Dongri to Dubai.
Dawood shot
into untoward fame internationally following the 1993 Bombay blasts, since then
he is the most dreaded gangster who shamed India many a time. Prior to him, the
mafia landscape of Bombay was ruled by powerful crime bosses like Haji Mastan
and Karim Lala. Yet he managed to capsize them to become the informal boss of
the Indian mafia.
The book
uncovers the journey of this don. Though the book is not a fiction, more of a
chronicle which puts forward how he got into mafia bossing, what kind of child
was he in his middle-class family, and many other aspects that all resulted in
shaping him as the enemy of public. By all ways, it is a gritty read – as usual
stories of underworld dons are always exciting.
The writing doesn’t
stand out but the story itself is so gripping that writing style reduces to an auxiliary
value. The author used a load of old-fashioned words, probably to give the feel
of a novel and not a collection of news articles. No doubt the research
material has been taken from old to new newspapers; the feel of a fictional
book is missing. Readers can feel there is masala-journalism in it. Despite all
that odd and awful narration, Zaidi deserves to be praised for the research he
has done behind the book. He explains the modus operandi of gangsters and
police. He presents tales which must have somehow survived in gossip. He has
even added some very personal revelations about gangsters which include their
lecherous sex lives and adultery.
In a nutshell, if you enjoy reading crime, Hussain Zaidi has compiled an excellent book. The
way he described places, makes readers to imagine the scene going in the back
of their head very clearly.
The book features
Dawood as a person larger-than-life, which may upset readers to an extent. But
it is not the writer's fault that Dawood is still at large living free from the
Indian jurisdiction. It is the cleverness of his attitude and the failure of
our system that today Dawood is the man that he is.
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