MUMBAI, August 13: Having spent an entire day in the media spotlight, the Jeet Nagar hutment dwellers, who witnessed the gruesome killing of 41 year-old music baron Gulshan Kumar by two assailants on Tuesday morning, are beginning to wonder whether it was worth it all. ``Shouldn't at least four policemen on duty be here after all the descriptions we have given of the crime and the assailants?'' asks a scared Parubai Bajirao. The crowd around her pleads in the same vein.

In the melee that followed the shout-out, a bullet also hit 45 year-old Madhukar Kawankar in the groin as he was fashioning clay Ganpati idols in a makeshift shed. ``I heard what I thought were firecrackers; then I saw the assailants and suddenly felt a sharp pain below my waist,'' Kawankar told Express Newsline from his hospital bed in Cooper Hospital's ICU ward. In the next bed lies 33-year-old Rooplal Saroj, Kumar's car driver of 15 years. ``I will return to my wife and four children in Delhi as soon as I am fit.

What's the point in staying in Mumbai when my employer is dead,'' he says. He received a bullet in his thigh for flinging a kalash at one of the assailants. Barber Shivaji Dalvi was attending to a customer at his small saloon near Kumar's car when the first shots were fired. His customer fled even as Dalvi dived into Kawankar's makeshift shed. ``My customer returned to cut the remaining portion of his hair this morning,'' Dalvi smiles.

Meanwhile, Kawankar's injury has put a question mark on the family's livelihood for the season. ``I cancelled orders for 35 idols, and am trying to complete the remaining ones myself,'' said his son Prakash. The Shiv temple which the late producer regularly visited twice a day stands locked and deserted. A group of women crowded near the temple to speak reverentially of Kumar, who met the medical expenses of several slum dwellers and liberally distributed fruits and 10 rupee notes amongst the children every time he visited the temple.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.