BREAKING BREAD WITH DONS

MEET HUSSAIN ZAIDI, CHRONICLER OF THE DREADED UNDERWORLD. THE CRIME REPORTER WHOSE LIFE IS MORE THRILLING THAN THE FILMS MADE ON HIS BOOKS. HE GOT KIDNAPPED IN IRAQ, HAD LUNCH WITH KHALID KHAN PACHA IN DUBAI, A CHAT WITH DAWOOD IBRAHIM ON THE PHONE, AND A MEETING WITH ABU SALEM IN THE COURT... AND THIS PROLIFIC AUTHOR HAS LIVED TO TELL THE TALE

- Medha Shri

THE END GAME

A cop drama, Zaidi's newest book is about a mentor protege duo of police officers fighting terrorists and the enemies within the police system

IT WAS a sultry day in Iraq. The Saddam Hussain regime had bit dust. Everything appeared usual on the surface, but nothing was. In the middle of a souk in Baghdad, a Mumbaikar was busy talking to locals. Suddenly, a man puts a gun on his back, he is shoved into a car. They blindfold him. He is now being driven to an unknown destination. Our man has been kidnapped in Baghdad.

This is not a scene from some Bollywood potboiler. This is way more interesting. This is S Hussain Zaidi’s life. Crime reporter Zaidi had been tailing a story, when he found himself surrounded by AK-47-wielding Baghdadi men. And, this is just one of the days in his life that he calls “boring and uneventful”. On another day, you could have spotted him standing in a dull PCO in Mumbai, interviewing Dawood Ibrahim — declared number third on The World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list by FBI, in 2011.

Zaidi had been trying to fix a meeting with the dreaded underworld don, when one day, he received a message on his pager asking him to call on a landline number. He made the call, was told to wait for a call back. A very polite person tells him, “This is Dawood Ibrahim speaking.” In 1998, this 50-minute call got Zaidi one of the most popular bylines of his career. The interview with the D-Company boss was splashed on the front page of The Indian Express, and, later, everywhere. Every corner, every household was discussing not just the dreaded don but also the man who interviewed the don.