Dawood Ibrahim sells. India's most wanted criminal is a sure-shot subject to grab eyeballs.
With the Big D as its main protagonist, it hardly comes as a surprise that S. Hussain Zaidi's Dongri to Dubai flew off the shelves by the dozen and the first print run of the book has already been sold out.
Courtesy crime folklore in Mumbai/Bombay, the media and of course Bollywood, our desi Godfathers such as Haji Mastan, Vardarajan Mudaliar, Karim Lala, Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan have become larger than life figures. But given the relative paucity of literature on the underworld, the hunger for books on the topic is immense and a work like Dongri to Dubai was long overdue. And there was nobody as well-placed to accomplish this as Zaidi - a crime journalist with nearly two decades of experience behind him and the author of the incredibly insightful and addictively engaging narrative on the 1993 blasts, Black Friday.
Judging by the fact that it took four to five sittings to finish reading the 363-page book, Dongri to Dubai is extremely fast-paced and readable. This is no small achievement as the book traverses the long journey of the Mumbai Mafia - from petty stabbing incidents in the 1950s to its inextricable linkages with global terrorism six decades later. What could however have been a seminal work on organised crime in the Maximum City ends up as a rather filmy-style narrative of Dawood's journey from a tough guy in Dongri to the Don of Dubai, and finally a global terrorist. The Bollywood touches begin with the cover and back page itself, which contain accolades by Anil Kapoor, John Abraham and Sanjay Gupta.
The book is replete with unnecessary dialogue-baazi and drama such as Dawood's 1974 soda-bottle attack on the burly Pathan Bashu Dada, the then Don of Dongri, to avenge the humiliation of his father and elder brother, or his Bollywoodstyle speech at a meeting organised by Haji Mastan to make peace between him and the Pathans. If the depiction of the latter incident is accurate, Dawood could have given the Big B and Salim-Javed a run for their money. The Don is supposed to have snatched the cigarette Mastan was smoking and crushed it in his palm and said, 'We know how to handle the fire and when to crush it with bare fingers.'
These flourishes are at the expense of contextualisation. Zaidi does not answer certain key questions he himself raises at the beginning: Why did Dongri emerge as the epicentre of crime in Mumbai? Why did the Muslim youth of Bombay take to crime? He has also brushed through certain extremely crucial events in Mumbai's history such as the 1982 mill strike, which changed the nature of the city and the mafia.
It is unfair to expect a book to be encyclopaedic in the ground it covers. But surely the amount of space wasted on details of the mannerisms of the various dons and a rather superfluous chapter on Osama Bin Laden's killing could have been utilised in bringing some analytical depth.
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (who incidentally has written the foreword for Dongri to Dubai) had a much better depiction of the wheels-within-wheels nature of crime, politics and espionage in Mumbai. This is despite it being a work of fiction, or perhaps because of it. But the book's shortcomings become obvious only because the expectations are very high, and in the final analysis, they are outweighed by its many positives.
Most importantly, Zaidi doesn't view Dawood through the lenses of hindsight, which is not an easy task given the iconic status that man has come to assume. His narrative remains true to how Dawood was viewed at the various phases of his life. For instance in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dawood, being a policeman's son as well as a Maharashtrian, was seen at least by the Mumbai Police as a rather desirable counterweight to the Pathan gangsters. Zaidi brilliantly narrates how Dawood, which is Arabic for David, took on and defeated Mumbai's Goliaths - sadistic dons such as Alamzeb and Amirzada Pathan as well as Samad Khan, whose brutality compelled Pathan patriarch Karim Lala to throw kinship ties out of the window.
The depiction of Dawood's stint in Pakistan is also insightful, especially the fact that he has no attachment to abstract ideas such as jihad and religion. Forging links with Islamic terrorists is a pragmatic decision aimed at making himself indispensible to the Pakistanis (see extract).
When you are declared a global terrorist, survival is difficult. Seven years ago, Pakistan used the opportunity to tighten the screws on him after the global terrorist tag by America. Dawood knew that was his death knell and soon he would become expendable. But this is where his astuteness came into play. He knew before anyone else that Pakistan was going to be outrun by fundamentalists.
Dawood thus began offering huge donations to these rogue outfits, fuelling their gargantuan growth. The money emboldened their jihadi activities and changed the dynamics of Pakistan's politics, and power equations between the ISI and jihadi organisations.
The Markaz-ud Dawa (front organisation of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba) began using Dawood's services for international money laundering. For Dawood, cleansing the Markaz funds from his bases in Europe and Southeast Asia was a cakewalk.
- Extracted from Mumbai ATS chief Rakesh Maria's interview to S. Hussain Zaidi in Dongri to Dubai
I don't think India is capable as yet to subdue the apparatus which he runs.
We will look at that when we are able to check shady business and black money laundering system in India.
And by then he would be probably dead.
How SRK comes in this thread. And How a the source given by Raj can be considered a valid one? Zakir Nayak is a moron...so is the the people associated with this blogs, websites etc....
I think the OP should clarify what aspect of Dawood he is emphesising. He was responsible for the death of so many Indians. How can one be fan of him without being a phycho...(of course there are hardliners who think him as savior of Muslims and avenger of ....), Now, if you are pointing his shrewedness to rise to present position and evading one of the powerful countries....he has some capability to bergain...
In India, power commands respect. No wonder, if Dawood wishes to contest an election tomorrow, almost all the political parties will compete to get him in the party. General public is simply not bothered who is contesting elections or what his background is. In a country where the accused of the biggest scam ie 2G scam gets an astounding reception after being released from jail, it won't be a surprise if Dawood gets to the parliament as an honurable MP.
'' The ears of his enemies were deafened by the noise of his achievements .''---said by somebody about Dawood Ibrahim....
Ashdoc's book review---of the first 75 pages of the book FROM DONGRI TO DUBAI ( rest will come in batches as I read the book )
There are Dons and there are Dons and there is the Doyen---of the Dons.....
This is the story of Dawood Ibrahim---the Doyen of the Dons ; the man who ruled and fooled over Mumbai but also loved and lost it.....
But before the arrival of the Doyen of the Dons there are the lesser players.....
Or rather , such is the reputation and such are the achievements of the DON that he makes those who appear before him look like a set of lesser players.....
Actually those who appear before HIM are legends in their own right---men such as Haji Mastan , Vardarajan Mudaliar , Baashu Dada and Karim Lala.....
But their achievements pale before the spectacular deeds of the big D---a name the Indian police and the intelligence agencies along with the people and the govt have come to fear as well as admire , though the admiration comes only grudgingly.....
But be as it may , the story starts with the onset of independence and the minor gangs of the fifties and their activities---mere pinpricks compared to what is happening today.....
But India was much more poor at that time and the money at stake was much less too.....So from minor knifings in the fifties we graduate to the rivalry between christian and muslim gangs in the sixties---a rivalry the christian gang lost because one of their leaders made the mistake of falling in love with a muslim girl and thereby lost the loyalty of his muslim followers.....
......And from there the story graduates to smugglers like Haji Mastan and Vardarajan Mudaliar---men who allied and marked out their respective territories to rule Mumbai jointly.....
Their alliance was cemented by the fact that both of them came from Tamil Nadu and spoke the same language---as also by the fact that they were not overly ambitious .
Haji Mastan was the coolie from the docks who went on the become a mafia kingpin and gave himself the honorific HAJI after he had done the pious journey of haj---a man who inspired the role of Amitabh Bachhan in the film DEEWAAR . And Vardarajan Mudaliar inspired the Vinod Khanna film DAYAVAN and Kamal Hassan film NAYAKAN . Thus was born an alliance between the mafia and Bollywood---and bollywood and the mafia continue to be fascinated by each other even today.....
In fact much of the book is written in pucca filmy style , and needless to say will form fodder for many films in the future---at least thats what the writer would unabashedly like it to be.....
Consider the scene of the first meeting between Haji Mastan and Vardarajan Mudaliar---Varda bhai has been caught by the police and the man who saves him is seen by Varda coming to him through a haze wearing a white safari and smoking a 555 cigarette . The scene as described by the writer has all the hallmarks of a film scene and has been written keeping a future film in mind.....
So we move on and find Karim Lala---a man so powerful that all he has to do is keep his walking stick in a place whose tenants have refused to evacuate it and lo !! they evacuate in no time.....
And then onto Baashu dada and his durbar---a place which has all the trappings of an akhada with a badam sherbet making machine in the center , for badam sherbet was the favourite of Indian body builders before protein shakes became popular....
But the man destined to triumph over all these DADAS and become the biggest daddy of them all was now making his mark---needless to say his name was Dawood.....
He was the son of a constable of the Mumbai police named Ibrahim Kaskar , a man of respectability in his locality of Pydhonie whose advice was taken by everybody including the Bhais and the police . But Dawood was the incorrigible rebel , a boy who wanted from his teens to live the life of kings and who loved and throughly enjoyed keeping others in his terror.....
......And when Baashu dada insulted his father Dawood took terrible revenge by destroying Baashu's akhada as well as his reputation.....
But a bigger challenge lay ahead---that of Karim Lala and his pathans live Alamzeb and Amirzada Pathan.....A slender konkani muslim would have to fight out the might and cruelty of the pathans....
But all that lay ahead ; for now Dawood was happy to turn the tables on a police inspector who was hoping to use him and make the inspector his lackey instead.....
All this was happening in the muslim quarter of Mumbai---Dongri . For now Dawood was content to be in Dongri . New horizons beckoned---like Dubai.....and far into the future lay Karachi.....
But the road from Dongri to Dubai to Karachi would prove to be a long and momentous one---in fact I haven't reached that part of the book yet.....but when I do , rest assured that I will take you on that journey too....
For now , I have to stop this ashdoc review here.....will continue later....
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