Reading Gang Leader for a Day

The book is very much my first literary experience of a man walking into a world unknown, a 'rogue sociologist' with a mission to chronicle a local don's life, and re-thinking his own through layers of history, education, and crime.

The writer Sudhir Venkatesh stands witness to another man's attempt at power, and fame through underworld dealings. Even as time and again there is an attempt to keep the humanness alive, Venkatesh presents a jarring crime world into bare daylight.

Sudhir is a student at Chicago university, and ventures out on a crack-dealers' housing community to work on his project.

As soon he walks into one of the community buildings, the smell of urine chokes him completely, which is mentioned many a times, to take away the reader's sensibilities to the stale environs, through the eyes of a sociologist.

So far, J.T.'s character, the Afro-American gangster, who becomes Venkatesh's passage to the underworld, takes over the narrative, with lot of emphasis on his 'caring' nature, something movies often talk about, magnanimous streaks among the powerful, and feared men. Sexuality takes a backseat, with men forming the narrative, and women appear, and disappear, as 'hustlers', and only J.T.'s mother occupying much of the space as a typical loving, god-fearing lady.

In more ways than one, Venkatesh becomes a hostage to J.T.'s life, with the ever-looming presence of the gangster, though endearing at times, has so far restricted the reader's entry into lives of the other occupants in the underworld.
What has really helped this book so far is the narrative itself, which fills you with curiousity about the writer's safety, more than anything else, and it's almost a given he is unperturbed about the thick layers of crime, and gangster life. The chutzpah of leading a gangster's life, J.T. increasingly becomes a showman, and Sudhir, an alienated transcriber. To be fair to the author, he manoeuvers his life inside in such a manner, that more emphasis gets laid on the sanctity of the project, and repeatedly you will find Sudhir's attempts to break free of J.T.'s shadow.

Later on, he finds the rival gangleader's company to etch a different perspective, sadly, here too the lurking shadow of J.T., and the typical environ chokes the narrative's growth. Then, comes the twist. He has to choose between the rival gangleader's generosity, and match it with J.T.'s- which would have developed beautifully, had the narrator given us a deeper insight to the dilemma, and a bit of scholarly confusion. However, he makes his choice prompt enough, to really push the story forward, and the reader is left grappling a new mystery--why is the narrator's gaze so staunchly fixed in chronicling every step, where he could have paused, and reflected a little more on his own mental, and emotional shifts.

To follow...