Black Friday

I had sourced Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts by S Hussain Zaidi, the crime reporter of Midday from Mumbai when Abu Salem’s extradition from Portugal was hot news and media was busy drawing up his biography. I thought this book would give me insight into this man, but my brother-in-law who had read the book before me, as he had bought it for me said that there is hardly any mention of Salem, this book is about how Tiger Memon orchestrated the blasts. So, it went into my “will read someday” stock.

I was also aware that Anurag Kashyap had made a film based on it. So, the book never left my consciousness. When the convictions in the Blast Cases began and news of film’s imminent release started floating, the urgency to read it returned. Ma had to dust up my stock to find this book.

I did not know what to expect, I just started reading and to my surprise this was one of fastest read I had (though it took nearly fifteen days, so you know how quick I read :p). Black Friday is engrossing to say the least; it starts with prologue that describes what happened to common people at various locations in the city where blast happened on March 12, 1993. Then it moves on to build up the events and preparations that happened before the blasts. The blasts take place followed by investigation, nabbing of few of the culprits and the beginning of the trail. Culminating with an epilogue that shows the suffering and the loss of common folks from diverse social strata who were on the roads on that day.

Personally for me the blast of 1993 were distant (those were the pre-news-channels days). But the 7/11 local train blasts gave me the taste of terror. Having at least dozen people I know travelling by those trains at that time of the day made me really panicky. Frantic calls and SMSing started enquiring about the well-being of relatives, friends and acquaintances, which continued for a few days. It made me wonder about the foot soldiers who may have placed the explosives on the trains for a few thousand rupees; what they may be feeling if they were watching the devastation they had caused on TV, or if one of their relatives or friends happened to be the victim of these blasts.

Black Friday brought the same upsetting questions to my mind.

P.S. The film is expected to be in the theatres on February 9th.

P.P.S. Here is an early review of the film.