Magic Moments

This book was voted by the book club members to be read and discussed, for the month of September. And the one and half hour-long session was yesterday, on 20 th September. We based our discussions on the questions already provided at the end of the book by the publisher as cues for facilitating such conversations around the book. It was the first of its kind that I attended. I had always wanted to take part in such a discussion- a dedicated book club activity- where book lovers sat around, sipped coffee at a café, and analyzed the length and breadth of the subjects and themes in it, providing their unique perspectives to it- a wholesome experience to any reader. Aniesha Brahma, a blogger and an author, had organized such events with Bee books, and scrolling through their photos in social media I had always wanted to be a part of it. Sadly, it was organized in Kolkata, in a Café and I was in Bhubaneswar or Hyderabad or Dehradun. Yesterday I got the chance, as this one was being cond...

‘Dongri To Dubai-   Six Decades of Mumbai Mafia’ by Hussain Zaidi is the first of its kind book based on years of crime reporting, police documents and numerous interviews, on Mumbai underworld, the gangs of organized crime who started out small as smugglers and went on to become violent most wanted criminals in the modern history of the country. And it is most importantly the narrative of the making of Dawood Ibrahim, the don and the now declared global terrorist. It encompasses the story around the mafia before Dawood- big names like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, The Pathans; the Mumbai police using the then street thug Dawood to control the menace caused by the other gangsters; the rise of the son of a head police constable to unimaginable ranks in Mumbai mafiadom; the clout and network of the don extending from the police to the political insiders; ingenious ideas in smuggling that was replicated in the then Bollywood storylines; onslaught of terrible violence and gang wars, plott...