Autobiographical notes Bombay 5- When Our Boys Were Thugged

Nostalgia

‘Blue-Collar’ Boys from Srinagar

ZGM

‘The City of Ships’ to use Walt Whitman’s line, ‘proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!’ was now no more strange to me.   The maddening crowds on its streets, the huge tides kissing the shores like a passionate lover over an over again were no more alien to me. The evening scenes outside the old campus of the Bombay University reminiscent of some romantic scenes in an Urdu novel of our boyhood no more aroused curiosity in me- no more shocked me.

Driving up the Malabar Hills to Mount Pleasant Road, and walking through the Nepean Sea Road history often started echoing for me with all its mellifluousness and bitterness. An elegant building for harmoniously blending with environment read to me like John Keats’ ode to Grecian Urn- it spoke loudly and boldly about a man who looms like a lofty minaret over the achievements of all his contemporaries.’ The building was little ahead infront of the ‘Varsha bungalow’ then Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil’s residence.      Nonetheless, the Nepean Sea Road, on which Maharaja Hari Singh had built a pleasure resort for himself on a few acres of land- now owned by Jammu and Kashmir State, poignantly resounded with the stories of corruption and betrayals. Over a period, I had become as familiar with some streets and lanes in and around the Colaba Area, as I was with the maze of lanes and by lanes of the Downtown Srinagar. Ironically, I had developed tolerance towards the allergic odor coming out of the fish market in the Sassoon Dock- one of the oldest docks in the city.Nonethless, in many a lanes around this area, in the evenings the fish-smell eveporated like camphor, when barbecue smoke and aroma of roasted mutton filled the air. The sea breeze appetizingly carried this smell to main market turning many a lovers of steaks drooling.   Some of barbecue kiosk owners were from Kashmir; I remember one was from some village in Kulgam- he was good at making steaks, and I had become friendly to him. On occasions, walking through these lanes, I felt, I was walking through our famous Gada-Kocha, of Zaina-Kadal, that also in the evening was filled with smoke curling from barbecues and buzzed with lovers of mutton tikka and Seekh Kebabs.

Some times, with all its oddities, I wanted to explore making the city as my permanent abode.  In the meantime, there was a change of guard back home, eleven members of legislative assembly had defected- the defection story also had a Bombay and Pune connection. And with the state having a new man at the top, I was informed by some friends to pack and be ready for being eased out of the position. It was during one of these days, in the afternoon, I got phone call from one Aslam Khan, a fruit merchant almost settled in the metropolitan. He informed, me that some two hundred boys from Srinagar, had been cheated and were begging in the Mohammad Ali Road area. Immediately, along with a friend-officer from the Arts Emporium, I visited the spot, to my surprise, I found more than hundred educated boys in blue shirts and paints desperately loitering in the market. Some had taken shelter in a dormitory Dongri and some in Pydhoni. In a group of boys, I found an acquaintance and one boy from UP, – a footpath spice seller from Abiguzar lane. In early August 1984, one Moosa Kutty posing as Manager Projects of Dubai based firm M/S Binladen Organization, UAE had landed in Srinagar and advertised in a local newspaper for recruiting 300 Agriculture laborers. The recruiting agency had collected from each boy Rs. 4000   through a local tour agency.  The state government had cleared the recruitment, and even one minister of the new cabinet had boasted that the government had arranged job for 300 boys in Dubai. On their arrival at Bombay Central, Railway Station the boys in blue uniform with hopes to earn petro-dollars were disappointed that Moosa Kutty had gone into hiding. It was after a big effort   Binladen Organization was contacted. It had not sent any person or agency for recruitment to Kashmir…

Getting half of the money back, disbursing the same amongst the boys, and sending them to Srinagar, was no less than plot for a Bollywood film- it thugs, dons and police in it.