Premanand Paanwala

This was quite some many years ago. Its difficult to remember the many details in this story. But it's an interesting story, and it needs to be told. Perhaps, the time has come. My knowledge of the story is from its recounting in Mumbai but most of it took place in the border badlands of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. These places were really bad, as we knew about it from doordarshan (the official TV channels) and newspapers in Mumbai. We heard of dacoits, bandits and bandit-queens by the day, during those early eighties. People in Mumbai did not know much about Bundelkhand, Rohilkhand, Chambal or those areas. It was of how the rest of India termed everyone from South India as 'madrasi'. Whatever we did not understand about these mysterious places on the border areas of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in the neo-Phoolan Devi years were all dacoit-lands.

I met Premanand totally by accident. I never ate paan (= betel leaf) and did not know the difference between banarasi or non-banarasi, masala or saada or any other. I am ignorant on the taxonomy or phonology of paan terms, paan or the lingo of paan-loving addicts. Premanand used to come to the gymnasium where I was a coach during 1980-1982, indeed I was (!), near King's Circle, very near Matunga in central Mumbai. I used to practice in the gymnasium for powerlifting, weightlifting and bodybuilding during my under graduate years. Premanand was a regular at the gymnasium.

What made him different from the others? Being a paanwaala? Not at all, initially. I did not know that he worked as a paanwaala. He was different, total. He was about six feet tall, broad shoulders, nearly 110 kgs in weight, handsome, about 22-24 years in age, rich, gold necklace and bracelets, and rode a Bullet 350 CC motorcycle. When we met, sometime in January 1981, I remember, I was 19, shorter than him by six inches, narrow shoulders, only 60 kgs in weight, and certainly not rich, and no jewelery or vehicles. But, for Premanand, fresh out of the UP-MP areas, orthodox body-builder and wrestler that he was, he was the practitioner, and I was the coach. So, I was his guru. And on the first day that we met, he sincerely touched my feet, and continued to do so, until June 1982, when we met the last.

The printed shirts of the seventies. Brought to life by Akshay Kumar in the recently released movie. Premanand would be a walking advertisement for such fashion.


Looking at his enormous bulk and obvious sincerity in age, and by the fact that nobody else in the gymnasium had touched my feet, I objected politely to Premanand touching my feet in respect. He explained that back at his native village, he would not be allowed to start exercising at the village gymnasium, the akhara, if he would not touch the feet of his coach, his guruji, before entering the sand-pit or the practice area. That was the end of the discussion as far as he was concerned, he made it clear by tone and voice volume, that I had to accept his respect, and that he would call me 'guruji'.

'Guruji' I was, for Premanand, until we went our separate ways, a year later. We met daily at the gym, and later in the King's Circle-Matunga area, through the day and night, as youngsters in the area did, moving about all the time. I studied at the Guru Nanak Khalsa College near King's Circle, and most of us would also end up in the study rooms in the college at night. A consensus had developed, for many of us from Khalsa College, VJTI, UDCT, SIES, Ruia and Podar Colleges in the Dadar, King's Circle, Matunga, Sion areas during 1977 to 1982, as far as I knew, that one could study only in the study rooms of their respective colleges at night from 8 pm to 6 am.

How could one stay awake at night, if you were also busy with attending college, games, canteens, restaurants, movies, gymnasia and vagabonding in the daytime? You needed tea, strong tea at night hours. The only strong tea for college students wanting to stay awake in central Mumbai were the tea-coffee vendors on the pavements of King's Circle. It was here that I discovered Premanand again. He had not mentioned this at the gymnaisum. He was working as an assistant or helper at a paan-shop in King's Circle. His brother had two paan-shops at the Circle and Premanand helped him with the running around, procuring supplies and moving cash. They did not seem to want too much cash to be at the shops, and every two hours or so, Premanand would take away the cash to someplace else and return.


The Mukhtar paan shop. Famous paan maestro. 
Not the paan shop being discussed about at King's Circle in this blog post.


He would stand there, at midnight, near the paan-shop, dressed stylishly, with his Bullet 350 motorcycle, watching Mumbai at night. His brother was his hero, one could see that. Premanand was dressed in the fashion of those days. We could not afford them. He could. Tight terene bell-bottoms, dark glares or sunglasses at midnight, we called them goggles, and technicolour, photo-print, coloured shirts. They were a rage in the years 1979-1981. The shirts would have coloured prints of movie scenes or gardens or waterfalls in sepia or green or orange tints. You had to purchase the cloth and get it stitched at a local tailor. The shop keepers would fool the youngsters by saying that it was smuggled stuff from Japan and they would show us the uncut cloth, 'thaan', as it was called, clandestinely. Well, almost. It felt good to have been able to see smuggled stuff, secretly.

Premanand loved to collect such printed cloth and get his shirts stitched up in them. He was a walking-talking advertisement for the street fashion of those days. His elder brother was entirely the opposite. Very conservative, soft-spoken, dressed always in loose-fitting qurta shalwars, almost like a businessman from Amritsar or Jullunder. This was probably because they lived in the Antop Hill side of Koliwada, in a housing colony that was mostly sikhs and punjabis, usually, in those years, taxi-drivers, restaurant-owners, small businessmen, workers and auto shop owners or mechanics. Most other north Indians in that area tended to dress, walk, talk and live similarly.

Premanand or his elder brother would never sit at their paan-shop and actually make the paan. They had employees for that job. Youngsters out of the Bundelkhand area, wold keep coming all the time to seek employment with Premanand's brother. He was some sort of a well meaning godfather to all from the area. He always had a job for them. They would hang about near the shops at King's Circle for a week or two, helping with odd jobs, and would disappear, having got a job elsewhere in the huge network of merchants, vendors and small tradesmen from the UP-MP area. Some guys would always be busy cleaning and polishing Premanand's Bullet 350 motorcycle. To them, the motorcycle in those years, the motorcycle of India, was the Bullet 350. No other vehicle mattered. They would hardly touch the Fiat that Premanand's brother, their employer, had parked nearby.

The Royal Enfield Bullet 350. God of all motorcycles. For ever and ever.
I lived on one Bullet 350 through 1985 to 1987 in south India. Never let me down.


He seemed surprised to see me at the King's Circle. He had not expected me to be a college going student. To him, a 'guruji' was a 'guruji'. He should have completed his studies and should have been teaching somewhere. Age did not seem to be a major factor in this thought process and logic. One aspect of requirement seemed to be all that mattered. I introduced him to my college buddies grouped around the paan shop, the pav bhaji (= bread + vegetables) eatery hand cart and the tea-coffee hand cart. Later, I came to know that all the hand-carts on this side of the King's Circle were owned by Premanand's brother. Except, to the ignorant, the tea-coffee hand cart had a board that seemed to proclaim an owner from Maharashtra, while the Pav-Bhaji hand cart seemed to belong to an Udipi from Karnataka.

My college buddies were awe-struck by Premanand. Most of us were in cheap T-shirts and imitation denims, and here was this movie-star like 'fair and handsome' guy with motorbike and gold chains and all. Nobody dared speak to him, except for shaking hands and thanking him for the free round of tea that he asked Shankar, the tea-stall guy to provide us. We were nearly twenty of us, and a free round of twenty teas was quite impressive. Shankar knew all of us, as regulars, who never paid our monthly tea accounts on time. He was worried that Premanand may write off our monthly accounts.

Premanand introduced me to his elder brother and merely mentioned that we were buddies at the gymnasium. He did not tell him that I was his gym coach. He may have been worried that his brother may not believe him or may actually believe him and may touch my feet. Whatever, Premanand's brother was genuinely happy to see me and the large group of college boys who had come about and got introduced. He knew all of us as regulars and that we were students of the Khalsa College. Premanand was given some task and asked to go someplace else in the Fiat with a driver. When he had gone, the elder brother spoke to me and said, "Bharat, you are also like a younger brother to me, like Premanand. I need your help. Seeing you all regularly, I know you all. But I feel I can trust you. Do not refuse my request."

The King's Circle, Mumbai, near Matunga. An amazing unchanging place.
Look at this photograph and weep. A flyover is going to go over it in a few months. 
This is the last of the pristine photographs of King's Circle.


I was surprised. Nobody had told me that they could trust me and had asked for my help at my age, at that time, and that too, at the first meeting. I was wondering if he wanted me to advice Premanand to get out of all the flashy clothes, dress in simpler manner, and get up on the paan shop and start making paan. I nodded in reply, and asked, "Definitely, but is there something you want me to tell him? He is a good friend, and comes to the gym daily and helps me with training and all that. Tell me, anything that I can help with."

He replied, "My brother, he has come down from Uttar Pradesh, six months ago. Ask him as to why he came down. Ask him later in some regular conversation. Not today. He will immediately suspect that I have told you. He got involved in bad problems at home, and he was not at fault. He has studied M.A. in Hindi Literature, and he is a good scholar. He wanted to do his Ph.D in Hindi or become a Pundit at Benaras Hindu University or something. But life gave him a bad time, and he is very sad and dejected and extremely unhappy. He has told me about you, before, at our house. He told my wife, that you are his guruji, and yet you respect him. Please help him."

All this was news to me. I had not known that Premanand was a serious student of Hindi, the language and its literature. He had never hinted in that manner. Of course, he spoke chaste Hindi, but for the untrained Mumbai ear, anything other than Bollywood Hindi, sounded like the Hindi of the Ganges. Sad? Dejected? Unhappy? Premanand? I was stunned at this news. He had never seemed to be sad or down in life. He had always been so full of life, happy, energetic and cheerful. He always spoke respectfully, and never pushed his way around in the gymnasium. He had never joked about the fat and obese kids who would be dropped at the gym by their more obese mothers, sisters or aunts. Most of us, the others, used to joke at their expense, but Premanand had always had a kind word for them, and made them play an initial game of volleyball, to get them aerobic-ready for in-the-gym workouts. He need not have helped them, but that's the way he was.

The Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.


On another day, later in the week, we got to chatting while other weight-lifters had blocked the weights. Premanand had just then completed 1000 sit-ups, that he would do non-stop in very rapid time without losing his breath. To give a comparative estimate, the other wrestler we had from Uttar Pradesh used to do 400 in four sets of 100 each. Premanand asked me, "Guruji, do you know where this place 'Chembur' is? I have to go there and pick up some funny new paan-leaves from some shop with a strange name. My brother says it is near a railway station in some place called Chembur, and it is inside the railway station but it is not inside. Funny place. He said I will understand when I go to Chembur."

I nodded happily. I had lived my childhood, through primary school years, in Chembur and loved the place. I knew the railway station. It was about fifteen kilometres, I think, from King's Circle. Maybe less. After 8 pm, in the rains, at night, it would be difficult to go there by public transport. So, I asked him, "Are you planning to go by your Bullet in this rain? Or you want to go by train? We can catch the train at Koliwada or Wadala but it would be very crowded. I know Chembur well. I used to stay there long ago. I can come with you. We can go back at King's Circle by 10 pm."

Premanand lived out his life in Mumbai on the Bullet. He naturally replied, "The Bullet, of course. Are you frightened of the rain? We will get wet. Mumbai rain is no problem. It is not like the rain in winter on the Ganga. THAT is rain. You will freeze in ten minutes and you will fall off the bike, sitting behind me, and I will not even know. Mumbai rain is like taking a bath. Come, we will go to this Chembur place, wherever it is and return fast. We can have hot butter pav bhaji at King's Circle when we come back. My treat." I did not hear about the butter pav-bhaji that he was talking about. I was more  petrified in my mind with the image of freezing in the rain while riding pillion and falling down in the darkness in the traffic after Sion or at Chembur Naaka. The rain did not bother me. Through my lifetime in Mumbai, I had never owned or used an umbrella or a raincoat.

Glimpse of a traffic jam in downtown Mumbai. Maybe a safer futuristic alternative.


We took off by 7.30 pm and drove through an extremely heavy downpour to Chembur. The traffic in those days was quite manageable. Today, you would be dead due to asphyxiation if you drove a bike in the bumper-to-bumper traffic snarls after 8 pm. In those days of 1980-81, we went through the slow traffic easily and reached Chembur railway station in about 15 or 20 minutes. Premanand, naturally, drove as if he was on the Grand Trunk Highway, speeding through, cursing slow drivers, waving at all north-bound truck drivers, as if they could recognise him in the dark of the night in blinding rain. But, to be fair to Premanand, there must have been some sort of a coded signal in his exhuberant wave, for almost all north-bound truck drivers waved back enthusiastically.

At Chembur railway station, Premanand showed me the note from his brother. He had wanted him to pick up 500 betel-leaves of the south-Indian speciality types, a special one, "Kumbakonam Light", because of some wedding order that had been received. I laughed when I saw it. Premanand was curious that I was laughing and I told him, "Wait till we get to the shop. Just ask the shop-owner as to where did he get his supplies." The  shop had a long long long name, and Premanand had not been able to pronounce it. It was inside the row of shops just at the entrance to the Chembur railway station and sold all types of south Indian specialities including Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam newspapers and magazines.

I stood aside, quiely, wanting to watch the fun. The shop keeper was a true-blood Tamil Chettinad, and naturally, spoke in his excellent accent, in some strange Hindi vocabulary, that was like drowning Premanand's knowledge of the Hindi language. I could see Premanand blushing at the accent and struggling hard to avoid any reaction. He was too polite. The Chettinad shopowner was saying, "Yesh, saar (in Hindi), phone call came, Anna (= big brother, must have been a reference to Premanand's elder brother) said, 500 vetrilai, all ready, with scented marriage special Asoka pakku packets." Premanand looked at me for help, and I translated the Chettinad hindi to Premanand's familiarity, "Vetrilai means paan, pakku means supari. He knows your order. Your brother must ahve asked for Asoka brand because it is a south Indian wedding order. Just ask him where did he get it from. You will like the answer."

The 'kumbakonam light' betel-leaf variety from Tamil Nadu


So, Premanand asked the question. And, the Chettinad shopkeeper in Chembur said, "Where I buy? From Matunga, of course. Best supplier of good south Indian vetrilai and pakku in Mumbai is at Matunga. Everybody knows." Premanand looked at me, very upset, and exclaimed, "What is he saying? We have now come from Matunga and he purchases this from Matunga. We came all this way in the rain. Why is bhaiya (= elder brother) purchasing from him?" I smiled. I had already guessed that the Chembur shopkeeper would have purchased from Matunga. After all, Matunga was the "Madras (= Chennai) of Bombay (= Mumbai)", as all old-timers said.

There was an adjacent shop, filled with northeners eating, actually gulping down paani puris. And, it was raining heavily and Premanand was upset with everything. So, we ended up at the paani puri shop, eating everything that was on the menu. We worked our way down from bhelpuri, sev puri, ragda pattice, ragda puri, and finally paani puri, when the crowd thinned down, after the 9 pm movie at the nearby Natraj theatre started. I decided to ask Premanand, thinking that this was a good unsuspecting moment, about his arrival in Mumbai, leaving behind his life in Uttar Pradesh.

He did not suspect anything. He thought it was natural that I asked him about his coming to Mumbai. He took me to be close to him, so he did not avoid talking about what had happened. I ate quietly as he spoke, and the shop keeper and the pani puri vendor also listened quietly. They seemed to be from the lands of the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh and they identified with Premanand. They knew of such happenings. This was why they were in Mumbai, in this small eatery, struggling with their lives. Premanand kept eating paani puris as he spoke. So did I. The shop keeper stood nearby and gave Premanand a bench to sit on. I did not seem to matter to him for obviously I was not from the lands of the Ganges. This was a story that I cannot forget to this day. This was about Premanand who is forever inside my head, talking to me everyday, since then. I have to tell this story and get it out of me. I do not know if it was true. But, I believed it.

A view of the various popular fast-food dishes, totally different in taste and sublime in Mumbai
Unlike any other place in India. No arguments, there.

From - http://hungerbite.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/20090312_panipuri1.jpg
The various ingredients that go into a mouth-watering panipuri.

The main gravy that is the hereditary secret of the masters of pani puri makers over the centuries


This is Premanand's story. It took place sometime in 1977-78, in a place on the border between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in the Bundelkhand area. He was studying in his M. A. Hindi and his final examinations were completed a day before. He would always say, later, to me repeatedly, that the luckiest break for him in his life was that his misery began after he had given his final M. A. Hindi examinations. His family used to live in a village, let's call that Fatehpur, and his second elder brother, Sripal Singh, was the sarpanch (= village headman). The eldest brother, Virendrapal Anand Singh, had already moved to Mumbai, to trade in betel leaves. We have met him earlier in this story. He had four sisters, and they were all married into the big city, Jhansi. All his brothers-in-law and his entire extended family traded in the supply, transport and stocking of betel and tobacco leaves. They also had farm lands, but that did not seem to be all that important, in those years.

His college was in a mofussil place, to the north of Jhansi, near Datiya, inside the Chambal badlands, and yet, it was a good college, judging by his praise. He admitted that most colleges in those areas were very notorious in those days, and so were the schools. But it seemed, like his Hindi professor had a real passion for the language, and all its significance, and had seemed to have been personal friends of the great writers of the language. As a youngster, his Hindi professor had met Prem Chand, he said. I did not know if that had indeed happened, or if it was possible, but, hey, this is Premanand's story, right? Who was I to question it?

He would go riding his motorcycle, it was a jawa yezdi, re-assembled by a mechanic at Jhansi, to the college daily and would return to the village. His father was very old, and mother was entirely busy in taking care of his father. His brother, Sripal Singh, the sarpanch, had "purchased" his wife's two sisters, and all three were married to him, and lived in the same house. His parents had not objected. In those regions, in those years, that seemed to have been the right thing to do, in the sixties, and the local people had decided that it qualified to make him the sarpanch. His first wife was the eldest, and she had confessed that she missed her younger sisters, and could not live without them. So, Sripal Singh had been the gentleman, and did his service to his wife, and obliged her. All three sisters had children, and once, as Premanand told me, he could never make out how many there were. He thought that even Sripal Singh did not know how many children he had, or did not know the names of any of them or could not recognise them from one to the other. And it seemed as if that was the natural thing to happen, and Premanand or Sripal did not mind the lapse.

The Dholpur fort in the Chambal. Most of Premanand's story took place in regions nearby.


There were several villages stretched out along the drainage of a river that was a tributary to the Chambal or the Yamuna rivers. I forget which. In those regions, where water was scarce, villages were settled along rivers, but they also seemed to have their main settlement near a large pond or a rain-fed or flood-fed lake, called a 'jheel' in the local lingo. Its a common term in most of the northern states, but I learnt that much later. Similarly, Fatehpur had a sprawling village along the river, and ten kms away, it had another hamlet, called 'Bechari' meaning 'unfortunate one', because the waters in the lake dried out for more than six months in the year. So, there was 'Nadi-maa-Fatehpur', the Fatehpur near the river, and 'Bechari-Fatehpur', the unfortunate Fatehpur.

A senior government officer, had understood the misery, ignorance, craftiness and greed of the local people in the area. He created circulars, orders and government gazette-like documents for most subjects. That was the age before the Internet and xerox machines and STD telephones and fax machines. Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, Gwalior, the divisional headquarters and Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, were all far off, mostly mythical city-like kingdoms for these villagers. The senior government officer knew this well. He created a government order in English, and got a government lawyer at Jhansi, to do an "official translation", got it attested, and issued it within his office. Soon, the babulog got busy, and created more files for the document, until it became totally official and sandwiched inside many other shabby papers and documents. The order stated that one needed to bid,  through 'tender', to seek and gain rights to excavate red soil from floodplain lakes, in dry season, for the brick making industry.

The local businessmen, important people, other government officers through proxy relatives, including peons and clerks in the senior officer's office, even bus-conducters and hotel or restaurant owners, whoever mattered, made a cartel for this non-existent 'tender' and played into the hands of this government officer, who had understood them thoroughly. The 'cartel' came and made an united representation to the government officer and requested him through monopoly to declare 3 to 5 bidders as winners for each wetland at the base price of the 'tender'. In return, a certain mutually agreed upon beneficial decision of barter was arrived at, to be given over the officer. Little did the 'cartel' realise, the base-money and margin was entirely pocketed.

Brickmaking from the wetlands near Chambal. This one is at Etah. Check out the blog by Gopi Sundar. Its tremendous achievement and extreme diligence about the habitats of the Sarus Crane.


Sripal Singh, the sarpanch of Fatehpur, was a rich man, and busy with his time in the betel-leaf business. He had also become a local sort of genius at making jaggery in the non-sugarcane growing areas by hijacking sugarcane carts on their way to distant sugar processing units. Farmers in Bundelkhand were usually not offered advance procurement price because of the monopoly of the few sugar processing units in the region. Sripal Singh invented the jaggery-hijack system, by offering an attractive roadside price to farmers in transit with fully loaded bullock-carts. Sripal Singh had cheap human labour, an extensive access to firewood, and ability to transport the sugarcane to hidden locations in the ravines by unemployed tractors and trailors.

As money came in, Sripal Singh wanted to construct new houses for his ever expanding extended family. His elder brother, Virendra had adviced him, from Mumbai, to construct strong fortress like houses, with deep basements that would be defended against dacoits or other clans with long inter-generational blood revenges, sworn hundreds of years ago, in the wars of some long forgotten local Bundela warlords. The wars had been forgotten but the revenge had not been forgotten. Each year, the warring families and clans would assemble at local religious events and reconfirm their revenge-oaths, by queuing up at the same temple. They were all friendly with each other now, except for the occasional kidnap of a beautiful daughter now and then. As long as it ended in a honorable marriage, it was ok. But it was all fragile peace. A small flare could ignite a bloodbath.

People could die in great numbers within a year. Nobody feared the police in these regions in those days. Witnesses by the hundreds would usually be created with fake identities and would queue up to give their stories. 200 to 300 witnesses per case, with several stories to be cross-referenced, written in shabby handwriting by different policemen, was enough to destroy any case. Six to ten years later, when the police inspector would be transferred, the new police inspector would find it extremely difficult to even locate any witness. To the outsider, they all looked the same, especially the women. They were all invisible. There were no photographs and nobody knew who was who, especially since they were all fake identities. The policemen had raided the villages and rounded them collectively in the same vehicle, so nobody knew who was from which village, and they all helped each other.

So, Sripal Singh wanted to construct new houses. He needed bricks. Legally, according to the local patwari and tahsildar (= village-level government representatives), the local face of the government, he could only purchase bricks from those who had been authorised to make bricks out of the dried up lake next to 'Bechari Fatehpur'. Sripal Singh did not agree with the monopoly given to the brother-in-law of the tahsildar, who for all purposes, was a 'foreigner' to Fatehpur. He had not bothered about it earlier, because he had not wanted to disturb or anger the tahsildar. But, when told that he could not do as he pleased in his own village, in the ravines of Chambal, it aroused the thousand year old genetic strain of rebellion, strengthened by the waters of the land.

If he would accept the monopoly, he would lose face in his village, and more worse for him, in the village of his father-in-law. That was a greater disgrance for him. So, he decided, like all battles against colonial imperialism, and what-not, as Premanand explained, no doubt due to his study of the Indian freedom movement for his M.A., Sripal Singh decided to follow in the lines of the Mahatma who made his own salt. Sripal Singh decided to make his own bricks. Except for one rather significant or insignificant difference. Sripal Singh had never heard or experienced or tried out the practice of non-violence. He did not know that such and such experiment of non-violence actually existed.

Sripal Singh was an expert genius, a 10th Dan of scientific violence. He believed in creating the correct home advantage for violence, and believed further in allowing one and all to share in the war that was to come. He did not just go and foolishly start making bricks, and beating up the contractors. He was not a goon. He was a scientist and he had a strategy that was based on a technique with a proper method at making sure that he obtained what he wanted. Not at all. To hear Premanand speak with brotherly pride, of how a 'paanwala' sarpanch, as Sripal Singh was locally known, could plan for the violence that would erupt, one seemed to think that the vedic masters should have spent some time in the Chambal. They would have added an additional veda in the understanding of the psyche and getting ready for war, without any army, royal mandate, spiritual support, requirement of land or riches. There was nothing to be won. It was only the right of the local villager to access local resources against the monopoly of an outsider.

2 comments:

  1. Well written. Profound indeed !! You certainly have a good imagination, I must say..Did you really meet this character? I am sure as an academic you would be having a few books to your credit, as well?

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  2. You are making my life more miserable than what is now...Chembur railway station, paani puri, Ragda pattis, Bhelpuri, Sev puri...wish I had wings ...and would have been there now..

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