Kiran Tare

He was the first to create vadawow in Mumbai. Inspired by Bal Thackeray, and enticed by opportunity, in a city looking for cost-competitive fastfoods, Sudhakar Mhatre took the plunge, in a cauldron of oil. And delighted people with genuine made-in-Mumbai vada-pavs.

Mhatre’s passion was fuelled by his industry and people’s palate. Vada has been Mumbai’s staple diet for almost 40 years now. The classless cuisine tempts everyone-from the elite to the poor.

What started as a simple initiative to employ local youth is now a mini-industry. And yet, just when the vada is debuting overseas, the man who set up Mumbai’s first vada-pav stall is no longer in business.

A Shiv Sainik, Sudhakar Mhatre, used to sell incense sticks outside Dadar railway station before 1967. But when Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray exhorted Mumbai’s youth to start their own business by selling vada pav, Mhatre set shop on Bhavani Shankar Road, Dadar, and became a pioneer.

Sadly, after selling piping hot vada-pavs to Mumbaikars for 40 years, the Dadar resident shut shop a year ago. A lack of space and complaints by neighbours forced him out. Ironically, even as a Sainik has got out of the vada business, the Shiv Sena has again jumped into it. It wants to scale it up and battle the biggies.

Mhatre, now 74, is hard of hearing. His younger son, Vaibhav, helped his father run the shop for almost 15 years.

“Baba [my father] used to run the stall for 12 hours a day. My mother, Ratan, would prepare the masala for vadas and I was entrusted with the task of fetching fresh pavs from a nearby bakery. Our customers were always treated to healthy and fresh vadapavs,” reminisces Vaibhav.

“We fried vadas on the roadside for almost 35 years. We stopped the practice in 2001 because dust was flying all around. We started frying vadas in our home and installed a chimney for the smoke to escape. But this didn’t go down well with neighbours and they started complaining. Finally,we succumbed to the pressure and stopped frying. At the same time, we did not have any permanent place to run the stall. So, we decided to call it quits,” he says with a sigh.

When Mhatre set shop, he sold vada-pavs at 10 paise a piece. By the time he shut shop, the price had gone up to Rs4 per piece. Many Sena leaders, including Manohar Joshi, Dattaji Salvi and Sudhir Joshi, used to frequent his stall.

Thackeray visited Mhatre’s stall in 1969.

“Balasaheb gave Baba a handwritten letter, applauding his efforts for running the sole vada-pav stall in Dadar. Baba had carefully preserved the letter, but it was lost when our chawl was demolished to make way for a building,” says Vaibhav.

Mhatre stays with his wife, two sons and a daughter-in-law on a ground-floor flat in the building. Despite his age, he is an active social worker. When DNA visited him on Thursday, he was busy distributing prasad on Shiv Jayanti day. Although his hands trembled, not a gram of prasad was wasted.

“I used to sell 1,500 vada paavs in just three hours without wasting the chutney. It’s a matter of practice,” he says.

It was a roadside chef ’s first flirtation with economies of scale.

Source : DNA