Dawood Ibrahim is frightened. He’s running for cover, both from the police, who are hot on his trail, and from his police constable father, Ibrahim Kaskar, who is out to thrash him for landing a local goon in the ICU in a street fight. “I don’t want to be beaten up by him [father]. Please help me,” begs the man who is today one of the world’s most dreaded gangsters.
It’s an incredulous image and might even be laughable if the incident, which took place in 1980 when Dawood was a struggling gangster, weren’t true. The person Dawood, the underdog, had run to for help was a 70-something woman called Jenabai. She was the same person Mumbai’s mafia leader Haji Mastan turned to when he hit a dead end in his life. She was the same woman who conceived and executed a landmark peace pact in the history of Mumbai’s underworld which brought together sworn enemies – the Ibrahim brothers (Dawood and Sabir) and the Pathan gangsters led by Karim Lala – to join hands with Haji Mastan to form a force, which, she declared, “even the government will stand no chance against”. And she was the one who, years after her death, led S Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges, the authors of Mafia Queens of Mumbai, into the murky, yet fascinating, world of the “Bais”, the “Mummies” and the “Nanis” — women who were way more lethal, conniving and shrewd than these harmless labels suggest.
The book begins with a chance meeting with a man at the grave of Haji Mastan at Bada Qabrastan, where the “raja aur rani” (kings and queens) who once ruled Mumbai’s underworld have found a final resting place, literally “underworld”, as the man puts it. What follow are stories of 13 women who form, or formed, crucial cogs in the closely-guarded world of Mumbai crime. They are women who handled the mafia and the police with equal ease. Their clout extended to politics. They could play on their vulnerability and at the same time act with calculated precision to get out of a tight spot. They could hold out in situations under which other members of their gang – the men – crumbled.
Often stereotyped by Bollywood – remember the 5 foot 6 inch “Mona Darling” (Bindu), the not-so-bright companion of gangster Teja (Ajit)? – these gutsy women haven’t quite been given their due. Until now.
Besides Jenabai, there is Gangubai, “the matriarch of Kamathipura”, a sex worker who became one of the biggest champions of the rights of brothel-dwellers. And there’s Ashraf, a once timid woman who becomes such a big threat to Dawood after she decides to avenge her husband’s death with his that the gangster has to get her brutally killed as a warning to others plotting against him. Then there is the Tamilian Mahalaxmi Papamani, “the wealthiest drug baroness in Mumbai” who takes to the lucrative, though illegal, business to feed her children but is nothing like a helpless mother. Her management acumen and farsightedness – she has in-house advisors who know the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act inside out – are startling.
There are also the others, the wives of dons, who effortlessly slip out of the role of homemakers to help their husbands’ bloody businesses to thrive. And those like Neeta Naik who nudged her electrical engineer, London-educated husband, Ashwin Naik, into the underworld. Ashwani Naik became the “first educationally-qualified gangster in Mumbai’s mafia circuit” and Neeta Naik went on to win the Bombay Municipal Corporation elections.
The authors’ conviction is not misplaced when they say:
“Question: Where can an educated, crafty and ambitious woman with dreams of possessing a fortune of billions go if she ends up marrying a small-time thug with no identity of his own?
Answer: Anywhere she wants.”
The only person who somehow doesn’t seem to fit in the book is Monica Bedi, who remains nothing more than a mobster’s moll, and a reluctant one at that.
A good deal of effort has evidently gone into putting together the book, which makes for an effortless and engaging read. Non-fiction/crime is not an easy genre to handle. The chances of getting carried away, the temptation to dramatise and the risks of going wrong with facts are high — especially if the stories involve big names and claims. Like Jenabai, it is said, tied a rakhi to former Prime Minister Morarji Desai and was respected by former Maharashtra Chief Minister Yashwantrao Chavan. And Gangubai, an undocumented, oral story goes, threw a proposal at Nehru when he asked her why she had got into the brothel business when she could have got a good job or a husband.
Interwoven with their stories is the story of Mumbai, and the state of the country. As the authors point out about CBI sleuths keeping the mission to get Monica Bedi and Abu Salem from Lisbon to Mumbai strictly confidential, “When it came to secrets, the Parliament was the leakiest ship in the country.”
Crime journalist Zaidi (also the author of Black Friday) and Borges put a disclaimer right in the beginning when they say that Mafia Queens of Mumbai is “in no way an attempt to glorify them”. Instead, it’s an attempt to understand “the psyche of women criminals”. That has to be granted. The book is mostly reportage, where the authors have sometimes landed themselves in tricky situations, though some literary licence has been taken. And despite the question mark over whether or not to empathise with these women who made the underworld their choice, it is difficult not to feel for them.
MAFIA QUEENS OF MUMBAI: STORIES OF WOMEN FROM THE GANGLANDS
S Hussain Zaidi with Jane Borges
Tranquebar
250 pages; Rs 250
