Nirav Modi: The LoU Guru

While the country was smitten by the pre-Valentine wink of Priya Prakash Varrier, a débutante Malayalam actress, her 15 minutes of fame and court cases in tow, a Diamantaire (honestly I was hearing the term for the first time) did the same at India's banking system and law enforcement machinery, whose snores were quite deafening.

Nirav Modi, hitherto known only to uber rich diamond jewellery buyers, has now become a household name and hot topic at dinner table discussions and esoteric terms like LoU, Swift code becoming more commonplace.

His uncle Mehul Choksi was not well known but his Gitanjali Diamonds and Gili were a regular fixture at newspaper ads and advertisement hoardings dotting the cities.

The TDS weary, Aadhaar tethered middle class were left gawking when the king size life of Nirav Modi unfolded on their LED TV screens. The repeated footage of this baby-faced man in the company of gorgeous women dripping in diamonds wowed many hearts.

The man planned his flight well in advance and cocked a snook at the Indian law enforcement agencies. It would have been business as usual had the erring Punjab National Bank official not superannuated or his successor had agreed to play ball with them.

And once India's second largest public sector bank dropped the bombshell, TV news channels had to break out of their self imposed cocoon of playing lapdog and guard dog to the government of the day. These channels and their social media cells buckled up their armour with hashtags containing words such as 'loot', 'jewel thief' and the like, and got down to the wild goose chase with each channel claiming 'exclusives' of their reporters having spotted them at Hong Kong, New York and other locations.

All of them evoked just a long languid yawns as they hardly looked convincing. It was like Inspector Jacques Clouseau trying hard to look as effective as Sherlock Holmes. A while later it came to light that many well known media houses had refused to pursue allegations against Modi and Choksi, despite many red flags raised by whistle blowers.

Now the uncle-nephew duo has joined the growing illustrious group of elusive scoff laws, who are well ensconced at various foreign shores. Ironically some of them are reportedly in England, the home of our old colonisers East India Company. 

Remembering 1993 Bombay Serial Blasts

March 12, 1993: It was just another Friday. But as the Churchgate bound local reached the terminus around 6 pm, there were only a handful people on the platform. Normally when a train enters the Churchgate station during evening peak hours the platforms will be packed with people, easily numbering thousands, waiting to pounce on it.

Those inside the incoming train follow an unwritten code of either sitting tight on their seats or huddle on the side of the doors to brace for a stampede from incoming passengers. Even before the train comes to a complete halt the intrepid and nimble footed ones on the platform perform some dare devil jumps on to the train and make a dash for a seat.

Once the train stops there is a flood of commuters darting towards empty seats and comfortable standing positions on the aisle, with some ending up with broken spectacles or bruised knees. After the commotion tapers off, those wanting to alight at Churchgate gradually get up and wade through the crowd towards the door.

However on this day the train passengers were spared of this drill of ducking kamikaze assaults. But as I alighted the train, the eerily empty look of a normally bustling station was not very welcoming. A thought crossed the back of my mind "Has another communal riot started".

The city had already gone through two waves of bloodletting after the three domes of Babri Masjid came down on December 6, 1992. As I reached the exit subway, I asked a cop whether there is any problem in the city, why there are so few people in the station.

He said a bomb has gone off and all offices have closed down. People left for their homes in the afternoon itself. 

I just couldn't get it and began to wonder how could one bomb empty up the whole of city's central business district.

Just then I came across a pavement newspaper seller and bought an eveninger Newsday, which is currently defunct. It was part of the Mid-Day stable, but used to hit the stands only by 5 pm, whereas other tabloids get printed and sold in the afternoon.

For the paper it was perhaps a big day and it had reported the blasts with a banner headline of bombs going off at various parts of the city, something that afternoon papers had missed. It was the biggest ever terror attack prior to 9/11. The 24/7 news channels and their shrill news hour debates, social media were still many years away in India.

As I went to the Air-India building side, where one of the bombs went off, the road was quite literally carpeted with glass pieces, as the glass panes in nearby buildings too had suffered damage. There were patches of blood here and there and the road was cordoned off.

Normally while going to that part of Nariman Point I used to admire and gawk at those high end imported cars and SUVs parked on the premises of these high-rise buildings. Remember those days the good old Ambassador was still ruling Indian roads. All these high-end cars parked in an around Air-India building were reduced to charred remains with their bonnets wide open and hoods blown off. Many of these cars remained there for months before they were cleared off.

Those were pre-cell phone days and telecommunication was a government monopoly. A landline telephone was a prized
possession one acquired after long waits, numerous visits to telecom office and greasing many palms.

Owning an STD booth was considered a major start up venture those days and many amassed a fortune out of it. Each booth used to have long queues, especially after 9 pm when the call charges were the lowest.

However on that particular day by 9 pm the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, which caters to Bombay area, (it had not become Mumbai then) crashed unable to bear the load, as everyone was calling their near and dear ones to talk about the catastrophe that had wrecked Bombay. Those days fibre optic cables was something you read about only in science journals, while the good old copper wires were the ground reality.

The subsequent investigation revealed that the explosives were shipped in from Pakistan through sea route and docked somewhere in the neighbouring district of Raigarh. Much larger quantities of explosives were stored there than that was used on March 12, as they were planning more such serial blasts.

Nearly 15 years later the same route was used by terrorists to carry out the infamous 26/11 terror attack on prime locations of Mumbai's central business district, thereby pointing to the fact that no lessons were learnt. 

The two waves of communal violence I mentioned earlier brought in communal fissures which later would get solidified and internalised among its people. Prior to that the city had never witnessed any widespread communal riot and probably the closest it came to was in distant Bhiwandi in 1984.

Stickers saying 'garv se kaho hum Hindu hain' (be proud to say we are Hindus) started appearing on the doors of apartments and at shop cash counters. So were red tikkas on many foreheads.

While travelling in trains the bhajan sessions became almost a regular feature, with voices more shrill than pious. Among commuters I would often overhear people derisively use the term 'landya' (for Muslims) and their association with 'do number ka dhanda' (illegal businesses).

All visible symbols and appearances of being an orthodox Muslim, such as fez cap, goatee and other sartorial peculiarities became very scarce in public places. Even non-Muslims who were sporting beards and even French beards felt that a discreet clean shaven chin was better part of valour.

Probably sensing this deep communal schism, a Parsi tea stall owner at railway station (I think it was Dadar) had put up a board, 'Yeh ek Parsi bava ki dukaan hai, Jai Maharashtra' (This shop is owned by a Parsi). During the riots there were cases of Parsis being mistaken for Muslims and getting targeted by Shiv Sena storm troopers.

While the embers of the communal violence and blasts died down, the process of ghettoisation got under way. Muslims who were feeling insecure in Hindu majority areas began to move out and vice versa. Mumbra a marshy land close to Thane creek became the new refuge of riot affected Muslims and the area mushroomed into a concrete jungle with little regard to planning and amenities.

Many housing societies in the city started embracing vegetarians only credo and it became more prevalent in upscale areas such as Napean Sea Road, inhabited by diamond traders of Gujarati-Jain origins and Marwari businessmen.

After they tasted success in turning their respective housing societies into veg only enclaves, it only whetted their zeal for food fascism. Thanks to the financial clout they enjoyed and the hold they had in the corridors of power they succeeded in shuttering non-vegetarian restaurants and meat shops in the entire neighbourhood.

The other day I heard a writer observe that Chowpatty beach is probably the only coastline in the world where you won't be able to savour fish-related dishes. The unravelling of much-touted cosmopolitan Bombay has surely come a long way.