It was September 8, 1995.
As the Frontier Mail (rechristened Golden Temple Mail Express in 1996) trundled along two platforms before stopping at Mumbai Central station, my anxiety grew. All kinds of negative thoughts overtook me.
With a racing heartbeat and shaking legs, I gathered my little luggage–a bag containing a few clothes and a carton of books and alighted from the train that I had boarded the previous day at Hazrat Nizamuddin in New Delhi.
It was around 5-00 am and Bombay was stirring at the daybreak. It was waking up from sleep.
But did or does the city ever sleep?.
After reaching the spacious waiting hall, I looked for a PCO. For the generation Z, PCOs or Public Call Offices were telephone booths or kiosks in the pre-mobile phone era from where calls were made by inserting one rupee coin.
You kept inserting coins if your call was long. I found a PCO at a tea shop that also sold snacks and biscuits I found there. I bought a packet of biscuits and a cup of tea. That was my breakfast on the day I landed in the city.
Fetching a notebook in which I had written some contacts in Mumbai– they were contacts provided by a friend as I did not know a soul in the city–I dialed a number at a hotel in Vile Parle. “Is Akasa Anjum there? I want to speak to him,” I said. “No, he is not here. The hotel is closed. And I do not know where he lives,” a voice on the other end said and hung up.
Akasa Anjum, I later found, was from Darbhanga and worked as a manager at a couple of restaurants in Mumbai before he moved to the Gulf and prospered there.
Unable to reach Anjum, I set out for Seven Bungalows, catching a train, a bus, and a rickshaw, to look for another contact. These contacts were provided by Tarique Siddiqui, two classes junior to me at the High School in rural Darbhanga where his father and my father taught.
Tarique and I lived in separate rented rooms in the middle-class locality called Julena near Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. Tarique would often drop into my room and I had taken a reference letter for his friend Imtiaz Bhai before I left Delhi. He had given a few more contacts.
At a multi-storied building in Seven Bungalows, I rang a bell at a flat but did not get any response. Then I rang the bell next door and a middle-aged woman opened the door. She told me that she had not seen the boys who lived in the flat next door for a week. Tarique had told me these boys were looking for a job in the Gulf. I realised perhaps they had got a job abroad and left.
By now it was around 11-00 am. I was hungry and thirsty. I asked for a glass of water which the kind lady immediately brought. Having watered my parched throat, I came down the tall building. Since the carton of books was heavy and I was not sure when I would find the right contact in the new, strange city, I wanted to keep the carton with a reliable person for a night.
The memories of the 1992 riots and 1993 blasts were fresh. People would not trust strangers easily. I told myself that requesting a rich person to keep my carton would not get a positive response. So, I approached a security guard who lived in a ramshackle shed at a construction site.
I told him and his wife about my predicament. I told them that I would take back my books the very next day. The poor watchman looked at his wife who winked. They kept the carton containing titles penned by the likes of Khushwant Singh, M J Akbar, Salman Rushdie, Shobhaa De, Milan Kundera, Neruda, and Naipaul.
A bit relieved, I set out for Mahim, the third address that Tarique had given. This was to the address of Imtiaz Bhai, also from Darbhanga. Someone had suggested, instead of taking the train, I take a bus because I was new in the city and did not know where to board and where to alight. So, on the very first day of my arrival in the Maximum City, I used both the local trains and its buses. These are the most common modes of public transport and are justifiably called Mumbai’s “lifelines.”
By the time the bus brought me to Mahim, it was around 2 pm. Tired, exhausted, and hungry, I reached a bag manufacturing unit whose owner knew Imtiaz and who had moved to Jogeshwari. The owner (I forget his name) made me sit at the bag unit and brought me lunch, which included chapatis, daal, and mutton korma. If the mutton was a bit oily and daal watery, I didn’t care.
In my teenage years, I heard a Hindi proverb from my father, a High School teacher: Bhook na jane baasi bhat, pyar na jane neechi zaat, neend na jane tooti khat (Hunger doesn’t care for stale rice, love doesn’t care for low caste and sleep doesn’t care for broken cot). So, I devoured the food and thanked the gentleman who had got it for me.
In the evening, one Abbas Bhai accompanied me to Jogeshwari East where Imtiaz shared a ramshackle room with Mumtaz, Anjum, Naushad, and a few others.
They all were Bihari bachelor boys working in different private firms. They welcomed me with open arms. Mumtaz Bhai, now a senior executive with an MNC in Bengaluru, worked at Badri Mahal in Fort, the headquarters of the Dawoodi Bohras’ spiritual head late Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin.
I didn’t know then that Syedna Burhanuddin and his son and successor Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin would one day bless me. I am among the few non-Bohras whom Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin has personally blessed multiple times—in Mumbai, Nairobi, Indore, and Surat.
Having been welcomed into the group and having found a nest, I began looking for a job. Meanwhile, within a month of my arrival, we moved to Mahim. It was a windowless room that eight of us shared. Naushad was a car mechanic and worked at a garage in Juhu. One Sharmaji, a journalist with a Filmi magazine in Hindi, would visit his garage. Naushad introduced me to Sharmaji who took me under his wing for a month before I worked with a film PRO.
I even interned with a Bollywood script writer briefly and soon found that finding a foothold in the film industry was like chasing a chimera. Times had changed. They no longer made success stories of Salim-Javed. Groupism was the order of the day.
Scriptwriter Miraq Mirza who is currently directing a film tried to help me, but he had his limitations. I realised making a script writer’s career was not my cup of tea.
I couldn’t have excelled at it as different camps had their writers and writers were no longer valued much. I found myself a misfit in an industry where chaplusi and chamchagiri reigned supreme. Where talent mattered less than “right connections.”
I couldn’t have returned to Delhi as I had already angered my father by not appearing in the Civil Services Exams. Since I had reached Bombay after burning bridges, I had to stay here. It was a do or die situation for me. I knew I had to perform or I would perish.
A man who has nothing to lose has everything to gain. I had come with just a few hundred rupees in my pocket and had not asked my father for money. I was a young bachelor with a burning desire to change my situation.
One day I saw an advertisement for a journalism course at K C College at Churchgate. I discussed with Mumtaz Bhai, by now my closest friend, who withdrew Rs 10,000 from my account which my elder brother had deposited in my account before leaving for a job in Saudi Arabia.
I had briefly worked with a tiny magazine in Delhi and realised Journalism was my ultimate calling. I joined the Diploma in Journalism course at K C College and began attending the classes.
Meanwhile, I had joined a small monthly magazine a transporter brought out from Chembur. So, for a year every morning, I took a bus from Mahim to Chembur. In the evening, I took a train from Chembur to Victoria Terminus (now CSMT) and from there walked to Churchgate to attend the journalism class at K C College before I took another train to Mahim. After a few months in the class one day our teacher, the late V Gangadhar, told me: “Do not waste your time here. Join a newspaper. You will learn more at the job that we teach you here.”
G T Balani was the principal of K C College. I requested him for a letter to the editor of The Asian Age, requesting him to allow me to intern with the paper. Aakar Patel was Asian Age’s Resident Editor in Mumbai. Young and dashing, Aakar was a no-nonsense guy.
He gave a cursory look at my CV and asked me to meet Kaniza Lokhandwala (now Kaniza Garari), the chief reporter, the very next day. Chubby-cheeked and chirpy, Kaniza was enthusiastic personified. She made me feel comfortable and gave assignments liberally.
We were a small team. M J Akbar, the paper’s founding editor, would visit Sayani House, our office at Prabhadevi, in an expensive, chauffeur-driven car. He used to wear style on his sleeves and wrote with rare command over the subject he dealt with. I read virtually every word he wrote those days, including his many books which put him in a different league.
From Asian Age, I moved to Sunday Observer where I stayed briefly before it folded up. The Indian Express became my next destination. It gave me immense opportunities to grow as a writer and journalist. And then the Times group beckoned me. Joining the Times of India was like a dream come true. I have been here since April 2005.
It has been 29 years since I landed in this city. The city has enriched me in many ways. It is the place I call my home. It is where my three beautiful daughters were born and grew up.
One doesn’t know what is in the future’s womb. The nearly three decades of stay here have seen ups and downs. Much water has flown down the city bridge. I have moved to Mira Road, a far-off western suburb. Bombay is now Mumbai.
I am now on the other side of 50. I was in my mid-twenties when I came to this city where dreams do come true if you have resilience and perseverance. Meanwhile, I wrote a book too.
For me, it seems only yesterday when I reached the city onboard Frontier Mail.
Life has taught me many lessons, including the truth in the saying, ‘Never say die’ and ‘Tomorrow never dies.’
The column has been taken with permission from Mohammed Wajihuddin’s reservoir of writings that are available on the Net.
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