Dawood's Mentor

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  Since the time Khalid had started working for Bashu, he had never ever failed in any assignment. It seemed that today was not his day and he would have to return to his den, shamed and defeated. Khalid had begun to slow down. His back was aching, his knees were feeling heavy and his feet felt like lead. He was breathing hard and his heart was thumping loudly. It is said that heavy, muscular man do not make good runners because their muscles and the inflexible weight of their bodies become an impediment. In contrast, lean and lightweight men have an edge over them. Wrestlers do not enjoy running. Except for swimming, they are not trained to undertake any aerobic activity.

  Khalid was thoroughly frustrated at such a potential loss of face and decided to give up. Both his men who were running behind him were also out of breath. They stopped the moment they saw Khalid slowing down. They decided to return and were resigned to their fate.

  Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, a youth whizzed past them, almost flying with extreme agility, jumping across the handcarts, hopping away in front of the honking car bonnets, intercepting motorbikes and scooters. Khalid turned to look in wonderment, surprised at the sudden surge of energy that one of his boys seemed to have acquired in no time. But as he turned around, he saw both his men were still behind him, the epitome of deflated tyres, thoroughly punctured. They too looked at him incomprehensibly and shrugged, acknowledging that they too didn’t know who this man was, sprinting ahead of them like a rabbit.

  It was obvious by now that the teenager was on their side, as he seemed to be in hot pursuit of Rashid Taxi. Khalid’s aching heels suddenly sprung to life. The young boy had revived his hopes. He began jogging to check if the young man had been able to accomplish what he could not do. And lo and behold, Khalid was pleasantly surprised to see that the galloping boy had caught up with Rashid near Peerkhan Street no. 1 and was calling for him to take over. The youth was holding Rashid Taxi by his collar and was not allowing him to move an inch from the spot.

  ‘Khalid Bhai, aa jao (Come here, Khalid Bhai),’ said the boy.

  While Khalid was overjoyed that Rashid had finally been cornered, he looked quizzically at the boy who held Rashid in his firm grip. One of his aides announced, ‘Yeh to Dawood hai (Oh, this is Dawood).’

  Khalid was trying hard to size up this scrawny lad who had been introduced to him by Ibrahim Havildar just recently, and who was now holding Rashid like a sack of potatoes, with so little effort. Khalid patted Dawood’s back, indicating that he was very pleased with his actions. The boy had no idea that Rashid was a prize catch for Khalid and by netting him he had rescued him from a tight spot.

  Then Khalid turned swiftly and administered a resounding, heavy slap—in full force—on Rashid’s face. Rashid collapsed to the ground, his lips bleeding.

  Rashid’s arrogance and belligerence, added with his audacious near-escape, had enraged Khalid. He wanted to kill him—crush him and smother him to death. But so far there had been no police complaints against Khalid and he did not want to start now. Killing Rashid in full public view with so many witnesses would definitely result in his conviction.

  But Khalid was determined to punish him and make a lesson out of him to serve as a deterrent for others who dared snub Bashu. In the few years that he had been with the Mumbai mafia, he had learnt the golden rules too well. If you want to kill someone, then you stab him in the stomach. But if you want him to live but still want to subject him to abject and disgraceful humiliation, then you stab him in his buttocks.

  This is called ‘gaand pe waar’—attack on the arse. The injury inflicted in full public view would be a perennial source of embarrassment for the victim and he would never be able to sit straight even after recovery. Eventually, among Bombay denizens, this form of retribution got whittled down to ‘gaand pe laat’ (kick on the arse) and, now, GPL is a widely used acronym.

  Khalid took a knife from his aide and drove the knife down both of Rashid’s butt cheeks, leaving two deep gashes. Rashid let out a piercing scream. Khalid and his men were satisfied with the punishment and were ready to leave. It was then that one of his men asked, ‘Bhai, agar police case hua toh? (Bhai, what if the police registers a case against us?)’

  This question stopped Khalid in his tracks. He had been preparing to gloat to Bashu about Rashid’s public chastisement at his hands. According to Indian penal laws, an assault could still be interpreted under Section 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC, or even under Section 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means).

  Dawood, who was, until now, merely standing by without participating in the violence, stepped forward and said, ‘If there is a cross complaint of a similar case, then the police will resolve it within the station premises and the matter will not go to court, thereby ruling out any prosecution or trial.’ Dawood had simplified their dilemma and spoken like a true policeman’s son.

  Khalid’s brow creased in worry, ‘How can we lodge a cross complaint against Rashid when we don’t have a victim whom he has hurt?’ Khalid inquired from Dawood and also looked towards his two men.

  Even before Khalid’s aides could respond, Dawood acted with the same swiftness that he had displayed earlier while chasing Rashid. He took the knife from Khalid and inflicted a deep gash on his own forearm. Fresh hot blood gushed out from his wound and splattered on his clothes, and also began dribbling on the tar road. Dawood’s clothes were soaked with his own blood. Everything happened so suddenly and abruptly that Khalid was left stunned at Dawood’s initiative and even sacrifice.

  The day Dawood shed his own blood was the day he conquered Khalid’s heart. The boy was ten years his junior but was so quick on the uptake. He had saved him from a legal complication and had also plucked Rashid like a ripe fruit in no time, that too when he was not even a stakeholder. It was at that precise moment that he vowed to himself that he would stand by the young man and protect him always, even if he had to give up his own life to save him.

  Khalid immediately gave Dawood a warm, crushing embrace and asked his men to tie a bandage on Dawood’s forearm. He then personally rushed him to the state-run J.J. Hospital’s casualty ward, which was just across the road.

  It was the beginning of a long-lasting bond.

  13

  Survival Techniques

  The sharp knife in Dawood’s hand moved with amazing swiftness, grazing Khalid’s left triceps. Khalid’s timely defence had saved him by a whisker. The knife’s sharp point had managed to tear into his T-shirt sleeve, causing a scratch. Instead of showing anger or irritation, Khalid looked at Dawood with admiration and approval.

  ‘Bahut khoob, Dawood, tum bahut jaldi seekh gaye (Very well done, Dawood, you have learnt very quickly).’

  It was barely the fifth day since Dawood had begun training with Khalid, but his protégé was already surpassing the mentor’s expectations. Khalid was impressed because, as he recalled, he himself had taken quite a while to master the knife despite having a good teacher like Bashu. He was a man of strength and believed that unless he had a strong grip of the weapon, his learning was superficial. Khalid took several weeks to master the forward and reverse grips of the knife, eventually settling for the forward grip.

  ‘Real dexterity lies in holding the handle of the knife gingerly. If you do that, the position of the knife’s edge can be changed as per the strategy of attack. A strong grip will impede the swift movement of the blade of the knife, by which time your adversary could have disarmed you or managed to inflict injury,’ lectured Khalid.

  Even before Khalid had begun Dawood’s training, the latter was already adroit at handling switchblades. The switchblade is convenient to carry, and its main objective is to terrify the onlooker by the mere gesture of switching open the knife with one swift flick of the blade, held between the thumb and the forefingers of the right hand. The mechanical krrrrr sound and the erect bare knife were enough to instil fear even in the minds of the onlookers. Even hardened gangsters who carried the switchblade were prone to being w
ary of this harm-inflicting knife.

  In Bollywood, actor Shatrughan Sinha, who often played a street ruffian, wielded the switchblade, or Rampuri chaku, in a particular style that embodied machismo. His fans would burst into applause and whistles the moment he brandished his Rampuri chaku, turning his face in a particular way even while slaying his opponent with his ‘dialogues’, a very generic, broad term in the Hindi-film industry. It can include abuses, war of words, interesting conversation, diatribe and everything else that pertains to an interesting exchange of words.

  Once Dawood mastered the art of knife fighting, Khalid began imparting lessons on unarmed close combat. The idea was to fight and defeat a group of thugs, if cornered, single-handedly. Khalid referred to it as ‘survival technique’, while Dawood called it a ‘hero fight’.

  ‘Since you don’t have much body mass, the only asset that you do have in your arsenal is your agility and nimble movement, which heavyset or big people normally don’t have,’ Khalid told Dawood. ‘What would you do if you are faced with a man like me? He could easily crush you with his strength.’

  Despite Dawood being in awe of Khalid, he shot back, ‘Nahin, bhai, aapko challenge nahin karoonga, lekin mai bhi halwa nahin hoon (No, brother, I will not dare to challenge you, but rest assured, when push comes to shove, I will be no cakewalk).’

  Khalid nodded. The boy’s aplomb never ceased to amaze him. He taught him many things.

  One of them was how to break the crushing embrace of an adversary, if held tightly from behind. ‘You have to smash the adversary’s nose with a head butt, or stomp with full strength on the enemy’s big toe. And if nothing else works, try to find some room and pull your back away from him, bend your knees and throw him off your back, commonly known as “dhobi pachad” [a washerman’s throw] in wrestling parlance.’

  ‘If none of the above tricks work, then there is a fatal mantra that can kill by breaking the enemy’s neck,’ Khalid explained. ‘The elbow is such an underestimated weapon in a man’s body. One perfect full-throttle elbow assault, heaved from chest height and hit below the opponent’s chin, can throw even King Kong off his foot. Chances are that it may snap the neck bone if the right amount of power is used in the attack.’

  Khalid continued his lessons excitedly: ‘Even the strongest man cannot take a hit on the knee joint, it can topple him. Again, the right amount of force is needed and it should connect at the most sensitive point. In desperate situations, always go for smaller body parts which are the most vulnerable for a man. Like sticking your fingers in the nostrils forcibly, pulling the earlobes, gouging the eyes out and, if you happen to be below the waist level and your hands cannot reach the face, then try squeezing the testicles tightly. All this will cause an immeasurable amount of agony to your enemy and he will let go of you.’

  Dawood was Khalid’s first sincere pupil ever since he had left his home town of Harda in Madhya Pradesh. He liked that Dawood was absorbing everything he said, like a sponge. He knew the boy held great promise. He possessed a fire and drive rarely seen in other boys of his age.

  Dawood was savouring and relishing the lessons. For the lanky, scrawny Dawood, this was a dream come true. He always wanted to be a real toughie. He wanted to be invincible, a boy who could fend off several opponents in one go.

  Whenever he was not playing cricket in the precincts of J.J. Hospital or loafing around with the boys on the streets or scamming people through his ‘palti marna technique’ (replacing a watch with a dud), he was hooking up with Khalid for more lessons. Khalid often called Dawood to Bashu’s wrestling pit for training. When Dawood’s friends, envious of his new-found abilities, also wanted to learn the tricks of the trade and sought Khalid out, the teacher politely ignored their overtures.

  Khalid was very rooted in reality. He was educated but had no airs about him. He never made a big deal of his strength unless so demanded by the occasion. He would plonk himself on a charpoy right on the street and order food from the nearby joints. He would not hesitate to ask hangers-on to share his meals with him right. He had no qualms about wearing a lungi. He was equally comfortable in bell-bottoms, a lungi or a Pathani suit. He never wanted to imitate film stars and he never wanted to impress anybody. The man was a pehelwan to the core. The flashy world and its trappings were not for him.

  While Dawood relied on Khalid for his leadership skills, fighting techniques and, later in life, to learn the tricks of the smuggling business, his reference point for the material things was not Khalid. While his teacher was a heroic strongman who trained him in self-defence, Dawood drew inspiration for power play and money, clothes and style from other places. Bashu, for instance, who always smoked the most expensive cigarette of his time, 555, flaunted a lighter made of pure gold, and was always bedecked in a pristine white shirt, white pants and white shoes. The mafia bosses in Bombay, like the politicians, only wore white.

  Haji Mastan and Karim Lala loved the white shirt and white trousers. They claimed that they were following the Islamic tradition of wearing whites, but even Varadarajan Mudaliar wore a white shirt and white veshti (lungi) at all times.

  As if not content with the white dress code, the mafia dons thought it fit to complement it with customized white leather shoes. Over the years, the mafia dress code has undergone several transformations but the white shoe is still in vogue. The rich and nouveau rich in Pydhonie, Dongri and the J.J. area, or even in the Middle Eastern countries, can still be seen flaunting their white footwear. Wearing white shoes brings luck, it is believed.

  Despite Dawood’s tendency to veer towards the flashy, Khalid was indulgent of him. He had seen the boy emerge out of his cocoon. After all, the boy was from a different generation. He had also developed a liking for him since Rashid Taxi’s butt-stabbing incident. Rashid had tried to lodge an FIR against Khalid at the Dongri police station, which was immediately countered by Dawood’s FIR of an equally serious and rather exaggerated complaint against Rashid.

  The Dongri police convinced Rashid to withdraw his complaint, else they would have to take cognizance of Dawood’s allegations too. Since Dawood was also the son of a policeman, the scales would be tipped in his favour, they said. Rashid was forced to withdraw his complaint against Khalid.

  To add insult to injury, Dawood also influenced the Young Party against Rashid. In no time, Dawood had replaced Rashid as the Young Party chief. Khalid was really happy with Dawood’s handiwork and smart machinations.

  Khalid’s boss, Bashu, should have been happy at the turn of events. His man Friday had snipped a growing threat in the bud, in the form of the Young Party, and neutralized it by placing an insider like Dawood at the helm. Bashu’s turf was intact but Bashu’s feelings were not. There was something about Dawood that made him uneasy. The boy was very intelligent, and his eyes had a sparkle, a mischievous look that said, ‘Hold it right there, I will take your place soon.’

  Bashu had also not liked the promotion of Dawood as the leader of the Young Party and he also vehemently disapproved of the growing friendship between Khalid and Dawood. But in either case, he realized he could not intervene. Bashu could neither influence Dawood’s appointment as the leader of the Young Party because the weight of Ibrahim Havildar’s clout and reputation was behind his son, coupled with the fact that the group had been ostensibly formed with the intention of giving a constructive direction to the youth, and nor could he ask Khalid to sever his ties with Dawood. He knew Khalid was obliged to the young boy who had saved him from a police case, and their friendship meant that the Young Party would not bay for his blood. But much as he tried, the uneasiness did not leave Bashu.

  He was waiting for an opportune moment to either get rid of them or break up their friendship.

  Heedless of the tumult in Bashu’s mind, Khalid and Dawood went about their lives without the slightest inkling as to what the future had in store for them. They were under the assumption that like so many people who cross your paths at a certain stage and disappear, never to be seen
or heard from again, they too would soon outgrow each other’s company. Their association and bond was born out of a need from one side and an obligation from the other. They presumed they would go their separate ways with the passage of time. At no point of time did either of them feel that they would be shaping each other’s destiny or forging a bond that would last almost a lifetime.

  14

  The Mafia in the 1970s

  There are times in life when you feel absolutely at one with yourself. Khalid felt a deep sense of well-being, as if he had managed to draw out all that life had to offer from the well of the universe. After establishing a well-oiled gold-smuggling mechanism, his life seemed to have found a purpose. Minor irritants like Hassu Maharaj and the budding menace of the Young Party had been duly neutralized. His burgeoning bank balance made him immensely happy and he shared his new-found wealth with his mother and other relatives who needed to be taken care of. Somewhere in the far recesses of his mind, though, there was a buried dream of donning a police uniform. But he would deliberately pull himself back to find solace in the wads of banknotes and all the gold he owned.

  In keeping with this fresh status, he moved away from the mafia capital of Dongri, its various labyrinthine mohallas and rented out a plush flat in Bombay Central, which was much more upmarket than Dongri. Bombay Central was less congested and had bigger homes. The areas of Dongri, Pydhonie, J.J. Market, Umarkhadi—popularly known as ‘3, 8 and 9’ (Bombay pincode numbers)—had back-to-back buildings that shared walls, with poor hygiene and no civic amenities. Almost all the monotonously built buildings had dank corridors, narrow wooden creaking stairs, common toilets and the all-pervasive stench of rotten garbage that was dumped in the common enclosed yard of the building. The lack of physical space had also impinged on the mind space of the gangsters, who had never thought bigger.