P. Rajagopal, with his sons

HE’S been convicted of murder and has two wives. He runs a highly successful and growing chain of South Indian fast food restaurants called Saravana Bhavan, which is now expanding in the U.S., with current locations in New York, New Jersey, California and Texas. And he is the revered patriarch of  8,000 employees in India and of his own family, which includes his son P. Shiva Kumar, who was arrested on a charge of forging documents to smuggle people into the U.S. in 2008.

This article by Rollo Romig in The New York Times is a fascinating glimpse into the empire of  P. Rajagopal and the culture that nurtured it, a culture that is now an integral part of multicultural America.

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