Matoshree, the residence of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray in Bandra, appears in this book as the fixed point of political authority that the wives of Mumbai's gangsters orient their ambitions toward. It is not a place of crime but of legitimacy, the destination that a woman like Neeta Naik reaches when she has successfully converted her husband's underworld connections into a political career of her own. The house stands in implicit contrast to the other spaces that dominate the book's geography — the graveyards, brothels, and slums where the women of the underworld live and die — and its mention signals a rare moment of ascent into respectable power.

The Seat of Political Power

Matoshree is the home of Bal Thackeray, the chief of the Shiv Sena, and it is the place where the party's inner circle is received. For Neeta Naik, the wife of the absconding gangster Ashwin Naik, gaining easy access to Thackeray at Matoshree was the culmination of her political rise. After winning a second term in the Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1995, Neeta had established herself as a valuable member of the Shiv Sena, and her access to the chief's residence in Bandra was a mark of that standing. The house thus functions as the threshold between the criminal world her husband inhabited and the political world she was determined to enter on her own terms.

Neeta Naik's Ascent and Access

Neeta's path to Matoshree was built on her own political acumen rather than her husband's reputation. While Ashwin was on the run, Neeta made her presence felt in the Shiv Sena despite the party's reluctance to recruit women, and her convent education gave her an advantage in dealing with people. She became a powerful orator in the standing committee meetings of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, and it was this political skill that won her acceptance among the masses and a second term in 1995. Her sister-in-law Anjali Naik and Asha Gawli, the wife of Arun Gawli, had also contested the 1995 municipal elections, but only Neeta secured a berth in the BMC. With her husband still absconding, Neeta made it clear that the victory was her own and no one else's, and her access to Thackeray at Matoshree was the reward for that independence.

The Loneliness Behind the Ascent

The political success that brought Neeta to Matoshree also widened the crack in her marriage. The separation from Ashwin had lasted a few years, and Neeta was beginning to feel very lonely. Both she and Ashwin had tried their best to shield their two children from the shadows of the world of crime and provide them with a good education, but the lonely battle was getting to her. She began to look for support elsewhere and allegedly found it in her private bodyguard Laxmi Zhiman. The media wrote extensively about the alleged extramarital affair, and Ashwin, always a possessive man, could not stomach her relations with Zhiman. He had earlier ordered the killing of electrical contractor Eknath Khanvilkar after the man had worked in his house for a few weeks and had supposedly been intimate with Neeta. The final straw came when Ashwin, through his henchmen, acquired photographs that had captured Zhiman and Neeta together.

The Fall After the Peak

On 13 November 2000, Neeta arrived at her Byculla home around noon. As she got to the door and was unlocking it, two men — identified as Manoj Bhalekar and Sunil Jadhav — brutally gunned her down. Neeta was rushed to KEM Hospital in Parel, where she succumbed to her injuries a day later. The following day, the media was filled with stories of Neeta's murder, and her liaisons with other men were ascribed as the cause for her tragic end. This end was said to have come at the hands of her own husband, the very person she had encouraged into the world of crime. Five persons were arrested after the murder, but two were later acquitted. Three others — Bhalekar, Nilratan Mukherjee, and Jadhav — were convicted, and Jadhav was later killed in an encounter. Based on the confessions of Bhalekar and Mukherjee, Ashwin, who was already behind bars, was charged under the special MCOCA for the murder of his wife. According to police records, the conspiracy was hatched by the gangster while inside Tihar jail. On 31 January 2009, a special MCOCA court acquitted Ashwin of his wife's murder for lack of evidence, and the Ashwin-Neeta love story that had turned sour was finally shut for good.

The Contrast with Other Women's Power

Matoshree's significance is sharpened by contrast with the other seats of power that women in this book occupy. Asha Gawli, the wife of Arun Gawli, never sought access to a political patron's residence; instead, she built her own fortress around her husband. When Arun was locked up in the Kolhapur jail under TADA in 1996, Asha took the reins and ran the gang by proxy, digging holes inside their kitchen where Arun would hide whenever the police arrived with an arrest warrant. She headed the women's wing of the Akhil Bharatiya Sena, which was used as a shield for the don against arrests and police encounters, and she filed his nomination papers and campaigned for him when he was jailed under MCOCA before the 2009 Legislative Assembly elections. Unlike Neeta, who reached for the legitimacy of Matoshree and was destroyed by the loneliness that accompanied it, Asha remained a clear winner in her own eyes because Arun was safe and unharmed by police forces. The two women represent opposite trajectories: one who climbed toward the political center and fell, and one who built her own center of power and endured.