Sufi - The Invisible Man of The Underworld

by Aabid Surti

  “What’s the value of the goods?”

  Iqbal knew the details. He replied, “Five crore.”

  “To whom does it belong?”

  “One and a half crore of goods belongs to us and the rest to the syndicate.”

  The Arab was fully satisfied now. He immediately signaled to his men. On this side, all the seven mates of Iqbal took their positions to take delivery of the three hundred jackets.

  One person took up a position on the upper and one on the lower decks of the launch. Their work was to keep a vigil over the sea. In case of a sudden attack, everyone could escape by jumping into the sea. (The greatest threat during ‘crossing’ was from the coast guards.)

  Two more persons entered the cellar. The remaining three placed themselves at intervals between the cellar and Iqbal.

  At first, a rope came from the opposite launch. Iqbal caught one end of the rope and handed it over to Dagdu standing behind him. He in turn gave it to Altaf waiting at some distance. Iqbal kept on pulling the rope until the end reached the cellar. The process was similar to pulling the string of a kite, after it is cut. But it did not end there.

  Like a shirt dangling from a hanger, the jackets started arriving along the rope. (There are one hundred gold biscuits sewn inside the lining of each jacket.) Iqbal was keeping count and pulling the rope. The chain of jackets was passing from one launch to the other and from one hand to another until it reached the cellar.

  Michael, one of the two persons standing in the cellar, was pulling the jackets along with the rope, while the other person was disengaging the jackets from the rope and stuffing them in jute sacks. Already, five sacks were full.

  This was just the beginning and the work was going on continuously at a feverish pitch. There was no question of taking a break until all the jackets arrived safely.

  As Iqbal's counting crossed the figure of one hundred and fifty, a beam of light darted over the sea like a flash of lightning. Both the launches were illuminated for a second and then darkness descended on them again.

  Iqbal sat stoically. The Arab, passing the jackets from the opposite launch, came to a stand still. The beam was from the powerful light aboard the naval ship Vikrant anchored at a distance.

  Had they become suspicious? Had they seen both the launches doing the ‘crossing’? The questions were many but the answers were none; still, it was necessary to follow utmost caution. Iqbal's career would be jeopardised if anything went wrong with his very first assignment.

  He shot an order to the Arab, “Make it quick.”

  Again, the rope was pulled and the dangling jackets started arriving from one launch to the other. The progress accelerated. When the figure reached two hundred and sixty five, again a beam of incandescent light from the naval ship pierced through the darkness. This time it stood fixed on the two launches. Both the launches shone like diyas (lamps) during the Diwali festival.

  A momentary shiver ran down Iqbal's spine. He felt certain that he had inherited the legacy of Hamid’s misfortune . There was now no room for any doubt. The naval ship had spotted them. The captain of the naval ship would immediately inform the customs collector through a phone call. Shortly, the coast guards would rush in their boats to raid them. The identical thing had happened to Hamid during the last crossing.

  This time the beam of light remained steady for a few seconds and then went away, plunging the two launches into dark. Silence replaced the light. Every man felt a knot in his stomach. They had grown unusually quiet.

  “Boss!” Dagdu could no more remain silent. “We should jump into the sea if we want to avoid arrest.”

  Michael, Altaf and the rest of the men had also stopped their work and encircled Iqbal.

  He reassured them, “Now, only thirty five jackets are left.”

  “The temptation of these jackets will get us all trapped by the customs officials,” Michael argued.

  Altaf too concurred, “It’s better we leave the goods and flee.”

  “Don't you forget, the consignment is worth five crore rupees,” said Iqbal and turning towards the Arab commanded, “Let the rope come.”

  As the rope slackened from the other end, Iqbal started pulling it. The jackets started landing near his feet. His colleagues got confused. Taking advantage of their dilemma, Iqbal tried to persuade them. “This is not just our consignment, the syndicate has also pitched in. It is our duty to save it even at the cost of our lives.”

  “But boss!” Dagdu retorted, “If all of us are arrested then the gang's work will come to a stand still.”

  “That's my responsibility.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll take you safely back to the shore.” Pulling the last jacket, he ordered the boatman, “start the launch.”

  The two boatmen, who were keeping both the launches tied side by side by fixing boat hooks in the other launch, loosened the bamboo and unhooked. Then they pressed the boat hooks against the outer wall of the opposite launch to separate Al Kabir and started the launch.

  Meanwhile, Altaf and Dagdu, trepidation etched on their faces, had reached the top deck of the launch. According to their speculation, the raid would occur on their way back. Hence they did not want to take the risk of traveling in the launch.

  Iqbal's problem was, if both of them jumped into the sea, the others would be encouraged to follow. They would lose courage and plunge in.

  He rushed towards them, caught them by their neck and pulled them back violently. Distressed, Dagdu was frustrated as he tumbled down on the wooden floor. Altaf got provoked. He stood upright and delivered an unexpected punch. Iqbal felt a pain in the jaw. With his tongue he explored the front line of teeth and discovered that one was bleeding.

  The blood set his right arm into motion like a spring, from it came a punch, a punch as terrible as the pain in the tooth. Altaf tried to attack again. Stopping his blow with one hand, Iqbal dealt another punch on his nose. He fell down. His nose started bleeding. Blood spilled on his drooping moustache and started dripping on his shirt. He was not to forget this incident.

  “Who else wants to jump?” Iqbal challenged the remaining six, readying his fists in the manner of a boxer. No one had the guts to look into his blood-shot eyes.

  Al Kabir started. Iqbal turned towards the boatman wiping his lips with the back of his hand and said, “There is no need to take the launch back.” The boatman was intelligent. He turned Al Kabir towards Uran Island. Iqbal came near Altaf lying on the floor and offered his hand, “Come, get up.”

  Rubbing his nose with one hand, he held Iqbal's hand with the other and got up. The wrinkles on their forehead smoothed out and they smiled at each other.

  “Under such pressure most people get unnerved easily.” Putting his hand around Altaf’s neck magnanimously, Iqbal brought him to the bench. “Relax, a peg of liquor will not just cure your nose but your temper as well.” The words were balm for his wounds.

  He procured a bottle of country liquor from the boatman, gave it to him and stood atop the launch. From here, he was able to see the lights of Uran Island. As the coast came closer, the lights became brighter.

  He started wondering: If the captain of the naval ship had informed the customs collector over the phone, why had the coast guard’s boat not appeared till now?

  He stepped down on to the lower part of the launch and searched far into the darkness while trying to hear if there was any sound. He could neither see the light of the custom’s boat nor hear the sound of its engine.

  He presumed that they must have been late. Perhaps they were lying in wait for Al Kabir at Bhaucha Dhakka. On anchoring the launch at Uran Island, Iqbal became tension-free; but he did not know that the enemy had propelled a unique plan of action.

  Chapter 16

  There were in all fifteen bags. Twenty jackets were stuffed in each bag. Every jacket had one hundred gold biscuits. The total consignment worth five crore rupees had landed on the coast of Uran island.

  There was no oth
er way to ferry the consignment from here to Bombay but by road. The sea route took just one hour, but the road took more than two. The journey was also more tiresome.

  “Dagdu!” Iqbal beckoned him, “We need to arrange for a tempo.”

  Dagdu was an old hand of the gang. “Boss, I know a transporter here. But,” he said expressing doubt, “I’m not very sure if he would be ready to come at this time.”

  “Call me if he tries to act smart.”

  Dagdu melted into the fading darkness of the dawn.

  Iqbal saw that rest of his men had made seats out of the bags and were sitting on them shivering in cold, some smoking a bidi or a cigarette. Altaf still had the bottle of country liquor in his hand, and was relishing the last few drops.

  Iqbal lifted up his eyes. There was the sky overhead and the earth below. The sky was changing its colour gradually. The rim of the clouds had begun to turn silver. Far ahead beyond the sea on the horizon, a glow of light had emerged softly, as Dagdu arrived with a Tempo.

  Iqbal saw that there were two taxis behind it too. He took pride in Dagdu's wisdom. He had proved his proficiency by arranging for transport at this odd hour on this desolate island.

  “Boss,” he said, jumping out of the Tempo, “we are really lucky. Some men from the tourism department had arrived here in these taxis last evening.”

  “How much did the Tempo guy want?”

  “Thousand bucks.”

  “So much!” He said reproachfully and wanted to add—you are really an idiot, but didn’t. For a thousand was insignificant in a business involving crores of rupees. If Iqbal hadn’t seen poverty and hunger, he wouldn’t have felt uneasy.

  Dagdu added with a chuckle, “We need to make the payment in advance.”

  “All right,” he said reluctantly handing over ten notes of hundred rupees to Dagdu out of the expense account.

  “Where is the consignment to be delivered?”

  “To our Mazgaon godown.”

  The formalities were completed. The consignment was loaded onto the Tempo. Iqbal and his men boarded the taxis before the Tempo took off. As the caravan started from Uran, the first rays of the morning sun descended.

  The Tempo was having a bumpy ride over the uneven kachcha road. The two taxis were following it at a distance. The whole team had been awake throughout the night. As the journey began, the heads of most of the men tumbled backwards. Some had started snoring.

  Iqbal was wide awake. It was not possible for him to sleep in the taxi. He had to sit alert till the load was relieved. His prime responsibility was to keep a watch on the Tempo, not because the Tempo owner would cheat. He had no worries on that count. Suppose the Tempo caught the attention of a policeman and he signals to stop for checking, everyone would be caught napping.

  The caravan of three vehicles crossed a bridge, entered Panvel and turned towards Bombay. A customs official in mufti, who was waiting at a tea stall, noted down the numbers of all the three vehicles, withheld a smile and headed for the nearest phone booth.

  There was still one and a half-hour's journey remaining. Iqbal was sitting next to the driver of the first taxi. The modus operandi of smuggling was age-old. Because of this, the risk too was high. If only one could reduce the risk, the work could be accomplished more speedily and easily. Take the case of delivery of goods during the crossing. According to the old practice, a man from the Dubai launch would hand over the jackets one after another to the man on the boat that had come to receive the consignment. Iqbal had once suggested to Singh to keep the jackets tied to the rope instead.

  Singh was a Sardarji. The idea went into his right ear and went out through the left. There was a reason too – Whose idea it was? Iqbal’s. And who was he? A greenhorn in the field of trafficking. What was his experience in crossing? Zero.

  Moreover, though it was true that the jackets could be transferred from one boat to another faster with the help of a rope, there was also the possibility of a slip up in counting the jackets because of the speed involved – a major lacuna.

  “Singh,” Iqbal had argued, “has it ever happened that there were less biscuits in a jacket than expected? Our trade runs on trust. The day the trust dies, the business of smuggling will die too.”

  Singh began to ponder. The reasoning was not wrong. In today's corrupt world, this is the only profession in which ninety-nine per cent honesty was still pulsating, if not hundred; whereas almost all other businessmen had buried their souls six feet under.

  At last, the truth in Iqbal's statement touched him. He decided to carry out the experiment at least once. To his surprise, in Iqbal’s very first ‘crossing’, all the jackets had come tied to the rope.

  As the caravan entered Chembur, another customs official, who had been smoking cigarettes since early morning, checked the numbers of all the three vehicles he had been told about over the phone. A Tempo and two taxis, which had passed a few seconds ago, bore the same number plates.

  Iqbal was immersed in deep thought. As the taxi headed towards the west after crossing the eastern suburbs of Bombay, he felt the need to introduce more changes in this illicit business. In fact the entire system needed to be radically overhauled. And he was the only one who could do it.

  He was educated and in his second year of college. He had his own inimitable way of coming up with solutions to the various problems that confronted smuggling at every step. Otherwise, most of the people involved were illiterate. The few who were educated stuck to the traditional way of bootlegging the way a monkey sometimes holds on to her dead child thinking it is alive.

  After giving it serious thought, Iqbal concluded that the first and foremost thing to do was to bring about sweeping changes in the system of crossing itself where the risk was the highest.

  When two ships met in mid-sea like two lovers, and remained glued to each other for hours, it was bound to invite suspicion. Though the entire operation was carried out in the dark, it was still very risky. Like walls have ears, the darkness has eyes.

  Was it not possible to find a way to transfer the consignment from the Dubai ship to the boat coming to take the delivery without them actually meeting each other?

  The answer was an echo within… My dear Iqbal, this would be possible only if you were a magician. Then you could just say abracadabra and lo and behold, the consignment would fly in the air from the Dubai ship and land in your delivery launch! You are a highly talented college student – how come you don’t get such simple logic? Of course it is necessary for both boats to be side by side to enable the transfer of goods.

  “No,” his lips quivered. It is possible if the smuggling is carried out through the land route. For example, a vehicle carries the goods up to the border of Bombay and returns after dumping them at a specified place. A while later, another vehicle comes to that same spot, loads the goods and leaves.

  Why can’t the same technique be applied in the sea? A light bulb went off in the computer of his brain. Gradually the idea began to crystallize. A definite plan took shape in his mind. This concept was to revolutionize the technique of crossing.

  Now, he longed to stretch out on the seat and sleep, but he could not risk not waking up in time. As the caravan entered Bombay's western suburb of Andheri, Iqbal asked the taxi driver to stop. The taxi driver signaled the Tempo ahead whose driver saw it in his rear view side-mirror. All the three vehicles stopped near an Udipi restaurant.

  The men dozing in the taxi woke up. At first, they thought they had arrived at the godown, but then they looked out. Then at each other. Everybody seemed to be full of the same question – What was the need to stop here? The Mazgaon godown was just a forty minute drive from here.

  “Dagdu!” Iqbal said, settling the taxi fare. “We need to arrange for another Tempo.”

  For the first time he lost his temper. They had already entered Bombay, were about to reach the godown and Iqbal wanted to change the Tempo. “Boss...” Before he could protest Iqbal had reached the next taxi. He checked the meter, m
ade the payment to the driver and released it.

  “Michael!” He instructed Michael who squeezed out of the taxi yawning with Altaf. “You keep a watch here till Dagdu arranges for a new Tempo. I’m taking the others across for breakfast.”

  “Is it necessary to change the Tempo?” Michael asked him before he could leave.

  Iqbal nodded and entered the Udipi restaurant with the five men.

  “Sufi!” I stopped him from narrating the story further to ask for a clarification. “How did you get this sudden idea about changing the vehicle?”

  “Intuition.” He replied, “Perhaps you know that people often have premonitions about important events in their lives.”

  “That means you didn’t know that the customs officials were keeping a watch on your vehicles!”

  “Had I known, I wouldn’t have committed the blunder of entering the city. Instead I’d have gone to Vapi or Surat.” Pausing for a while, he added,, “In spite of having been exposed in mid-sea, we had not been raided till Andheri. This fact was bugging me constantly. My sub-conscious mind must have jolted me!”