Three Gangester Books - two fiction one factl

The God Father by Mario Puzo, Penguin 1969

The Fortunate Pilgrim by Mario Puzo, Penguin

Dongri to Dubai by S. Hussain Zaidi, Lotus Collection, 2012

The story of the God Father is too well known to bear a recall.  It was also made into a highly acclaimed and popular film.   Vito Androlini  born in Sicily in Italy, was sent to America by his mother when his father’s killers came home to kill him too.  His rise from a grocer to the fearsome Don Vito Corleone is the story of fate itself.  As the don was to repeat later,  everyone had to have only one destiny and his destiny was to be a gangster in the garb of a businessman.

Through the story, we are introduced to the Italian code of mafia conduct.  The fate that awaits a man who broke omerta, the law of silence, the strong family ties which worked as an excellent support system and at last, the concept of God Father itself.  As one character explains, the world is too big and complex that a child would be ill at east to be guided by only one father; he must have two.  One biological and another, a God Father, a protector and saviour, a man who comes to his aid in  times of need and earns his loyalty in a way his biological father could not.

The story of Don Vito is like any other mafia leader.  A venture into small crime and first murder brings him fame and power.  People in the neighbourhood approach him to settle their little problems, like a small loan to be repaid, a house to be vacated,  an illegal immigrant to be protected from the long arm of law.  Slowly, he graduates to collecting protection money from gambling houses, building contractors and runs trucks smuggling goods and so on.  Owning hotels,  cinema houses and movie making follow.  Forming alliances, friendships and developing moles, taking revenge, silencing an inconvenient citizen and pocketing law-enforcers are all in the game he plays.    The rules of the mafia have not changed a bit.  The plot remains the same, but the actors, scene and the times change.

Real time actors and the setting change to Mumbai in the book Dongri to Dubai by S. Hussain Zaidi, which traces the history of the mafia in that city of dreams.  Two notable scenes which are so close that one fails to understand which one is real and which one  is fiction.  First,  the resemblance between  the killing of Sunny in the God Father and the killing of Sabir, Dawood’s brother in Mumbai.  Second, the conference of dons in Chicago and a similar conference in Mumbai in which truce in their internecine warfare is announced.  The only difference is that the killings in Mumbai are much more blood curling, mostly because this is recent history and we are only too aware of them.

The Fortunate Pilgrim was a different kettle of fish.  If God Father was the story of Don Vito, fortunate pilgrim was to story of his contrast, the God Mother, named Lucia Santa.  A member of a conservative Italian peasant family which is forced to migrate to America by poverty in her home country, Lucia confronts the adversities which visit her inexorably by the only way she knows; by sticking to the values moulded in her old world.  This is also the story of the small Italian community in New York, its conservative values, clash with American value system, the subjugation of women and their subordination as home keepers.

Fortunate Pilgrim is unforgettable for the presence of two women of grit and character, Lucia Santa and her daughter, Octavia.  The mother, up bringer of her family despite all kinds of tragedies – a dead first husband and a second one consigned to a mental asylum are only two of them –  and refusing to give up.  Octavia tries to outgrow the limitation of her mother’s world but without adopting the smart ways of modern life.  As she muses once, getting ahead in the world meant despoiling her fellow human beings.  At the same time, Octavia refuses to goad the familiar ways of the lazy daily lives of her family.  The anger felt by Octavia is also the anger of any thoughtful woman aspiring a better life, both for her and her family.

There are also moments of fun, particularly when Lucia Santa weighs the persona of Norman Berger, the Jew whom Octavia chooses to marry.  His propensity to carry to book all the time angers Lucia as she once reflects, “Those who read books will let their families starve and those people are insensible to the world outside soaked as they are in an unreal world.”  How true!  At another moment, she mocks, “Octavia, my most intelligent child, picked for a husband the only Jew who does not know how to make money!”

With the war in Europe, prosperity for Americans does not remain a dream.  As demands for war material accelerated in Europe, economy grows and fuels the growth story.  The family moves to a house at the prosperous Long Island at last.

If ‘God Father’ was the triumph of a man by the shortest ways to secure power and prosperity, ‘Fortunate Pilgrim’ was the story of a woman who perseveres and with luck,  wins her liberation from poverty.