After he beat up Rakesh and then joined his gang, he was no longer a nobody. “I became more and more famous in the school, got involved in a lot of fights and stopped studying.” He’d do things to prove his daring—riding pillion with one foot each on two bikes like Ajay Devgn did in Phool aur Kaante, racing bikes and other acts of delinquency. “I got respect and validation. So doing it felt right, because as a teenager, the more izzat† I got, the more I wanted.” The simmering property dispute with the uncles’ families, instigated by his parents, had culminated in a public clash of the clan
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