Blasts hit business, fail to rip bond

We are standing at a sweet shop on Bapu Khote street, the so-called ‘line of control’ that separates Hindu Booleshwar from the Muslim Ghogari mohalla. Syed Zaffar, 53, my guide for the evening, points to the Hamidia masjid nearby. “The karamchari who sweeps the entrance every morning sometimes calls me and shows me four-five empty beer bottles thrown by drunken miscreants from “the other side”, he says. “I ask him to keep quiet about it, and tell him I’ll myself wipe the spot where he found the bottles four-five times more. Otherwise, before you know it, there’ll be 400 bottles flying the other way.”

Pydhonie, off Mohammad Ali road, is a bustling business hub, home to wholesale markets of metals, imitation jewellery, gold and ayurvedic products. It is completely a Muslim neighbourhood. But the majority of traders and shop owners are Hindu. “Yet, during the 1992-93 riots, not a single shop was damaged. We protected these shops, and nobody took ‘protection money’ from the businessmen, because, at the end of the day, humanity is what counts, and business, not religion,” says Zaffar, who has been a witness to many a conflagration in this area, with the earliest dating back to 1962.

Obviously, he has learnt his lessons well. He is a founding member of the Muslim Council Trust (MCT), a body that is at the forefront of promoting inter-community amity. “We are taking no chances this time around. When we heard about the blasts yesterday, we had volunteers ready at the JJ Hospital to help the injured coming in, for blood donation, and to ensure people don’t panic.”

Muslim community leaders are as united as they are over-anxious in their condemnation the 7/11 blasts. “What the hell do you mean by ‘Islamic terrorism’?” bristles Shabbir Soonji, trustee of Habib hospital and a widely respected spokesperson of the Khoja Shia Ishna Jamaat. “Terrorism doesn’t come religion-coded. It is just terrorism. Why drag religion into it?”

Ebrahim Tai, chairperson of the MCT, echoes his sentiments. “Muslims, too, died in the blasts, didn’t they? We are as stunned and bewildered by this attack as any Hindu or Christian is. I hope the culprits, whoever they are, and whatever religion they might belong to, are brought to book by the police,” he says.

Sarfaraz Shamsi, who runs a waster paper business, believes that somebody must have cast an evil eye on the city and the state. “First you had the flooding, then the Bhiwandi incident, then the Shiv Sena statue desecration and the rioting that followed, and now the blasts. In the end, it’s the common man and small businesses that suffer,” he says.

Rahim, an ice cream seller, is busy gossiping with a friend about a relative’s daughter who has run away with a cabbie, when I walk in. Normally, he doesn’t have time to gossip at six in the evening. Today, he is bored. “Business is down today,” he says. “People just want to be careful. But things will get back to normal soon,” he says optimistically.  Banian street, unlike what you might expect, is not a street selling banians.

Patel Traders, Ramesh Embroidery, SK Angoothiwala Jewellers - these are the signboards you see on the shops in this lane off Mohammad Ali road. Zaffar seems to know every Hindu shop owner in the area. “Our primary allegiance is to insaaniyat, not to a religion or to a community,” he says. “That is something these blasts will not change. At least on Mohammad Ali road.”