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Bombay Balchao
Bombay was the city everyone came to in the early decades of the nineteenth century: among them, the Goans and the Mangaloreans. Looking for safe harbour, livelihood, and a new place to call home. Communities congregated around churches and markets, sharing lord and land with the native East Indians. The young among them were nudged on to the path of marriage, procreation and godliness, though noble intentions were often ambushed by errant love and plain and simple lust. As in the story of Annette and Benji (and Joe) or Michael and Merlyn (and Ellena). Lovers and haters, friends and family, married men and determined singles, churchgoers and abstainers, Bombay Balchão is a tangled tale of ordinary lives of a woman who loses her husband to a dockyard explosion and turns to bootlegging, a teen romance that drowns like a paper boat, a social misfit rescued by his addiction to crosswords, a wife who tries to exorcise the spirit of her dead mother-in-law from her husband, a rebellious young woman who spurns true love for the abandonment of dance. Ordinary, except when seen through their own eyes. Then, it s legend. Set in Cavel, a tiny Catholic neighbourhood on Bombay s D Lima Street, this delightful debut novel is painted with many shades of history and memory, laughter and melancholy, sunshine and silver rain.
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Mafia Queens Of Mumbai
The Mumbai underworld, or the Mumbai Mafia is as much a part of the city as Bollywood is, and as much a stuff of legends. The well known stories from this murky world are all male-centric. Haji Mastan, Dawood Ibrahim, Varadarajan Mudaliar, and Karim Lala, to name a few. But, there were women who ruled the roost there too, women who remained in the background and pulled the strings, women who acted as mentors and advisers to the famous dons, women who were wives of the dons and then took over when their husbands were killed, women who assumed leadership to try and bring down rival leaders who had harmed their family. Their stories are varied and just as intriguing, and hitherto untold. But these stories are well known in the ganglands of Mumbai. This book now brings together a set of stories about interesting and powerful female leaders of the Mumbai underworld. There is the story of Gangubhai, a girl who ran away from a small village and ended up in Mumbai streets and eventually became the powerful matriarch of Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red light area. Ashraf, who learnt of her husband’s underworld connection only after he was killed, transformed herself into the powerful Sapna Didi, to try and take down her husband’s killer. Mrs. Paul and Rubina Sayyed, associates of Chota Shakeel, Tarannum Khan, a bar dancer who became rich through cricket betting, and more such stories. But, the most intriguing story is probably about the very powerful Jenabhai, who was closely associated with many underworld dons like Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Dawood Ibrahim etc, and advised them on various matters and helped in shaping important events in the underworld.