Gangsters in Exile

New York-based writer Suketu Mehta's nonfiction book on Bombay will be published by Alfred A. Knopf next January

If Chotta Shakeel had not become the effective boss of the most feared criminal syndicate in South Asia, what would he have grown up to be? What is the secret ambition that lurks within the gangster's breast, the man wanted in India on multiple counts of murder and conspiracy? "You know how in school people write on the topic: 'What do you want to be?' I had a vision of becoming a military officer, and I wrote a composition on...

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