Book Review #78: Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts By S. Hussain Zaidi

Title: Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts

Author: S. Hussain Zaidi

Publishing Year: 2002

Publishers: Penguin Group

Genre: Non-Fiction

Pages: 252 (Digital Edition)

Source: Personal Copy

A gory event that ruptured the heart of India. An event that is truly unforgettable, unpardonable. It was the day, the terrorists rejoiced at seeing their revenge has given the fruit. The revenge that was plotted meticulously and executed at near perfection, which resulted in the death of several hundred people and the injury of several thousands, and, making the damages cost worth hundreds of crore rupees. It was the Bombay 1993 serial blasts on March 12^th, The Friday. As the author puts it, The Black Friday.

As a crime journalist, Author S. Hussain Zaidi has put in so much effort to give us a satisfying account on the Bombay blasts. He has nearly spent four years into research on this subject, interviewing several hundreds of police officials, lawyers, judges, eye witnesses, the accused people, the offenders, and journalists on that day who covered those events. He also referred hundreds of newspaper articles, press release notes, and judgment copies, charge sheets filed by the local Bombay Police and charge sheets filed by the CBI department etc… The level of the research that author had put into shaping up this book must be immensely respected.

As far as the content of the book goes, it has every detail including what led those terrorists to take such a route to become traitors and cause havoc in their own country. It is true that, the religious motives was the prime factor here. The 1992 Babri Masjid demolition was the root cause of all this, has to be the trigger point for all of these. This has followed by the communal riots in Bombay that led to the loss of hundreds of lives within no time and causing great damage to their lives personally. However, few people that had faith in the country’s police and judicial laws were waiting patiently to seek justice. But, few people took the other route to avenge their attackers. Hence, this infamous 1993 Bombay blasts on 12^th March, Friday, have happened.

The Memon family were believed to have suffered a considerable damage as per the book. So, the Memons took it their hearts and few infamous people in their family started to plot a revenge. Among them includes, the prime offender, the master mind of serial blasts Tiger Memon, which was financially managed carefully by his younger brother, the CA grad, Yakub Memon, who was recently hanged for this activity in July 2015.  The entire attack was presided and observed at the hands of another most wanted criminal for India, the Dawood Ibrahim.

The book explains categorically the way Tiger Memon planned the attacks and how he recruited his mujahideen’s a.k.a fighters to go with him to avenge their Muslim brothers. This group of people that Tiger has recruited for his mission had received arms training in Pakistan. This was carefully planned out by Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. All these young people, probably in their early 20’s had no idea for what they are subjecting themselves into. All they thought was, they are fighting against the infidels and so must they be fighting a holy war or jihad. Tiger had planned carefully to send all these people to Pakistan secretly via Dubai, at which, he succeeded. After their training on handling AK 56, hand grenades, fixing timer bombs, handling pencil grenades, using rocket launchers, setting up RDX, Gelatin, etc… these youth returned to Bombay to carry out the operation, which the world will remember as one of the ghastly incidents of blasts that have happened.

As the book progresses further, we get to see the details of how these terrorists have chalked out their plans and the various places that they decided to plant the Bombs etc… They have chosen some of the busiest places in Bombay such as BSE office, Zaveri bazar, Shiv Sena’s office, and Air India office, several five star hotels, busy streets (for planting the Bombs in Bikes), etc…. So in each of these places they have set the timer bombs, so that, the explosions keep happening every 15 minutes or so. This has continued for almost two to three hours at seven to nine places.

As in case of every crime scene, the perpetrators leaves behind a heavy amount of clues. So is the case of Bombay blasts. The eminent police officers of Bombay led by Samra, CP Singh, Rakesh Maria, Nadagouda and likes of people who laid out a perfect plan for the investigation came out victoriously by nabbing their first link within the 48 hours of blasts. What followed later is an absolutely riveting account from the book that should be read with absolute admiration. Catching a suspect and catching the actual offender is not an easy task pertaining to the communal tensions that was slowly rising up in the city. In this event, the Bombay police has made some tremendous progress which has to be appreciated by everyone who reads the book.

Many years have passed since this incident, and several years of trial have been conducted and punishments has been announced. Hundreds of accused were arrested, released and prosecuted under the law. The most prized catch was the Bollywood movie producer’s duo and star actor Sanjay Dutt in illegal arms possession has sent ripples across the movie industry during 90’s. The younger brother of Tiger Memon, Yakub Memon’s arrest and his only interview, his approval and denial of his family involvement, his trial, the capital punishment and execution is all part of the history now.

The only thing that still rings in every reader's mind as they read through the book is, the Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim. They are still alive and living in Pakistan or Dubai. Several Indian governments had come and passed, but, none of them had tried their best to put pressure on these countries to repatriate these criminals to India. We can just hope that, at least one strong government would be able to succeed in this case.

My Rating:

5/5

Book Review #46: Playing It My Way: My Autobiography By Sachin Tendulkar

Writing review to the well known facts is a bit overdoing the task!! But, let me tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paaji’s autobiography. With help of Boria Majumdar, Sachin has written excellently and given us a walkthrough of his life from the age of 11 till his retirement at the age of 41.

I don’t go over describing the events that unfolded in his life as a cricketer. We all know it better over the years by watching him play. What might be the takeaway from the book? Well, his determination. That’s all I can say. Having succumbed to hell lot of injuries, Sachin managed to play an illustrious career of 24 years. Started as a novice, ended as a Bharat Ratna!! Not an easy task to become the favorite of most of the Indians that loves cricket. Having born in the 80’s, he was my hero in my childhood and surprisingly my first bat that I was gifted by my dad had MRF sticker on it!!!

If we speak about the book, it speaks less about his childhood and more about his statistics. It has to be, doesn’t it? Started to play cricket at the age of 11 and within 5 years ended up in the national team is not an easy achievement. He never looked back from then on. He carried on with the same zeal in his entire career. Of course, there are some ups and downs, hiccups, disappointment, resentment, etc…but, nothing has stopped him going on.

He did mentioned some of the gray patches of his career and expressed his disappointments over few events that happened in his career as a player and as a member of team India. Particularly Greg Chapel being appointed as the coach of team India that made our team looks weaker than Bangladesh or even Kenya. He had openly criticized in his book about Greg and his cunning motives. On one occasion, where Greg meets Sachin in his house and asks him to take over the captainship from Rahul and even goes on telling him that, they both can rule the Indian team in the coming years. Having sensed all this, Sachin declined it out rightly and asked Greg to not bring this topic anymore. We will come to know many such stories of Greg and his “Hatke…” style of coaching India that resulted in damaging the team’s morale and spirit.

Sachin also mentions about few events where he wished things could’ve been little better. One such thing was Kapil Dev being appointed as the team’s coach that made no sense to him!! In one of the particular test match where he was not out on 194 short of 6 runs to his double hundred, that’s when Rahul had declared our innings!! This decision of Rahul had made Sachin furious for few days and even he stopped talking to Rahul for few days!! When Rahul tried to explain to him that, “It’s in the interest of team” Sachin was reluctant to listen to him and instead he made his point clear that “You could’ve have waited for 6 more runs”!!

He goes on explaining each and every tour he had made in his carrier and expressed his wish of becoming the world champion. Remember, Sachin has played in 5 world cup events since 1992 and couldn’t able to be on the triumphant side. He had to wait for his 6^th world cup to witness this moment. Anyways, he had written in great care about all these events.

He carefully dodged few things regarding his captaincy, match fixing scandals, IPL spot fixing. He managed to brush few lines on these events. That’s expected according to me. He even avoided why his friendship with Vinod Kambli had taken turns in the years down the lane. He just managed to write few lines about his and signed it off saying; he is still friends with him.

He has written that he was super agitated when it came to his 100^th international 100. This one particular hundred took almost a year and half to come into the fore. As a fan, I was disappointed that it came against Bangladesh!! :)

Enough said about his autobiography. It is certainly a must read book. Even though you are not a fan of Sachin (Duh!!), you will certainly witness few funny, sad, heated epic moments from his life as a Sachin – A Good Student of Cricket, Sachin - The Cricketer, Sachin – The Foodie, Sachin – The Shy Guy, Sachin – The Patriot, Sachin – The Proud Father, Sachin – A Responsible Son, Sachin – The Friendly Guy, Sachin – The Well Behaved Gentleman, Sachin – A Philanthropist and finally Sachin – The Epitome of Indian Cricket.

Overall a fantastic journey I must say. I was so engrossed while reading it; I finished reading it in flat 2 days :). There are nice photographs from his childhood, his trips, his marriage, etc… At the end of the book, you can see his complete career statistics, his runs, his hundreds, against which team, home and away runs etc…

Towards the end of the book, you can read his last speech that he gave at wankhede stadium thanking every single person that played a crucial role in building up his career, starting with his family members, his wife Anjali, importantly his childhood coach Ramakant Achrekar, his best friends, his significant others in the team like Sourav, Rahul, Laxman etc...He finished his book in style thanking his fans for all the support that they have given him in his career and mentioned that he will never forget the “SACHIN… SACHIN…” chant of his fans till his last breath!

My Rating:

5/5

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Book Review #45: Anveshana By Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa

This book is a sequel to SL Bhyrappa’s highly acclaimed novel Grihabhanga. The story starts from the point where Grihabhanga has been left off. It is such a nice attempt of SLB sir in this novel that, we can easily remember all the stories, characters from the novel Grihabhanga.

For those who haven’t read Grihabhanga, let me tell you the crux of this novel. So that, readers can actually relate to this novel Anveshana. A small fictitious village in Tumkur and a poor farmer family was living in that village. Nanjamma the main protagonist in the novel Grihabhanga was married to a loaf called Chennigaraya. She faces many hurdles and difficulties in her life throughout the novel. She loses two of her children who were suffering from plague. Her husband is a good for nothing man, who wanders day and night around the village doing nothing and spends the money eating in hotels and other illegal activities. So, it was Nanjamma who takes care of her family and starts earning money so that she can build a home of her own. The only surviving child of her, Vishwanatha, who grew up with a monk leaves the village once his mother dies. Vishwanatha has a maternal grandfather called Kanthi Joyisa who stays in the outskirts of the village doing black magic and other stuffs.

In Anveshana, the story picks up from the phase where the grandfather Kanthi Joyisa who became terminally ill, wanted to see his grandson Vishwanatha for one last time. He wanted to leave his belongings, money and other stuff to his grandson. So he sets out on a journey in search of his grandson. This epic journey is called as Anveshana.

Kanthi Joyisa wanders many neighbor villages, town and other cities to know the whereabouts of his grandson. He meets many acquaintances of Vishwanatha and follows the route information that he gets from them. On his final voyage he meets a childhood friend of Vishwanatha. He is a tailor in a small village. He informs Kanthi Joyisa that, the last time he saw Vishwanatha was near a movie theatre, where Vishwanatha was working as a ticket collector. And the journey of Kanthi Joyisa continues.

Here author introduces the character Vishwanatha and his life journey in subsequent chapters. Vishwanatha who leaves his village settles down in a town and works as a hotel waiter for some time. Later, he moves to the house of a lawyer and works as a cook for some time. He leaves that place and travels to Mumbai and works as a Tonga Walla for some more time. And he continues his journey leaving no trace of him for his friends or relatives.

The magic of the novel is in its immense detailed explanation of Vishwanatha and his way of living life. Author introduces us to a phase where Kanthi Joyisa, the grandfather of Vishwanatha loses all his hopes of finding his grandson. He informs the tailor friend of Vishwanatha and goes back to his village and dies in isolation. This scene closes the curtain to the character Kanthi Joyisa.

Author introduces us to various traits of Vishwanatha throughout the novel. His love interests, his marriage, his college life etc… the vivid description of Vishwanatha’s love life, married life and college life and renunciation is a treat to read from the book. From this novel, we will come to know that, Vishwanatha has a habit of writing diary. As he leaves his final destination to the renunciation life, the school teacher of Vishwanatha discovers this diary and starts to read it and tries to understand the character Vishwanatha in a better way. This marks the end of the novel.

The striking gesture in this novel is the character Vishwanatha never appears in this novel as a first character person. He was often remembered, described, referenced but never in any way appears as the main protagonist of the novel, yet, he is the hero of this novel. All credits to the magical writer SLB sir. He has marveled in each of his novels. I have no words to explain more about this novel.

My Rating:

5/5

Book Review #5 - Dongri to Dubai - S. Hussain Zaidi

Dongri to Dubai

This one book where you never want to put down at any cost. Written with a great eloquency with a massive amount of research. And I read it completely in one sitting throughout a day.

The author S. Hussain Zaidi a veteran crime reporter and a journalist, and being mentored by the famour crime journalist Jyotirmoy_Dey who had covered Mumbai Mafia for more than 2 decades and conducted what is known to be the last interview of the Mumabi Underworld Don and now a fugitive Dawood Ibrahim.

Zaidi's book, Dongri to Dubai, presents an authentic and exemplifying account of the history of Mumbai Mafia spanning for more than 60 years from the post independent days of 1950's till 2000's, in a staggering 60 chapters and 300 odd pages.

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, the world's most wanted man, is a son of a Mumbai police personnel Ibrahim Kaskar who was known for his integrity and loyalty towards country and he has served honestly throughout his entire tenure as a policemen.

If you hog into internet and search for this man, Dawood Ibrahim, you will find a plethora of information on this underworld don. But you hardly get a complete detailed picture of this man and his stories. This is the book that fills that gap, Dongri to Dubai. Apart from this book, the author Hussain Zaidi has written a number of other books on the same genre, mainly, Black Friday, Mafia Queens of Mumbai, Headley and I and the latest one Byculla to Bangkok.

The book begins with a period of 1950's to 60 - the early days of Mumbai Mafia and gradually moves on to the era of smugglers like Haji Mastan, Vardarajan Mudaliar (VARDA Bhai) and the meance of PATHAN gang who are migrated from Afghanistan and Peshawar post independence. And also the short history of dreadful gangster Manya Surve. It gained power and cult between the 3 people 2 Tamilians and 1 PATHAN. It was Haji Mastan's connections, Varda's shrewedness and Karim Lala's muscle power that made mumbai underworld what it is today. Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudliar are from Tamil Nadu whereas Karim Lala is from Peshawar who moved to Bombay in 1930's. While Mastan worked as coolie Mazagoan docks to make ends meet and Varda tried to make a living by working as a porter at the landmark of victoria terminus. Karim Lala established a gambling den and later moved on to money laundering. The stepped up into the world of crime by smuggling goods across the Bombay port's, extortion, producing country liquor, which was banned at that time.

Dawood:
Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, born as a second son to the respectable police constable, who entered into the world of Bombay crime in late 1970's. The very first crime that dawood committed was a robbery. Later he was also involved in Money Extortions and thefts across Bombay ports. Later he was elevated as a Bombay Don when Bombay police used him as a PAWN, in the fight against the PATHAN gang and thus started his journey towards becoming the number one don in Mumbai.

By late 1970's, Dawood along with his brother Sabir, Anees and his manager Khalid ventured into smuggling market in the middle eastern countries, especially Dubai, for Radio Transistors, Watches and later to Golds. He was continuing his dream run, until his brother Sabir was killed by Pathan gang in a petrol bunk, shot at point blank range. This incident has led into the events, that what we can call as a gang war. Dawood partnerships with Bada Rajan and Chota Rajan and an erruption of gang war resulted in the deaths of Pathan Amir, Bada Rajan, Abdul Kunju, Samad Khan, etc.. This event leads Dawood to escape from Bombay in 1986 and he seeks an asylum in Dubai.

In Dubai, Dawood built an empire itself with the help of his close aides, mainly Chota Rajan and Chota Shakeel. It is where the term D-Company came into existence. From there, Dawood controlled the Bombay Mafia. Though Dawood migrated to Dubai, the gang wars in Bombay was never ceased to stop. It was continued with lot of killings and personal vengence. The worst happened for Dawood was the Mumbai Serial Blasts in 1993. Dawood's name was the first name that came to the picture of Bomaby Police, and he was the one who masterminded it according to the police sources. This was followed by the fallout of friendship with Chotta Rajan who surrendered to Bombay Police, but never agreed to return to India, without the promise of a proper trial of him in court. Later, Chotta Rajan migrated to many places including Malaysia, Europe and Thialand.

During these times, entry of Abu Salem into D-Company was a much talked issue. Abu Salem involvement in Bollywood film making made much worse for the then top actors. Almost every actor in Bollywood was being interrogated about Abu Salem links with the movie industry. There was also few incidents like attack on Hrithik Roshan's father Rakesh Roshan. One more incident being, the movie "Chori Chori Chupke Chupke" starring Salman Khan, Preity Zinta, etc.. being funded by Mumbai Underworld people, mainly Abu Salem. Later police brought a stay on that movie from getting released into theatres. Then Abu Salem was arrested along with his Girl Friend Monica Bedi, etc.. This book leaves no leads behind. Author has classified everything according to the incidents in chronological order.

All these incidents leading the then Indian government pressurizing Dubai government for the handover of Dawood to India. This led Dawood to forcefully seek asylum in Pakistan. That is his current headquarteres of D-Company according to this book.

The next few incidents after Dawood relocated to Pakistan. Getting married his daughter to Pakistan's ex cricketer Javed Miandad's Son. The lavish party that he threw on this occasion. And, some of the popular Bollywood faces attending this party, etc..

Overall, Zaidi's cinematic narration and numerous Hindi Dailogues in this book which could have done without makes it an apt choice for movie adoptions. Without much surprise, parts of this book has already been made into movies. Especially, Shootout at Wadala, Shootout at Lokhandwala, D-Day, etc..

Although this book promises the readers give them insights into the origins of Mumbai Underworld, it progresses to become a lousy attempt of the writer to paint a humble human face of Dawood portraying him as a mere pawn which used him at large. And, this leaves the reader with an impression that, Dawood might be an innocent and not a criminal, who just stood there gazing at the incidents happen through his name.

However, this book is still recommended for anyone, who wants to understand the evolution of Bombay underworld and in general Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.

My Rating: 4/5