Khader enters Bombay’s criminal underworld

Abdel Khader Khan’s account of entering Bombay’s criminal underworld begins not with authority but with a young migrant trying to make a living. After leaving his home in Kandahar, he travelled through Pakistan and India to Bombay, hoping to make his fortune. The work that brought him into the underworld was selling cinema tickets at a profit; a challenge to the local boss who controlled that trade redirected him from an independent hustle into organized violence.

Arrival and a first livelihood

Abdel Khader Khan describes arriving in Bombay as one among millions drawn to the city by the hope of making money. He initially lived in a slum, near the area where he says he would later own one. He practised Hindi every day and learned quickly, building the language skills he needed to navigate the city and its informal economy.

His first enterprise was reselling tickets to popular Hindi films. He noticed that buyers could profit by purchasing tickets before a cinema filled and selling them once it displayed a House Full sign. He put his small savings into tickets for Bombay’s most popular film, then sold them outside the cinema after it filled. The trade brought him an excellent profit in its first week. He began to imagine the material comforts that success might bring: a fine apartment, good clothes, perhaps a car. At this point, his ambitions were ordinary and his business, though illicit, was still his own.

The encounter with Chota Gulab

That independence ended when two large men confronted him outside a cinema, showed him their weapons, and demanded that he go with them. They took him to Chota Gulab, the boss of the area, who regarded the ticket sales as an intrusion into his territory. Gulab had established control of the cinema-ticket black market through violence and wanted the young newcomer brought before him as an example to others.

Abdel Khader Khan later recalled being terrified and believing he had little time left. Instead of remaining silent, he argued that he had no family, no other way to earn money, and nothing to lose. He offered to work for Gulab if the boss had a suitable job for someone loyal and resourceful. The exchange changed the direction of the encounter: Gulab laughed, asked how he had learned English so well, listened to his story, and gave him a job.

The language difference was part of the scene’s reversal. Gulab had used imperfect English to intimidate him, presenting his authority as though it belonged in a court of law; the young man’s more fluent English helped him answer boldly. His appeal did not remove the threat surrounding him, but it turned a confrontation into an opportunity for employment.

From employee to soldier

Gulab became a kind of father to Abdel Khader Khan in Bombay. Their closeness, however, brought resentment as well as protection: Khan says he had enemies around him from the time he shook Gulab’s hand. His new position was not a peaceful one. He worked as a soldier, using his fists and weapons to enforce Gulab’s rule in the area.

Khan places this early period before the council system and describes fighting as a daily and nightly occurrence. One of Gulab’s men, resentful of Khan’s relationship with the boss, found a reason to pick a fight with him. Khan killed him. When the dead man’s close friend attacked him, Khan killed that man too; he then killed for Gulab, and continued killing. The progression in the account is stark: an initial act of self-preservation and an employer’s demands become repeated participation in the violent enforcement of territorial control.

The remembered beginning

The story is told to Lin after Lin asks how Khan travelled from Kandahar to the Bombay mafia. Khan’s smile at the question is described as newly gentle, unlike the expression Lin had seen in their earlier conversations. The contrast between that moment and the remembered young newcomer makes the account more than a history of professional advancement: it shows the distance between the vulnerable ticket seller and the ruler of a criminal kingdom whom Lin knows in the present.

Khan’s recollection does not end with a resolution or a claim that the killings were finished. After describing the repeated deaths, he falls silent, looking toward the floor where it meets the mud-brick wall, and then repeats that he killed again. That pause leaves the origin story suspended at the point where entry into Gulab’s organization has become an accumulating pattern of violence. The episode traces the route into power, but also makes its cost visible in the repetition with which Khan remembers it.