Mumbai: Every night, cars ranging from modest hatchbacks to luxurious sedans line up at Mumbai’s Kemps Corner. A few men run to these cars from across the street and shout out orders: “Do maghai, ek Calcutta meetha, ek saada.” They deliver these orders with just as much haste before moving on to the next car.
All this rush is for a paan (betel leaf) stall, Muchhad Paanwala, which has, over decades, become a favourite post-dinner pit stop in the city for everybody, including Bollywood celebrities.
Known for their handlebar moustaches and the variety of flavoured paans available at the stall, the Tiwari family is also notorious for courting trouble with the police.
On Wednesday, Shivkumar Tiwari, one of the co-owners, was arrested for allegedly selling banned e-cigarettes. According to a Mumbai Police officer, 79 e-cigarettes worth Rs 1.25 lakh were confiscated from Muchhad Paanwala’s godown in Khetwadi.
This was the second such haul in days, according to the police.
“About 4-5 days ago, the Gamdevi Police Station had also recovered e-cigarettes worth Rs 1.5 lakh from Muchhad Paanwala’s shop in Kemps Corner,” the officer told ThePrint.
The proprietors of Muchhad Paanwala didn’t respond to ThePrint’s calls.
Also Read: Great Indian Paan caught in health vs livelihood battle. Ban hurting magahi betel, areca nut
Mumbai’s millionaire paanwala
There’s a certain intrigue surrounding Muchhad Paanwala. The family members have been selling paan in Mumbai for decades and are reportedly millionaires.
A second Mumbai Police officer said that the family is believed to have an apartment at Mumbai’s plush Nepean Sea Road and that the Tiwari brothers drive high-end cars.
A local politician who lives in South Mumbai and frequents Muchhad Paanwaala often said: “I don’t know if the owners of Muchhad drive in a Mercedes, but luxury cars such as Mercedes and Rolls Royce are frequently seen outside his shop. He has successfully turned paan into a brand in Mumbai.”
The business was started by Shyamcharan Tiwari, who came to Mumbai from Allahabad and sold fruits and vegetables before becoming a paan vendor. His son, Jaishankar Tiwari, took charge of the shop in the 1970s. The shop is named ‘Muchhad’ after Shyamcharan Tiwari’s long handlebar moustache, which all the Tiwaris in the family have attempted to mimic.
The menu at Muchhad ranges from the basic plain and sweet offerings wrapped in betel leaves of the maghai or Calcutta variety to more experimental paans in flavours such as strawberry, chocolate, mango, pineapple, and Khus Khus.
Muchhad Paanwala was also perhaps the first street vendor to embrace technology, launching a dedicated website as early as the 90s. That website, muchhadpaan.com, is not currently functional.
At one point, in addition to offering the option of placing orders online and providing contact numbers for catering requirements, it also provided basic information on paan-making.
A brawl and a drug case
In 2021, the Narcotics Control Bureau arrested Ramkumar Tiwari after recovering 500 grams of cannabis and materials used to make joints from a warehouse he owned. Since the amount of cannabis seized was small, Tiwari was granted bail.
His arrest was related to the same case for which the NCB had also arrested British national Karan Sajnani and Sameer Khan, the son-in-law of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik.
A source had told ThePrint that the NCB’s allegation was that Sajnani and Khan planned to develop a cannabis-based product and sell it through local vendors such as Muchhad Paanwala.
In September 2021, a special court granted bail to the duo following forensic reports that suggested most of the samples could not be detected as cannabis.
Over the years, the Tiwari family saw a split and one section of the family started a rival paan shop, ‘Tiwari paan shop,’ right next to Muchhad Paanwala.
In 2011, the two factions of the Tiwari family had a brawl on the streets, attacking each other with iron rods and sticks. Police arrested members of both sides of the family.
A Mumbai Police officer attached to the Gamdevi Police Station told ThePrint that the rivalry remains intense. “They still keep having fights with each other over customers and make complaints and counter complaints against each other about stealing customers, keeping the shop open beyond permissible hours, etc,” the officer said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Inside story of how billionaires of big-brand pan masala industry got around an ad ban