The leader of the thugs waved to the Police Officer, the Officer looked hard, then waved back and asked the driver to drive on.
Venkatraman’s transfer had had its effect and Roy had heard that the new ACP was on the take from Bhuria. Now he had first-.hand experience.
As the Police Van disappeared, the leader lurched forward, swinging his sword. Roy swayed out of the way and kicked him on the groin. As he bent over with a grunt, he scissor
130 Tinsel
kicked him on the side of his head. His heavy boot crashing into the skull.
“One down!” He said to himself.
Watching their leader fall had the desired effect on the others. The others hesitated then came at him; Roy sidestepped the other thug with the sword and swung the cycle chain at his neck. The chain locked around his neck and Roy pulled him hard against the others. The sword went flying from his hand and he gasped in agony as the cycle chain bit into his throat, violently cutting off his air supply.
The force pulled the chain out of Roy’s hand but he picked up the fallen sword in one quick motion and swung it hard at the thug with the chopper, slashing him deep across the chest.
Three were down and the other three looked uncertain and a bit scared to attack. One of them attacked wildly, but Roy easily danced out of his way and slashed his back on his follow through.
The last two had enough. They cursed him and sped off on their bikes, taking two of the injured pillion with them.
Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran 131
The last two were lying on the road unconscious. Roy turned around and bent to pick up his bicycle. As he straightened, he felt a sharp burning pain on his back before he heard the sound of the gun firing. He turned around and saw a furious Bhuria shooting frantically at him from his car. Two more bullets thudded into Roy.
Roy knew he would die unless he did something drastic. With only survival in mind, he jumped 20 feet down into sewage canal.
As he landed, he could hear his right leg breaking with a snap, but felt no pain.
‘This is it,’ he thought ‘I am going to die like a dog in a gutter!’ before he hit his head on a rock and then it was all black.
__________________________________________________
End of Book One
__________________________________________________
Inter-logue
__________________________________________________
November 1992
Zaheer was asleep at home when the phone rang. He was to meet up with Roy and Chika in the garage for drinks but Shameem was feeling very restless. She was in her 8th month of pregnancy and the aches, pains and kicking had started. Zaheer had instead preferred to spend time with her.
It was almost 1:00 am; they usually did not get calls this late.
‘I hope it is not bad news…’ thought Zaheer as he reached for the phone.
The call was from Chembur police station. The caller was one of the constables who was present in the patrol van and had seen Roy’s confrontation with Bhuria’s thugs. The constable was a friend of Zaheer’s and also knew Roy well. He told him what he saw and apologised that he couldn’t do anything to help Roy, since there was a senior Police Inspector present in the van.
Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran 133
Zaheer felt a cold shiver pass through him. He immediately woke Shaukat and they set off on their father’s old Bajaj Chetak scooter.
They reached the bridge just in time to see Roy take a tumble into the canal. Bhuria also saw them coming and sped away.
When they leant across the bridge, they could hardly see Roy in the dark muck.
“Stop a Taxi,” yelled Zaheer to Shaukat “I’ll get him!”
Without giving a moment’s thought Zaheer climbed down from the bridge and jumped into the stinking sewage.
“Roy, where are you!” He yelled as he waded through the slush, his feet sticking to the bottom making it difficult to move.
Then he saw Roy, he was not moving and Zaheer didn’t know if he was alive. Tears streaming down his cheeks he pulled the motionless body to him.
“Roy… Roy… I have come, don’t die please…” he yelled and slung his limp body on his shoulder like a fireman and waded out.
134 Tinsel
By that time, some more sympathisers had gathered and they helped Zaheer out of the canal.
Shaukat had managed to find a cabbie and the brothers rushed Roy to the hospital.
Roy was barely alive when they reached the hospital. He was immediately washed and prepped for surgery. The specialist surgeon was woken up from his quarters and brought down.
While Roy was being prepped, Zaheer and Shaukat completed the police formalities required.
Chika had not gone home after their session and was spending the night with his ‘Friday’, whose husband was on tour, hence could not be contacted.
‘Bloody Hell,’ thought Zaheer, ‘Where the hell is Chika!’
Two bullets were extracted from Roy and his right knee was set and plastered. But he was still comatose. And in coma, he remained for a week.
Life isn’t complicated.
We are.
Book Two
__________________________________________________
1993-2000
It was dark, he could hear some voices. They seemed so distant. It was Chika, joking and trying to cheer the others.
He then heard Rita speak, “It has been a week now that Roy hasn’t responded,” she sounded really worried, “what is the doctor saying?”
He then heard Zaheer’s voice, “Roy is tough, he will pull through!” There was a confident note in his voice.
“Of course, he will,” added Chika, “the doctor said the same thing. His vitals are fine, all he needs to do is to come out of the damn coma!”
Roy opened his eyes slowly. It seemed like someone had tied weights to his eyelids. The light blinded him and he could barely make out the silhouettes of his friends.
His voice sounded like a croak, “Zaheer is right Rita, I won’t die that easy.”
Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran 137
There was instant commotion in the hospital room.
“Roy! You are back…” laughed Chika and Zaheer rushed out to call the doctor. Rita was speechless, tears streaming down her cheeks.
George and Gracy, who were waiting outside the room rushed in. There was all round happy commotion in the room, till the nurse shooed them all out saying that the doctor is on his way to examine Roy.
Roy looked at himself. He looked like an Egyptian Mummy. His entire torso was bandaged and his entire right leg was plastered and in traction.
He was later told that two bullets were extracted from his shoulder and back and one had gone clean through missing his heart by an inch.
The doctor examined him for half an hour and came out smiling.
“He will make a full recovery…” he announced, “He sure is a very lucky guy!”
While the celebration was going on outside, Roy was trying to remember the events of that night.
138 Tinsel
He remembered seeing Bhuria aim at him and his desperate tumble into the canal.
When the commotion died down, Roy asked Chika “How did I get here?”
“This man is the hero…” said Chika, putting his arm around Zaheer fondly, “he saved your life!”
He then proceeded to tell Roy what had transpired after he jumped into the canal.
Roy was moved to tears and did not have words to express his gratitude. Zaheer kept his hand on his shoulder and said,
“The only thing that matters is that you are alive, Roy. I am sure you would have done the same for me.”
His two best buddies sat on either side of the bed and held his hands.
“As long as we have each other, nothing and nobody can touch us!” declared Chika.
Then Roy’s eyes steeled, “What about Bhuria? How do we tackle him?”
“We don’t need to,” replied Chika and threw him
a couple of days old copy of the Daily Times.
Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran 139
“Notorious Gangster Killed in Kurla!” Screamed the headline.
The article went on to explain how Bhuria and three of his lieutenants, at the behest of the owners, had visited the Premium Cars Factory compound in nearby Kurla to meet with their union leaders and coerce them to end the strike.
But instead they walked into an ambush. Dalvi and his gang were waiting for them and surrounded them. All four of them were brutally hacked to death in front of hundreds of factory workers.
Yet, the police had found no witnesses willing to come forward and testify.
The murders were reported to be revenge killing by the Dalvi Gang for the murders of Shorty and his gang in Khandala a couple of months earlier.
Nothing was mentioned about how Dalvi got wind of the proposed meeting and the exact time and location.
Couple of days later, when Roy, Chika and Zaheer were discussing their future plans in the hospital room, they received a call from Shameem.
“Are you guys watching the News channel?” She asked, and added, “Allah! All hell has broken loose!!”
Immediately, they switched on the TV and there it was all over the News channels. Visuals of thousands of frenzied Kar Sevaks, screaming “Jai Shree Ram” demolishing the defunct Babri Masjid.
The media overdose had its effect. By evening, there were protests in Muslim localities and random incidents of violence and rioting.
By the next day, the riots turned more sinister and there were reports of Hindus being hacked to death and even burnt alive by rampaging Muslim mobs. Places of worship, police stations,
Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran 141
BEST buses, private vehicles and Government institutions were targeted.
Hindu mobs retaliated and clashes and killings escalated. The protests and violence went on for eight to ten days.
Curfew was clamped on the city by the police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and para military forces were called in to help the police curb the violence.
The violence showed signs of abatement by 14th December and though there were stray incidents of violence, the city began limping back to normalcy.
Then in the second week of January, the Hindu backlash began. Incensed by the killing of a daily wage worker in Dongri and the burning of six Hindus, including a handicapped girl in Radhabhai Chawl, the Right Wing leaders took it upon themselves to teach the minority rioters a lesson.
The backlash was vicious and personal. It set about a tidal wave of systematic and brutal ethnic cleansing that Bombay had never witnessed before.
142 Tinsel
Roy and Chika were worried for Zaheer and his family, but he wasn’t.
“We have lived in the locality for over three decades,” he explained with a smile, “I was born there, even Shaukat was born there. We may be the only Muslims in the chawl, but we are like one big family. We are absolutely safe there.”
Two days later, the rioters reached their chawl and a dozen armed men started banging on their door. They were clearly drunk, frenzied and crazed with hatred.
Mr Sheikh called the police, but there was no response. In desperation he called every influential person he knew in the area but received no response.
In the end, Zaheer called Chika and wept that he should have listened to their warning and now it was too late!
Defying the curfew, Chika drove like crazy to Zaheer’s chawl. But like Zaheer said, he was too late.
The door was broken down and each member of the Sheikh family had been beaten up and
Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran 143
dragged on to the street and imprisoned in kerosene soaked car tyres and set on fire.
Zaheer, his parents, Shaukat, his wife and children were all charred beyond recognition. But the very pregnant Shameem was still alive, but barely so.
As Chika carried her into his car, she implored, “Chika, save my baby…”
Chika rushed her to the hospital, but she breathed her last on the operating table.
“I am sorry, she is no more…” the sympathetic lady Surgeon told Chika.
“Can you at least, save the baby?” Chika sounded abnormally calm.
“I will try…” the Surgeon said and she immediately conducted a post-mortem caesarean section on Shameem and extracted the baby.
“It’s a girl,” she told Chika, “three weeks premature, feeble, the heat caused by the fire has traumatised her but she is alive. We will have to monitor her for a while. Whose name should I write as her guardian in the form?”
144 Tinsel
“You can write my name, Chaitanya Shetty,” said Chika “Please give the best of care to the baby, all charges will be paid by me.”
The brutal killing of the Sheikh family dragged the whole locality down with shame.
“Everybody knew that the Sheikhs were friendly, secular people. But the mob that killed them was not from our locality. They were drunk, armed and frenzied. There was nothing we could do to save our friends. We are really ashamed of ourselves.” The Secretary of the Chawl told the press.
The brutal incident shook Roy. He felt like a failure. He would get recurring nightmares of Zaheer calling him out for help.
Though he was discharged from the hospital, the multiple fractures on his right leg required him to remain in bed with a plaster of Paris cast and traction for another three weeks. His step mom being a nurse had helped. Gracy had set up the traction on his bed and ensured that he was well cared for.
He would often wake up screaming Zaheer’s name in the middle of the night. Gracy was moved by Roy’s affection for his dead friend and did all she could to comfort him.
In the meanwhile Zaheer and Shameem’s baby girl had made a remarkable recovery and was ready to be discharged.
Since all her immediate family members were dead, she was claimed by Shameem’s only living
146 Tinsel
relative, her brother Afzal, who lived in Kurla with his wife and four children.
Chika and Roy were not too happy with the development, but there was little that they could do.
“Life is too short and too bloody unpredictable” Roy decided and a week after his cast was removed, he got married to Rita in a small Arya Samaj ceremony at home.
Only his close friends and relatives were called. Among them were Sunil’s parents. They were old and happy to give the bride away at the ceremony.
George, who was now completely off alcohol and happy with Gracy, at last became a proud father-in-law. He and Gracy played the part of perfect hosts in the ceremony.
Though it was a happy occasion, Roy and Rita were still in mourning and did not host a reception nor did they go for a honeymoon.
George and Gracy were adamant that the newly married couple stay with them, at least for a while.
Tinsel Page 9