Mumbai: One of the most dubious addresses in Mumbai, Dagdi Chawl, owned by the former mafia don-turned-politician, Arun Gulab Gawli, is all set to celebrate its 50th – and final – Navratri celebrations starting Sunday night.
Post-Navratri, the Dagdi Chawl complex comprising 10 ground-plus-three storied buildings with 375 tenants, will be evacuated in phases for the proposed mega-redevelopment project finalised here.
“We have tied up with a prominent builder, Living Stone Infra Pvt. Ltd, for the redevelopment project. After all the documentation and other formalities are completed, the entire Dagdi Chawl will be vacated and handed over for the revamp,” Vinayak Karawade, Chairman of the proposed Dagdi Chawl CHS, told IANS.
The 10 buildings, aged over a century now, are spread over one acre of land, and on the top floors in one of the buildings, Gawli and his family used to live a luxurious life.
There are around 375 tenants in the rooms measuring just 120 square feet each, housing over 1,000 souls, with many families having spent three generations in the chawls, from birth to death.
“After the redevelopment proposal kicks off, each family will get good flats measuring around 450-500 sq. feet, as per government policy. Once we complete all the formalities with the builder, the construction will start and thereafter ready for occupation in around three years,” Karawade said.
As per present plans, two identical towers of around 40 floors each, one housing the existing tenants and another swank one for open market sale, will come up in the Dagdi Chawl.
Owned by Gawli, 68 – currently serving a lifer for a murder since 2012 – Dagdi Chawl is one of the prime pieces of Mumbai real estate, near Byculla station and the Mumbai Zoo.
“We are optimistic that after Navratri and blessings of Goddess Durga, the entire redevelopment process will take off quickly and also be completed on time,” said the ex-don’s brother, Pradeep Gawli with a smile.
The Dagdi Chawl Navratra Utsav Mandal had launched the festival celebrations here in 1973, ostensibly inspired by Gawli, who is said to be a staunch devotee of ‘Aai Mauli’.
In fact, Gawli is likely to come here sometime this week on parole from Nagpur Central Jail to participate in the farewell Navratri event, as Dagdi Chawl may cease to exist in 2024.
However, Pradeep Gawli declined to comment on the ex-MLA’s jail ‘break’ plans, but confirmed that this will be the swansong Navratri festival at the famed Dagdi Chawl.
The shabby tenements complex has inspired a Marathi feature film by the same title in 2015, and a loose biopic on Arun Gawli, titled “Daddy” (2017) starring Arjun Rampal as the dreaded don and south Indian actress Aishwarya Rajesh as his wife, Zubeida nee Asha Gawli.
Arun Gawli, dubbed as a reluctant and fluky gangster catapulted into the underworld by sheer circumstances, once lorded over Mumbai in the 1980s and 1990s from this den.
On several visits to Dagdi Chawl, this correspondent was always accorded a courteous welcome by Gawli and his toughies – it was mandatory to address him as ‘Daddy’ in the premises, or there were several soft-to-stern reminders till it became a born-habit.
The den-folk practically idolised Gawli, and many youngsters considered him an ‘icon’, he had a few rooms on the upper floors, accessible by a private lift permitted only for his VIP visitors, select national or international journos, including this correspondent.
His room opened into a vast terrace of an entire building there, with a rubble of stones piled up as a symbolic Kailash Parbat, with a statue of Lord Shiva and Parvati at the top, and a River Ganga flowing down in a fountain to a lush green carpet, where there were tiny statues of Lord Krishna and his cows – ‘Gawli’ means a cowherd.
As Gawli warmed up to the conversation, there was a continuous supply of snacks and hot/cold beverages from invisible aides popping up at regular intervals.
Every couple of minutes, the Daddy don would absently offer his hand in a ‘De Taali’ gesture, and the visitor would clap it in sheer fear.
The Dagdi Chawl also served as the headquarters of Gawli’s political outfit, Akhil Bharatiya Sena (ABS) which catapulted him to the Maharashtra Legislature in 2004, his daughter Geeta is an ex-BMC Corporator, an uncle Hukumchand Yadav was a MLA in Madhya Pradesh, while his nephew is a senior Shiv Sena-UBT leader and ex-minister Sachin Ahir.
For nearly five decades, a permanentpolice posse was stationed outside the den which was allegedly out of bounds for even top cops, and believed to be a maze of secret rooms, tunnels, lookout spots, hidden weapons, plus sheltering a variety of goons, louts and lumpens, but nobody had the guts to verify it from their ‘Daddy’.
After the redevelopment process begins in early 2024, an unglamorous chapter of Mumbai’s underbelly and underworld will be erased from history and two glitzy towers shall rise from its rubble.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)
–IANS
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