Come to think of it, if you think Shahrukh Khan and Gauri Khan went through hell, just think of where Nawab Malik has taken Sameer Wankhede’s family and extended family to? You see, not everybody owns a TV news channel and not everybody can get a Harish Salve or a Mukul Rohtagi to talk to Supreme Court and High Court judges face-to-face. Arnab Goswami and Aryan Khan are altogether two different species from the Wankhedes.

In fact, for a long time — for the longest of time — nobody mortal took on politicians and ministers and survived to tell the experience. People didn’t even notice the politicians. Laxman’s common man hardly had time after life’s drudgery to think of what went around beyond the front gate of the government colony and the Mumbai chawl. The politicians and Bollywood lived on another planet. The politicians surfaced around election time. The filmy people on Fridays!

As for drugs and druggies they were in the movies and not many stepped off-screen. That was then, now is another day and time. We see the difference. The change of guard – first in Delhi in 2014, and then in Mumbai, Maharashtra – turned everything upside down. Now, everybody older than five/six years knows which narcotic drug is which Bollywood actor’s favourite and which politician and which anti-narcotics cop is on ‘ughai’. Hell, kids now talk of extortion like they used to suck candies.

Times have changed. And it was one of the strangest things that happened. After decades of left-leaning Congress and secularism came the BJP and rightwing nationalism – some called it communalism – and then the astounding and extraordinary turnaround from the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. But then, nobody imagined the fissures and crevasses that would erupt. Outcome: The front that lost has been trying since to regain foothold. But it’s not happening and Mumbai has been made to bare warts and all in all their ugliness!

The vasooligate and the trp-gate. The NCBgate and the Nawabgate. Aryan Khan and Shahrukh Khan thrown into the mix. Mun Mun Dhamecha, what was her fault? Mumbai has been awash with drugs for longer than it has been Mumbai. Bollywood has been a drug-zone for longer than Sameer Wankhede has been NCB zonal director. But it took just one change of political guard in Mumbai, Maharashtra, to paint Mumbai in vomit!

The Nawab Malik-Sameer Wankhede feud is destroying Mumbai and Bollywood. And, to be honest, Sameer Wankhede is almost done in. He and his family and extended family have thrown in the towel. Wankhede Senior, rechristened ‘Dawud Wankhede’ by Nawab Malik, has gone to court with a defamation suit and Sameer Wankhede is no longer the face of the Aryan Khan Cruise Case. His wife and sister have been made to shut up. Nawab Malik won!

Or, has he? Nawab Malik doesn’t seem like he has had enough of the Wankhede hide, or hair! Four days after Diwali, he was still bursting crackers under the Wankhede clan’s singed skin. The morning of November 8, he held another of his trademark morning pressers and asked Sameer Wankhede if Harshada Dinanath Redkar, his wife Kranti Redkar’s sister, was a member of a drug ring?

There are among God’s creations creatures and beings which won’t let go once they have rightly or wrongly got hold of an adversary by the tail or the head. And rightly or wrongly, Sameer Wankhede is a ‘creation’ who is in the grips of a ‘creation’ that refuses to let him and those of him go free. Not that what Nawab Malik is doing to Wankhede is helping Aryan Khan or Shahrukh Khan any. There are two wars being fought: One between Nawab Khan and NCB/Sameer Wankhede. The second between the BJP and the MVA. And Nawab Khan is ensuring that Shahrukh Khan via Aryan Khan remains alongside him. Question remains, though, why did Sameer Wankhede arrest Aryan Khan and the rest of the 'children"? Why arrest and parade Mun Mun Dhamecha without a medical done? (IPA Service)