by Aabid Surti
He paused for a while and then exposed Iqbal’s game plan. “If you are trying to buy me out by magnifying all such fears, then you better take note – I’m not a gullible person like your ship captain friend who is rotting in prison. Point No 2 – Once I’ve had my tea, I’m taking Dagdu with me.”
Dagdu was shaken inside out, as if electrocuted by a loose wire hanging from the roof of the canteen. Iqbal’s brain too betrayed him. He had not anticipated the tables to turn so unexpectedly.
As the canteen boy brought two cups of tea and a glass of lemon juice, the captain of the Hong Kong ship appeared on the deck. As per his instructions, this was the time to send a man from the ship to the canteen to establish contact with Iqbal. Iqbal was to disclose how he would be taking the delivery of the contraband goods, especially the watches brought from Seychelles.
From the deck, he focused his binoculars and saw Iqbal and Dagdu drinking their tea with a customs official in the canteen. He presumed the official was on Iqbal’s payroll, else why would he be sitting there chatting?
He gave a crew member a description of Iqbal and sent him down.
Iqbal saw him coming from afar. This time, his breath froze and his knees buckled.
Chapter 31
Having drunk his tea, Bombay customs official Khan got up. He glared at Dagdu. This was an order for Dagdu to get up. He shot a scared look at Iqbal.
“Sir!” Throwing a last glance at the approaching sailor of the Chinese ship, Iqbal said recklessly. “How about taking me instead? I’m ready to come.”
“Not today,” said Khan tightening his hold over Dagdu’s wrist, “Have patience, your turn will come soon.”
Dagdu got up reluctantly. “But Sir!” Iqbal tried again, “you won’t get the information you are looking for from him.”
“I’ll decide about that after the dandabedi.”
Dandabedi is the technique of extracting information from a criminal in which he is made to lie down on a bench and the soles of his feet are subjected to severe beating by a rod.
According to Sufi, the first few blows hurt the body; but the following blows affect the mind, as the soles become numb. One feels as if the blows are directly dealt on the head!
Explaining the process in detail, Sufi says that because of the beatings, the swollen soles look like elephantiasis. If the accused is presented before the court on the same day and he shows his feet to the magistrate, the customs officials will be in a real soup. The magistrate would fire him left and right.
The customs officials are no fools. Before taking the accused to court, they make him get down from the bench and threatening with the rod compel him to jump like a monkey. It is very painful to hop and skip with swollen feet, but it reduces the swelling.
Dagdu shivered to the last bone on hearing the word dandabedi. While Khan was dragging him out of the canteen holding him by the wrist, the Chinese sailor entered.
The captain of the ship had observed, through his binoculars, Iqbal and Khan in good humour; but the Chinese sailor had seen a different picture on reaching here.
As if he was a stranger, the sailor entered the canteen and sat down on an empty chair. Iqbal silently praised his presence of mind.
Khan gave him a cursory glance and left with Dagdu in his car. Iqbal got up from his seat, came near the sailor and sat down across him.
“What happened?” The sailor asked him, placing an order for a glass of milk.
“The customs had the whiff of our plan,” Iqbal replied, “But their suspicion will be confirmed once Dagdu spills the beans.”
“What next?”
“Leave the dock.”
“That’s not possible.” The Chinese sailor said, taking a sip after blowing over the hot glass of milk that had been placed before him. “The ship has just anchored.”
The ship needs to take the permission of the port authorities before entering the port and anchoring there. This ship had brought contraband goods and the captain had sought permission to anchor on the grounds that he needed to buy some parts from Madras City to carry out certain repairs in the boiler. If the ship suddenly started moving, even a porter working there would be suspicious.
Iqbal thought for a while and asked, “Has the captain mentioned our watches in his manifest?”
“We were never required to till date.”
“Today you will require it. You rush back and get the watches entered in the list.”
“In whose name?”
Iqbal jotted down the name of a Sri Lankan party on a slip of paper. The Chinese finished the half-empty glass of milk in one gulp and rushed back to the ship.
Then, Iqbal thought about Dagdu.
Dagdu was industrious. He was particularly useful for donkey work, having worked as a coolie at the Bori Bunder railway station. He was also a seasoned fighter, provided Iqbal or some other member of the gang stood by him. Left alone, he would turn from a lion into a lamb. He was particularly afraid of the police and the customs officials. Khan had taken advantage of this weakness.
Khan pushed him into a room of the Madras customs office and asked him to lie down on a table. He understood, now the dandabedi horror was about to begin. His hands were tensed into tight balls. His legs were uneasy. This was not his first time.
A few years back, he had developed great skill at thievery. One day, he had adroitly made the suitcase of a passenger disappear like a rabbit from hat. Yet he was caught. The reason was obvious: he had tried this vanishing trick many a time in the past.
Just as a smart onlooker can grasp the trick of a magician by watching it performed repeatedly, the railway police had solved the riddle and arrested him. That was his first experience.
He was young, daring and considered himself the mighty Dara Singh. So he did not confess anything. The railway police tried dandabedi. He could not take it. He succumbed in just seven blows. He confessed everything. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.
Imprisonment proved to be a boon for him. Where previously he knew only one stealing technique, here he mastered ten new techniques, including the secrets of the conman Natwarlal.
It was as though having completed high school in the outside world, he had come to college for further studies. He gathered as much knowledge there as possible. After six months when he came out, he was a graduate. He had obtained a degree in trickery. But no degree comes in handy when subjected to dandabedi.
This time he confessed everything that he knew even before Khan could deal the first blow. Khan was speechless. He could not imagine even in his wildest dreams that a boy could employ such an ingenious way for smuggling and that too without having ever gone to jail.
There was now no need for keeping Dagdu under custody, as Khan did not have any proof against him. He did not believe in wasting court time as well as his own by putting forth a case without any concrete proof. He also knew that by this time Iqbal would have arranged for a competent lawyer for Dagdu’s release.
There was still a ray of hope: If he raided the ship at this very moment, he could seize a large consignment of watches, arrest the captain, detain the ship worth millions of rupees and thus bring its business to a standstill. Instilling fear was essential to curb trafficking. The owners of the ships would think twice before employing as captains those who had links with the underworld.
Khan, accompanied by seven officers of the Madras customs, immediately left in two cars. He thought on the way – The doctor who understands the disease must also know its cure. The man who makes the blueprint of crime must also know the trick to slip away. Iqbal was one of them.
He carefully considered all aspects whenever he made any plan. He would plug all the loopholes and keep ready an appropriate escape route as well. He would implement a plan only after making it foolproof. This was why he was able to give sleepless nights to officials of the police and the customs department. He emerged victorious in the game of cat and mouse even today.
By the time Khan’s team arrived on the ship, the contraband w
atches had been included in the captain’s manifest. The captain promptly presented the list to the customs officials. Khan realized this was the escape route and was within law. He felt dejected. On reaching the headquarters, it struck him – were the name and address of the Sri Lankan party, to which the watches were stated to belong, right or wrong?
The investigation into the matter, which took two days, revealed that there was no such firm by that name in Sri Lanka and there was no such building as was claimed to be the head office of the firm. But by this time the ship had already left India’s territorial waters. And Iqbal?
He had left Madras for Bombay in a truck carrying the contraband goods from the Andaman Island where the helicopter had landed. Dagdu was sitting by his side on the driver’s seat. He had driven the truck silently for three hours.
It was now Iqbal’s turn. He had been driving the truck without uttering a word. He knew that guilt must have been biting Dagdu. But he did not feel it proper to broach the subject. Finally, it was Dagdu who broke the silence.
“Boss! Are you annoyed with me?”
“Why?” he asked, pretending ignorance.
“Because I confessed.”
“Not at all!”
“Sure?”
Iqbal nodded. It was night. The truck was passing through a forest. Under the headlights, the road, the surrounding trees and bushes emerged, illuminated, and went past.
“Then, why are you silent?” Dagdu asked again, as he wasn’t yet convinced.
“It seems you have not listened to the radio.”
“What’s there to listen to except for the Binaca Geet Mala? Yes, sometimes I do listen to the Hawa Mahal programme,” he said. After a while, he added, “What have you heard?”
“The dollar and pound have crashed. The price of gold has shot up in the foreign market.”
That means a deadly blow to the enterprise. Smuggling can be profitable only when the prices of gold in the international market are low compared to the prices in India. Who would soil his hands in a business that does not have a large profit margin!
The future looked bleak.
“Now?”
“That only the big chief can tell.”
“What do you feel?”
“It’s futile to speculate. We might have to shut down the gold business for a few months. I’ll not be surprised if we are compelled to take sanyas for a year.”
Right now, Iqbal’s main worry was disposing of the bag of gold biscuits worth eighty lakh rupees hidden amid the coconut-laden truck. He had to jettison the entire consignment at whatever profit he could make on reaching Bombay tomorrow. He was even prepared to sell on a no-profit, no-loss basis.
My main worry at the time was to get out of the debt trap I had landed myself in after my first flop exhibition, and to prepare for a new one. All together, I had borrowed about five thousand rupees. This year, at least six thousand rupees were needed to hold my next show.
Following the ban on the import of art materials, the prices of colours and canvas had increased and the Indian companies manufacturing art materials had not yet come up to the international standard. The Indian colours were like dust and the canvas was worse than jute bags. And yet, I felt that my kismet was changing for the better.
Mrs. Neesa Bandookwalla, who had studied in art school with me, had a spacious apartment in which she had set aside a room for painting. One day, when I met her at the Jehangir Art Gallery, I told her about my predicament. “I’ve a large studio,” she confided gladly. “If you paint by my side, I’ll be inspired to work more.”
I thanked her.
The next day, I fetched all my belongings from the morgue of the Habib Hospital and placed them in her spacious apartment at Colaba.
As my major problem was solved, a new problem cropped up at home. The elders in my family - my mother, uncle, aunt and grandmother - conspired in my absence and decided to get me married as soon as possible.
The decision greatly pleased my mother, who no longer considered me a worthy fellow. The field of arts, (whether dance, music or painting) has not gained the respectability it deserves even today. My mother was no exception. She believed if a boy is pinned down with responsibility, his life will get back on track.
This is another wrong belief widely held by the elders and there is no solution to it in the world. I was helpless. I shuddered at the very thought of marriage. There was more than one reason for it.
The foremost was the liability it entails. When we fall into life’s ruts and crevices, we feel unfulfilled, unhappy. If I were to get married, I would have to be responsible for my wife. And, if by mistake she were to bear a child, I would have no option but to forget my dream and take up a job, even if the salary is only five hundred rupees. After all, I would be required to meet the household expenses. Many artists have wasted their lives making both ends meet.
Secondly, artists are moody by nature because they are deeply involved in their creative endeavour. No wife, even if she is highly educated, can tolerate it. After becoming a wife, a woman feels as if she has acquired real estate, not a husband, and is tempted to enforce her rights, leading to conflict.
Marrying Suraiyya was an altogether different proposition. There was near total absence of conflict. There was also no possibility of becoming a burden on each other because both of us belonged to the same profession and were of similar nature. Both understood each other’s feelings. Only a fortunate man gets such a woman. I was not.
I was determined not to get enmeshed in marriage. Whatever the temptation, by finding some or the other fault, I should reject it and that is exactly what I did when the first proposal came.
The girl was a schoolteacher. Her passport-size photograph was placed before me. The elders eagerly looked at my face. I sat quietly as if in deep thought.
My mother could not withstand my silence. “What’s there to think about?” she exclaimed. “We have seen the girl and she will look good by your side. Besides, she draws a salary of three hundred rupees a month. If you like, we can invite her home.”
“She looks alright,” I said softly. “But…”
“But what?”
I had seen the girl a couple of times passing through our lane. So, I asked knowingly, “One cannot make out her complexion from the photograph. How does she look?”
“She’s slightly dark, but definitely not ugly.”
At the end of this discussion, I was given seven days to decide, to which I readily agreed. I knew how to extend a week’s time to a fortnight and a fortnight to a month.
Iqbal did not know what lay in store for him. Two days after getting gold biscuits worth eighty lakh rupees from Madras, he met DK at his residence. “Have you sold the entire consignment?” was the first question.
Iqbal nodded.
“At what price?”
“We were able to recover our investment.”
DK had not expected even that.
Heaving a sigh of relief, he said, “We would have been in deep trouble had the eighty lakh been sunk.”
“How?” Iqbal could not help but ask.
“Our party from Dubai has come by the night flight. This time he has demanded part payment in cash.”
Dubai’s party was the sheikh who sent the gold. He used to come to Bombay once or twice a year to settle the accounts and would book three suites in the Taj Hotel. He occupied the central while the two adjoining ones remained vacant so that no one could move into them during his stay.
An alert man is always happy, was one of the Sheikh’s two favourite proverbs. The other one was – even the walls have ears.
Iqbal failed to understand why a few lakh rupees had become a matter of concern in a rolling business involving crores. He did not feel it proper to ask DK. After all, he was the big chief.
“Do you have any appointment now?” DK asked, without giving him time to think further.
He shook his head in the negative.
“Then let’s go and meet the sheikh.”
Both came out of the Marine Drive flat, drove to the Taj Hotel and went up by lift to the second floor. The plump sheikh was seated on a sofa, listening to Egypt’s popular singer Umme Laila’s song on a record player and eating chicken lollipops from a silver tray. Iqbal felt he looked like a logo for western gluttony and the starving east.
Seeing DK accompanied by Iqbal, he switched off the player. DK closed the door behind him and both of them quietly sat on the sofa across the sheikh.
Let me clarify a point – there is no ban on import or export of gold in Dubai. Sheikh was a bullion merchant. He did not cheat his government because he never violated his country’s laws.
The last four months’ accounts were to be settled. During these four months, gold worth seven crore had been smuggled into India and that too on word of mouth.
Neither there was a written contract between the two parties nor any document. Long distance calls played a major role in whatever was agreed to by both the parties. The phone calls lasted only a few seconds. In the conversation, the word peti meant a lakh rupees and khokha meant a crore rupees.
