Book Review : Dongri to Dubai by S. Hussain Zaidi (Rating : *****)
Every country has its reallife version of the fictional mafioso Vito Corleone. Dawood Hasan Ibrahim Kaskar is not as charismatic as Mario Puzo’s enduring creation, but he does display a Corleone-esque tendency to vapourise all his enemies. Ibrahim has featured in so many movies that it is safe to attribute a sub-genre to him. S Hussain Zaidi’s new book Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia already has a cinematic connection: ten of its 63 chapters will be used in the screenplay of the forthcoming Sanjay Gupta movie Shootout at Wadala, about the murder in 1982 of Manya Surve, who reportedly killed Ibrahim’s brother Subir Kaskar. “Dawood was always known to be unforgiving,” Zaidi writes about the mobster, who ordered the hit. “He decided to avenge his brother’s killing and eliminate each and every person involved in the murder. He had no personal enmity with Manya… But Manya will have to pay for this, Dawood swore.” Replace Manya’s name with any other and Ibra