Open Secret - Bombay's Auntie Bars
By Astha Mehta
I was born and have lived all my life in Mumbai, like my father before me. My father is a third generation Mumbaikar. He grew up in the Bombay (as Mumbai was called then) of the 1960s, specifically in Vile Parle of the 60s - all swamps, old catholic villages and what I can only assume was a very young Nehru Nagar area, mainly populated by immigrants from Tamil Nadu. I grew up hearing very real stories of corpses being disposed of in those swamps, which in the Mumbai of today, you would scarcely believe ever really existed.
Naturally, after our Yayavr discussion on the subject of the Prohibition Era (1949 to 1962) and the Aunty Bars of Bandra and South Bombay, I asked my father if there had been any Aunty Bars in the Christian Village down the street from us. He happily replied, “They still exist!”. That was when it hit me - I’ve been seeing them all my life! They may have switched to selling commercially produced liquor instead of the moonshine and toddy like in the 50s and 60s, but they’ve been here all these years. The houses with the dimly lit verandahs, little handwritten daily menu boards, and the lady selling boiled eggs sitting in her spot by the gate, every single evening – I must have walked past it a million times, but I felt like I was seeing it anew today. Scattered all along the street are stalls selling fresh chakna, multiple generations of families thriving on selling fried, salted peanuts and chana.
My father went on to explain that a sizable brewing operation used to run out of Nehru Nagar nearby. My father’s family ran a timber mart at that time and the brewers would come to buy wood for the distillation process and even order custom lids for the brewing apparatus. Every evening they would do a sweep of the local markets and collect all the leftover fruits that were over-ripe, bruised or unfit for sale, to add to their brews. On a designated day every week, moonshine filled football rubbers and tubes would be loaded strategically into a municipal BEST bus at the naka (corner). The bus would then merrily make its way through the city, dropping off the moonshine in Santacruz, Bandra and further south. At the chowki (police checkpoint) at Mahim, roughly the border separating ‘proper Bombay’ from the suburbs, a hawaldar (constable) would step into the bus for a quick inspection, and then wave it across, no doubt having received his hafta (bribe) for the week.
Occasionally, and mainly to keep up appearances, there would be a “raid” on these brewing enterprises. Generally, no cops attempted to enter Nehru Nagar alone, but for the “raid”, there would be a whole bus full of them. They would go in, “find the spot”, and finally come out after a couple of hours, triumphantly carrying back a few empty casks to show their effort and placate the powers that be. In reality, most of the liquor brewers had prior intimation of these events and had ample time to move most of their goods.
Further north, the neighbourhood of Gorai also had a large distillation operation going, as did Dharavi right in the middle of the city. They supplied moonshine to all of Bombay.
The Aunties of the Gaothan nearby, referred to as the “Baatli Waalis” after the glass bottles they’d often be seen carrying, would buy the moonshine from these little distilleries or brew their own on a much smaller scale. Some even had their toddy or Feni smuggled in from Goa.
Eventually the prohibition was relaxed and aunty bars dwindled, making way for all sorts of other liquor stores, bars and restaurants. But if you look closely enough while walking the streets of Mumbai, you might still find one right there, sitting unobtrusively and yet so obviously, and it’ll have been there all along.