Dongri to Dubai (7 page)

Chhota Shakeel
Photo courtesy: Press Trust of India.

Chhota Shakeel, Sunil Sawant alias Sautya (left), and Abu Salem (right) are a few of the noted members of D Company.
Photo courtesy: Retired Assistant Commissioner of Mumbai Police (ACP), Ishaq Bagwan.

4

Madrasi Mobster

O
n a scorching afternoon, an industrious young boy from Tamil Nadu was working very hard at the famous Victoria Terminus as the sun shone down relentlessly. Around the same time that Mastan was struggling for his livelihood at the Bombay Port Trust in the dockyards of Bombay, Varadarajan Mudaliar, another coolie, was trying to make a living at the landmark railway terminus.

Both of them were oblivious to the fact that their destinies would be closely intertwined with the other and that their lives would be entrenched in a similarly heady mix of crime, money, and power.

One story in particular precedes the ‘Madrasi mobster’ (‘Madrasi’ is a colloquial north Indian term for a south Indian), alias
kala babu
. He is said to have changed an institution, and put in its place, another: this was the only time in the history of Bombay’s crime that the ubiquitous cutting chai made way for a cold, dark beverage called
kaala paani
, across police stations in the city. The fizzy liquid was substituted for chai because of this singular coolie. According to stories from the time, at many police stations across the central belt of Bombay, the
chaiwallah
(tea-vendor) who brought his daily quota of tea several times a day in chipped glasses would walk in with glasses filled with the fizzy cola instead. The
chaiwallah
would leave this drink only on the tables of the senior officials in the police station and walk away without charging any money for the drink. In what seemed like an unwritten law, junior officials would immediately clear the room, people who had come to register complaints would be told to empty the premises, and the senior officials would put all other work on hold. The black liquid was a message sent to the officials that
kala babu
, was on his way to the police station. A policeman, who did not wish to be named, says, ‘Those days, it was his way of saying: I am coming to meet you. Make necessary arrangements. He had the whole force serving him.’ Till date, there is no one who ran the mafia the way
kala babu
d
id; and his biggest trump card was that he knew people’s weakness, especially that of the
system
.
He was always heard saying, ‘Keep people’s bellies full and balls empty’.

If the anecdote has any truth in it, it is certainly further evidence of a phenomenal rags-to-riches story. For this
kala babu
who started his life in the city at the Victoria Terminus station as a coolie
went on to become one of the most powerful Hindu dons to rule over the city.

Varadarajan Muniswami Mudaliar was born into a feudal Mudaliar family with scarce means in the small town of Vellore, in Tamil Nadu. It was 1926 and he had begun working when he was just 7 years old as an errand boy at a photography studio at Mount Road in Madras (present day Chennai). He never completed his studies, but was the only boy who could read and write in English and Tamil in his family.

With nothing but a sheer force of aspiration
,
Varadarajan moved to the city of dreams and settled into one of the lanes adjoining the then Victoria Terminus. As much as his hard-working nature brought him under the radar of his employers, his name became synonymous with a person with a heart as large as the nameless crowd that he passed every day in the crowded station. The lore of his ‘large-heartedness’ was exemplified in the fact that when he finished his hard day’s work, he went to the dargah to offer
niyaz
(sacred food) to the devotees.

Varda used to visit the 260-year-old shrine of Bismillah Shah Baba, which was located just behind the main concourse of the long-distance terminus at VT. Starting off with a small amount of food for the poor every day, he began organising food for them at a massive scale as he flourished.

Even as he progressed in his life—from a simple errand boy to a porter and eventually to a notorious figure in Bombay—the dargah continued to receive food from the Mudaliar household and he continued to rub shoulders with the people with whom he started out his life—the porters. ‘He believed that he owed the dargah his dues. That was the first roof for him in Bombay,’ says his doting daughter Gomathy. Till today, his family has maintained the tradition of giving
niyaz
every year in June, where over 10,000 people are fed.

The police circles however refute the good Samaritan history. The policemen only recall incidents that involved words like ‘theft’ and ‘mitigator’ when it came to his generosity. The police had never documented that he was a helpful type; for them Varda was only a crook. The positive aspect of his character was, however, highlighted in two movies,
Nayakan¸
starring Kamal Hasan, and
Dayavan
, starring Vinod Khanna.

The innocent boy from Vellore with nothing on his side but sheer drive became a man much before his time in the hard and rough lanes of Bombay. His circle of friends went beyond the porters that he worked with every day to include local thieves and he was quick to learn easier means of making money through these friends. The daily toil may have earned him only a few annas and lots of abuse from passengers, but this new route also offered him a circle of friends that was bound by solidarity in an otherwise lonely city.

When Morarji Desai imposed the prohibition of liquor and other contraband in the state in 1952, the ban, especially of liquor, only provided licence to a growing illicit liquor trade. This trade required brawn and this proved to be the first turning point in the life of Varadarajan Mudaliar.

His local network brought him closer to goons who were already engaged in this trade. A policeman who had once caught Varda in the thick of the night recalls, ‘He was a glib talker. It is that attribute of his which made him dearer to the liquor mafia. They needed men who could talk and get the work done. Varda had that in him. He could convince anyone that he was right. Even if he had just killed an army, he could legitimise it.’ It took him just a few days to set up base at Antop Hill in central Bombay. It was this area that was going to turn Varda into Varda Bhai. The little locality witnessed the metamorphosis of the naïve Tamilian boy in his late twenties into the enigmatic outlaw.

The geography of Dharavi, Sion, Koliwada, and Antop Hill was the greatest advantage for the illicit liquor trade with nothing but hutments everywhere. In fact, even the police found it difficult to enter and patrol the area. The poorest people along with illegal migrants had their address in Antop Hill and Dharavi in those days. Like a local policeman narrates, ‘It was a matter of pride to be on a police chargesheet those days for people living in this area. Each boasted of FIRs as one would about awards. Men would be ridiculed if they were caught in silly offences.’ The area was dotted with small huts where local liquor was illicitly produced. With the help of the local network and bribes to the police, the trade made way to bars in Bombay. Varadarajan started gaining entry into the trade when it was still in its early days.

The area was mostly occupied by non-Brahmin Tamilians who operated and maintained the
bhattis
(furnace) in
khaadis
(marsh lands). The number of
bhattis
ran into hundreds, with each one having a capacity of making around 120 litres of concentrated hooch each night.

The police files detailing Varadarajan’s trade said that he was the only one to plough the profits back into the trade as he looked at a much bigger canvas unlike the locals who were complacent with an area under them. He used his ‘south Indian card’ to his advantage and started creating pockets of mini Tamil Nadu by recruiting people into the illicit trade. He also identified similar pockets across central Bombay and even moved the production of illicit network to Sion-Koliwada, Dharavi, Chembur, Matunga, and some other areas to create a stronger, tighter network. The word regarding Varadarajan’s tenacity spread and those who came from Tamil Nadu for work invariably ended meeting Varadarajan and settling in this highly lucrative trade.

The logistics of work those days were very nominal. The trade, mostly active after midnight, would consist of a few who knew how to mix liquor, and another set of people who provided the security cover and kept vigil. The next set-up was of foot soldiers who, along with retired cops, worked in the nights round the week to provide liquor to many small shops across the city, especially close to the access points of the city.

The journalist Pradeep Shinde who covered the trade very closely, once observed, ‘The entire kingdom of Varda Bhai rested on the distribution and collection of illicit hooch
.’ ‘T
he concentrated liquid’, one of his reports states, ‘was filled in tubes of truck tyres, which are piled up in the deserted roads of Dharavi and taken over by the “wheelmen” or distributors. These carriers, ironically are by and large from the ranks of retired or suspended police personnel who have switched sides because of the lure of money. These are transported in gunny-bags, car trunks and other innocuous places.

‘In Bombay, it is easy to identify these carrier vehicles—the rear seats are invariably missing to provide more storage place. In areas which are called “
garam
sections” [hot spots], meaning areas that were devoid of friendly police protection and had the risk of meeting a hostile cop party, an escort vehicle was provided. Its function was to intercept police vehicles which would suddenly be blocked by a car whose ignition had conveniently
failed
.’
Witnessing this intricate yet simple web of transportation, the upper ranks of policemen soon realised that the trade had became a big menace. And slowly but surely, Varda Bhai was transforming from just another illicit liquor producer into a big don.

The dawn of Varda’s power came when his men could get anyone a ration card, illegal electricity, and water supply and make them a Bombay citizen faster than the local administration. People started pouring into the city in groups, especially from southern India—Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala—and with each day the slums lined across the central region began to grow. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Varadarajan, in a small way, had much to do in making Dharavi the biggest slum space in Asia. Such was the allure of his might, that people started working blindly for him. Press reports during the sixties peg his trade of illicit liquor to around 12 crore rupees a year. In those years, that was a huge footprint considering the clandestine nature of the trade.

The aura of his power had engulfed not only his trade but also the psyche of the people around him. An Antop Hill Police Station diary entry records a very sketchy detail about a man from Uttar Pradesh who went missing. He lived with his wife and two children at one of the first floor corridor-houses in Antop Hill. Every night, when Varadarajan’s men would gather to make liquor, the noise from the vessels would disturb his sleep so much that he complained to the local police, who poignantly chose to turn a deaf ear to it. When news of his complaint reached Varda’s men, it so vexed them that they simply just decided to shut him up ‘forever’ when he came down to yell at them one night. His name is still registered under the missing list at the Antop Hill Police Station records. However, as was widely reported in several newspapers at the time, his wife had another story to tell: she was adamant that the police was very handsomely paid to keep mum about the whole incident, she left the city soon after.

Varda, however, knew too well that he needed to be very far-sighted in his approach in handling the network that chose to function under his name. While he handicapped the intelligence network—as bribes ensured that the informers in the backstreets were kept satisfied—he also ensured that the other end was well oiled. A news report published during the sixties did not shy away from stating on record that ‘constables on the hooch beat made quite a sum. The rate for police protection for the
addas
[where hooch was sold in public] was Rs 5,000 per
adda
. Each police station had on an average 75 to 130
addas
in its area. For the owners of the
addas
, the monthly turnover in just one suburban area with five
addas
is around Rs 50,000 per month’. The economics worked at 10 rupees per glass for diluted hooch, which means anywhere around 1 crore rupees a month.