Sufi – The Invisible Man of the Underworld
Aabid Surti
An extremely enjoyable novel I
read this year was Sufi – The Invisible Man of the Underworld. The author, 84-year-old Aabid
Surti, is not just a writer; he’s also the legendary creator of (among others) the popular comic book character, Bahadur, and a dedicated water conservationist. At the Mumbai launch of the book, filmmaker Sriram Raghavan (of Johnny Gaddar and Andhadhun fame) said that Sufi, for him, was
“Shantaram meets Charles Dickens meets Once Upon A Time in Mumbai.”
The novel is a thrilling tale of two friends, Iqbal aka Sufi and Aabid, who grow up, desperately poor, in the dingy lanes of Dongri, go their separate ways and then meet 30 years later. Every Thursday, Aabid drops in at Sufi’s flat, they sit on easy chairs, and talk about their lives. Aabid became an artist, cartoonist and writer, but the cerebral, soft-spoken Sufi ended up as one of the city’s biggest smugglers. His story unfolds against the Mumbai of the 1960s and 1970s, when smuggling was at its peak. Surti gives a detailed, dramatic account of this world, from the modus operandi of smugglers (yes, contraband goods were unloaded from one ship to another in mid-sea at night) to its convoluted power hierarchies (Sufi’s ultimate boss turns out to be a nondescript Gujarati seth in a kurta pyjama). Real characters like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Vardha bhai flit in and out of the narrative, as do Mumbai landmarks such as Ghadiyal Godi, Sion-Koliwada and Do Tanki.
I hope Sriram Raghavan is already planning a film on the book.