My Encounter with Mini India in Mumbai Customs by Hemesh Chhabra

 The author has spent almost four decades in the field of Customs and Central Excise/GST. Having spent a majority of his career in Mumbai Customs, he has enumerated his experience with Mumbai Customs in this memoir. 

 

The book starts with the author's joining in Mumbai Customs as a Preventive Officer in the March of 1986 and goes through his training followed by the different postings assigned to him by the department. It concludes with the author being promoted to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Central Excise and being posted to Vadodara in October, 2014. In between there are facts, emotions, insights, incidents and opinions shared by the author which make for great reading. There is culture shock along with a feeling of awe having experienced mini India as mentioned in the title. 

He has worked during and after the Liberalisation Reforms of 1991 and the 1993 Mumbai Bombings. Round-the-clock work in the customs department ensured that he was off duty during the Mumbai Floods of July 26, 2005. He has gone through a big change in customs work in Mumbai and India and has separately brought forward the same in informative sections on colleagues and changes seen in Bombay Customs of 1986 to Mumbai Customs of 2014 after the conclusion on account of posting to Vadodara.

 

Some excerpts are being reproduced below.

Working at Sasoon Dock

To work in Sassoon Dock was nearly an ordeal for me. I was a Jain, a strict Vegetarian and in Sassoon Dock everywhere there was a stink of fish. There were heaps of various kind of fish which were to be auctioned/sold. On wharf and nearby approach roads, there was always slippery water dripped from the moving tempos & hand carts, and herds of fisherman who did not take bath for months and thus emitting a bad odor all the time. For hours I had to deal with them, enquire about their catch and other relevant information to record their return and issue further "Shera" (permission) for fifteen days/one month. After working fifteen hours (6pm to 9am) in the night there, my clothes/uniform absorbed that fishing smell. So, whenever I returned in public transport my co-passengers looked at me with detest. Even my newly married wife used to open the door while gripping nose and directed me to Bathroom and instructed me to put the uniform and my mufti - dress in the bucket full of detergent and come out only after taking an hour-long shower.

Mumbai Airport - Mini India

Airport was an extension of my encounter with Mini India in the Mumbai Customs. Coming across to the passengers of all parts of India, and interacting with them I understood their culture, their languages, their names, surnames, color & creed etc. I found that by just knowing the surname one can almost get to know the state of the person, For example, Bannerji, Chatterjee, Bandyopadhyay, Sen, Sarkar etc., were invariably from Bengal, Jha, Sinha, were from Bihar, Patra, Mahapatra, Sahoo, Dash, Mohanty, Swain were from Orissa, Meena from Rajasthan, Patel, Parmar from Gujrat. Most of the male Gujrati were having BHAI and female had BEN in their names. Similarly Punjabi ladies had "Kaur" in their name. I noticed that surnames were suffixed with 'kar' in Maharashtians (like Tendul"kar"). I also came to know that Hindu names were suffixed with Cristian Surnames in Karnataka and Konkan Area (For Example Rajiv D‚Souza), surname ending with ...yam (like Subramaniam, Chidambaram) were from Tamilnadu whereas the surname ending with ..yan (for example Rajayyan, Rajendran) were from Kerala. Likewise Reddys were from Andhra and a south Indian "Anna" was akin to a "Bhaiyya" of North India. Of course, this gave only a broad idea and there could be exceptions.

Four days of Television (or duty?) - when work becomes fun

In one of the cases where the unaccompanied Baggage was being examined by a senior PO, more than 1400 video Cassettes were found in the personal effects of the transferee. Since I was juniot, I was assigned to watch the contents of the Video Cassettes. To ensure that it did not have any objectionable contents, like blue film or anything concerning threat to safety and economy of India. So, a VCP (Video Cassette Player) was arranged in the MMTC Strong Room, where a 21" inches Color TV was available and where POs were deputed to keep an account of precious and semi-precious cargos' import export. For four days I just enjoyed those Video cassettes containing many south Indian Regional Films, religious discourses, health tips etc. and nothing objectional was noticed by me. As an ex-Bank employee, it was really enjoyable for me, since in Bank all the time I had dealt only with the figures while writing the Day Book. As a junior PO It was a joy to watch the films as doing official duty.

During the 1993 Mumbai Bombings

In R & I (Rummaging and Intelligence), after adjudication Cell I was posted in DIU (Dock Intelligence Unit) for a small period. In DIU there were 10-12 Officers to gather information and make cases in Docks Area. We were assigned night patrol duties also. It was in this period, to be precise on 12-03-1993, that Serial Bomb Blasts in Mumbai took place. I was on day duty and getting the news of Bomb Blasts every now and then like a cricket score. "Ab Blast kakan hua."  "ab kitni casualty ho gayi?" .. etc…

Talking about an esteemed superior

While doing one night duty I received a phone call from Arora Sahab (Additional Collector Laxman Das Arora) to accompany him up to Santacruz Airport, as he was leaving for Allahabad on transfer.... At Santacruz Airport he talked about intelligence work, cultivation of informers, my experience & working in R & I and what not, while standing and sipping coffee at the Tea-coffee shop counter. It was my last meeting with the high-profile Customs’ Additional Collector. After few months, might be due to the alleged enmity, while working with Mumbai Customs, germinated between him and the dreaded smugglers, on 24 March 1993 he was assassinated in Allahabad.

Airport after the Liberalisation Reforms of 1991

In 1998, I was again posted at Airport And a fresh cycle of interaction with the passengers pan India and from all the five continents started. in my second Airport postings, I met with the same duty responsibilities which I have mentioned in my earlier Airport Posting, though I found lot of changes in the procedure of customs clearance, which was the after effect of the opening up of the Indian economy led by Shri Man Mohan Singhji through his 1991 landmark Budget, influenced by the worldwide policies of "Glasnost & Perestroika". The import of Gold was allowed on payment of duty in foreign currency on completing certain conditions. Free Allowance which was earlier mere 1250 was raised to Rs. 12000/- per passenger. The overall effect of the less stringent customs rules was that less crowd in arrival Halls and fast clearance of incoming air passengers. Oral declaration of the baggage given by the passengers were accepted in normal course, thus creating a faith on each other i.e., between customs law enforcing officer and the passengers.

Air Intelligence Unit
 

During my tenure in AIU, we made many cases and noticed novel Modus Operandi to smuggle gold and drugs. We found out that crude Gold in the wired form could be conceal in the specially made grooves of a trolley bag or suitcase, Crude gold could be conceal in electric motors of Mixer-grinders, gold biscuit could be concealed in the nappy of a toddler in hand, it could be concealed in children toys, concealment of gold after wrapping with carbon papers, it could be brought on person, Gold could be handed over to the Airlines Staff for taking out of the Airport, Gold could be left in the Aircraft, to be collected later by cleaning staff of the airlines, gold biscuits could be handed over to tainted immigration officers in the Cigarette packet while getting immigration clearance, Gold could be smuggled with the connivance of hand-in-glove Customs Officers, uniformed as well as AIU Officers. Similarly Foreign Currency could be exported illegally concealed in clothes, on person, in vegetables, in Mangoes after removing pulp & Seed and then stuffing FC wrapped in cello Tape etc. Similarly, Drug could be concealed in the False Bottoms of Suitcases, in the guise of medicines, in the food containers, in the hard cover page of a book, in the hollow rods of trolley bags etc. I must say that smugglers were very innovative in evolving methods for smuggling activities. In this connection once I was told by an accused of gold smuggling that in Dubai there are jewellery shops which could supply the crude gold in any form/in any shape as per the order of anyone and that Gold Smuggling was in total control of notorious gangster Dawood Ibrahim. As I mentioned in the narrative of my first Airport Posting, still the Gold was occasionally smuggled in eaten pieces by unemployed youths, called carrier, on the payment of some money.

Initiative in the line of duty

 After completion of my Nhava Sheva tenure, I was posted in SIIB- Export (Special Investigation and Intelligence Branch - Export). Here there was lot of file work. I had to go through the old cases files, did follow-up actions wherever needed. On going through the old cases, I came to know that in one case, even the extended period of five years under the section 28 of Customs Act-62 (applicable in the cases of suppression of facts), was going to be over within three weeks. I immediately brought the fact into the notice of my the then Deputy Commissioner who instructed me to prepare the Show Cause Notice as soon as possible. Accordingly, I worked on the SC even in the late nights, all seven days, forgetting any holiday and thus was able to complete a flawless draft SCN well before one week of the dead line of issuing the SC. It was presented before the then Commissioner, Export. She went through it thoroughly and appreciated my effort of completing the flawless draft SCN of demanding customs Duty of more than 74 lacs, that too within a short time.

 

Anglo Indian officers of Mumbai Customs

I joined "Our Mumbai Customs" in 1986, it meant that the Customs Act, 1962 had been enforced just 24 years before that and the many officers recruited after the implementation of CA -62 were on the verge of retirement (That time retirement Age was 58 years) So I had the opportunity to be guided by those experienced officers. Among those was the last and old lot of Anglo-Indian Officers, who were recruited through Employment Exchange. Their names were enough to scare a junior novice officer like me ... Kingsford, Providence, Hancock, Julian, D’Mellow, to name some of them as I had not come across many Anglo-Indian persons at my native place. Today I may say that they might not be knowing legalese minutiae of the Customs Act, except Chapter XIII, but they knew very well how to command the respect from the public and juniors.

Some changes in the department between 1986 and 2014

When I joined Mumbai Customs, Mumbai Docks had Nine gates (Detailed in my Floating Posting Above) for the movement of Import Export cargo and "Chakris" for pedestrians. These gates were manned round the clock and around 54-55 Pos were posted in floating to man these gates. Gradually the number of gates were reduced due to their less requirement because the containerised cargo movement was picking up rapidly. The quantum of Import Export cargo had increased manifold, for which these gates were found incompatible and as such the Docks were reshaped. There were Huge-huge warehouse Sheds in the Docks and in the vicinity to keep Breakbulk Cargo for safe custody. After my joining in 1986, since the mode of transportation of import export cargo from breakbulk was rapidly changing to containerized cargo in 20' and 40' containers. So, there was a rapid decrease in the utilization of warehouse sheds. I witnessed slowly- slowly sheds were disappearing and the movement of Container Trailers increasing in the docks and on roads. The ratio between breakbulk cargo and containerized cargo was 8:2 which now has been changed to 1: 9.

On corruption in Customs

Customs Department is wrongly believed to be a corrupt department in general and Mumbai Customs in particular. But Corruption is individual's choice and it cannot be associated with any particular government establishment as a whole. Every Government Servant is fallible to corruption. Corruption is present in every Government department with a difference of degree. Corruption is built-in human character by nature. It runs in the veins and hence it infects everyone, lesser or more. In my early days in Mumbai customs my senior officers would often tell me .."Don't run after money and money will come to you, if it is there in your destiny. Bhagya mein Paisa hai to aayega hi aur Bhagya mein nahi hai to aakar bhi chala jayega,"), I remembered their "Mantra" throughout my service-career and today I can proudly boast that because of this "Mantra", I had peace of mind and could complete my entire service career without any blot or blame of corruption.

An incident regarding escorting a helicopter belonging to a German adventurer from JNPT Nhava Sheva to Mumbai Airport and the clearance of the same from customs, immigration and air traffic control along with the numerous hurdles in the way was really interesting. Being long it cannot be reproduced fully here. Similarly, an incident regarding arranging disbursal of bills of private transporter from New Delhi showed urgency. The incident also had  non payment of air fare to the author since a non-Air India flight had to be boarded in emergency. All in all, this was a very interesting and refreshing book. I would love to read it again.

Assault on Lake Casitas By Brad Alan Lewis

This is the story of how a rower won an Olympic Gold Medal in the 1984 Olympics. Seeing the hard work, disappointment, politics and the continuous focus on winning was something else. Here are some excerpts:

1. Fainting from exhaustion at the finish line....

The driving effort is carefully quantified in the psyche of every practicing oarsman: half-power is like walking up a flight of stairs; three-quarter power is the same as a steady jog up those stairs; full-power is the equivalent of running to the top of Mt. Whitney. Then comes race-power. This is a special category, reserved for the ultimate in physical expression. At the completion of the final stroke of a close race, an oarsman should collapse over his oars, having spent every possible ounce of energy. Fainting from exhaustion at the finish line, although rarely seen, is greatly respected among competitors.

2.  A special place in Hell is reserved for those athletes....

“1988 Olympics.” A more virulent curse did not exist in my vocabulary. Simply put, I did not want to train another four years. Instead, I wanted to go backpacking, rent my own apartment, write a book, see the world, climb Mt. Everest, stay up late and watch David Letterman, start a new life. Start a real life. I was tired of constantly being tired, of feeling on the verge of getting ill, the usual physical state of being for any elite athlete. I wanted, needed, demanded my freedom. But even in my sorry state of mind, I knew I couldn’t quit the fight without having solved this frustrating puzzle. To simply pack it in, to beg off, to go home and spend the rest of my life wondering why I had lost to Biggy on the last stroke, would be a lifelong torture. A special place in Hell is reserved for those athletes, in any sport, who lose in the last second of the race. I preferred not to join them. If my lower back and sanity were to remain intact, I had to concentrate my efforts on the only remaining alternative—Coach Harry’s Camp.

3.  I only cared about preparing to be the best rower...

When compared to the ordinary concept of winning and losing, “battling for my life” required a whole different level of consciousness. Mike’s words reassured me that I was right to be obsessed, to train as if nothing else mattered. I had no interest in becoming rich and famous, or entering medical school, or any future beyond rowing. I only cared about preparing to be the best rower, with every faculty and power available to me.

4.  An absurdly simple sport

Rowing is an absurdly simple sport. I can easily guide a beginner through the right technical motions. The difficulty arises when that beginner attempts to repeat those motions on a bumpy racecourse, at 40 strokes a minutes, with his heart rate zooming and an opponent charging up his stern. ...

5.  Good place to die, beautiful place...

Last 500. We move past the Yugoslavs into second place, behind Belgium. To hell with the silver medal. I don’t want the silver. I want my torture to end. Then I can be free. I will do it here, now, in this moment, with these strokes, with the strength of my body, with the strength of my soul. Dig in. The pain is so bad that I can’t even allow myself to acknowledge it. Good place to die, beautiful place. Make the puddles sing, torque the blades, feel the grips like extensions of our arms, feel the connection between our souls and the speed of the boat. Forget the opponents, only our speed is important. Ignore the outside world, feel the boat respond, the effort is instantly rewarded. Humility, yes. Racing as though our lives depend on it, yes. Now take responsibility for the outcome.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

I was expecting a boring normal finance book: invest every paycheck, save as much as you can, early retirement etc. After all that is what finance books contain. 

However, this is a book that deserves judging by its title - it really talks about the psychology of money. Let the author convince you:

 The premise of this book is that doing well with money has a little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

"Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" by Joshua Foer is the first book I have read in a loooooong time. Being a parent definitely eats in to your free time.

The premise of this book is the author's journey into winning a national memory championship using the method of loci, also called the memory palace technique.

I cannot vouch for this method. I haven't tried it and I am too lazy!

Here are some excerpts:

 1. Parts of the brain: a great analogy

For all the advances that have been made in recent decades, it’s still the case that no one has ever actually seen a memory in the human brain. Though advances in imaging technology have allowed neuroscientists to grasp much of the basic topography of the brain, and studies of neurons have given us a clear picture of what happens inside and between individual brain cells, science is still relatively clueless about what transpires in the circuitry of the cortex, the wrinkled outer layer of the brain that allows us to plan into the future, do long division, and write poetry, and which holds most of our memories. In our knowledge of the brain, we're like someone looking down on a city from a high-flying airplane. We can tell where the industrial and residential neighborhoods are, where the airport is, the locations of the main traffic arteries, where the suburbs begin. We also know, in great detail, what the individual units of the city (citizens, and in this metaphor, neurons) look like. But, for the most part, we can't say where people go when they get hungry, how people make a living, or what any given person's commute looks like. The brain makes sense up close and from far away. It’s the in-between—the stuff of thought and memory, the language of the brain—that remains a profound mystery.

2. We have always heard about the perception of time with age - time starts flying faster with age. Here's a possible explanation.

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That's why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

3. Why its easier to remember images than facts

..our memories aren't perfectly adapted for our contemporary information age. The tasks that we often rely on our memories for today simply weren't relevant in the environment in which the human brain evolved. Our ancestors didn't need to recall phone numbers, or word-forword instructions from their bosses, or the Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum, or (because they lived in relatively small, stable groups) the names of dozens of strangers at a cocktail party. What our early human and hominid ancestors did need to remember was where to find food and resources, and the route home, and which plants were edible and which were poisonous. Those are the sorts of vital memory skills that they depended on everyday, and it was—at least in part —in order to meet those demands that human memory evolved as it did. The principle underlying all memory techniques is that our brains don't remember all types of information equally well. As exceptional as we are at remembering visual imagery (think of the two-picture recognition test), we're terrible at remembering other kinds of information, like lists of words or numbers..

4.  In the fourth   first place...

Cicero agreed that the best way to memorize a speech is point by point, not word by word, by employing memoria rerum. In his De Oratore, he suggests that an orator delivering a speech should make one image for each major topic he wants to cover, and place each of those images at a locus. Indeed, the word “topic” comes from the Greek word topos, or place. (The phrase “in the first place” is a vestige from the art of memory.)

5. The brain is a taxing organ.

The brain is a costly organ. Though it accounts for only 2 percent of the body's mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe, and it’s where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned. The brain is the most energetically expensive piece of equipment in our body, and has been ruthlessly honed by natural selection to be efficient at the tasks for which it evolved. One might say that the whole point of our nervous system, from the sensory organs that feed information to the glob of neurons that interprets it, is to develop a sense of what is happening in the present and what will happen in the future, so that we can respond in the best possible way.

6. How indices changed books and the need to remember them fully

..Along with page numbers and tables of contents, the index changed what a book was, and what it could do for scholars. The historian Ivan lllich has argued that this represented an invention of such magnitude that “it seems reasonable to speak of the pre- and post-index Middle Ages.” As books became easier and easier to consult, the imperative to hold their contents in memory became less and less relevant, and the very notion of what it meant to be erudite began to evolve from possessing information internally to knowing where to find information in the labyrinthine world of external memory..

7. About speed-reading

 When the point of reading is, as it was for Peter of Ravenna, remembering, you approach a text very differently than most of us do today. Now we put a premium on reading quickly and widely, and that breeds a kind of superficiality in our reading, and in what we seek to get out of books. You can't read a page a minute, the rate at which you're probably reading this book, and expect to remember what you've read for any considerable length of time. If something is going to be made memorable, it has to be dwelled upon, repeated.

8. Bruce Lee on plateaus

Ed sent me a quote from the venerable martial artist Bruce Lee, which he hoped would serve as inspiration: “There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.” I copied that thought onto a Post-it note and stuck it on my wall. Then I tore it down and memorized it.

9. A critique of memory for the sake of memory

The seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon declared, “I make no more estimation of repeating a great number of names or words upon once hearing ... than I do of the tricks of tumblers, funambuloes, baladines : the one being the same in the mind that the other is in the body, matters of strangeness without worthiness.” He thought the art of memory was fundamentally “barren.”

10.  Our memories make us who we are

..How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it’s about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have become estranged.. 

The best thing here...the friend who recommended this book is expecting to be a father in a couple of months. Best of luck for parenthood bro!

Kangri Dham

Being of Himachali descent means a lot of good things.

One of these is the ability to occasionally enjoy Kangri Dham, which is a ceremonial meal served in traditional style. It is much like langer in the manner of serving.

Rice is served with daal and chutney/maani/malanji etc.

What makes it totally unique is the different kind of chutneys (there are different names for them in Pahari/Dogri). Different kinds of daal and chutneys are served for the taste to come on waves of salt, sweet and sour.

On top of that eating it with your fingers makes it difficult. All you want to do is to stuff the unique goodness in your mouth as fast as possible...but your fingers are burning all the way.

Most recommended experience.