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Dejection in the morning turned to elation by afternoon. Before Adi Irani could grieve the passing away of his mother on June 24, 2010 came the news that he had been elected mayor of Dahanu. It helped him realize there were greater forces at play, says Irani who had to assume new responsibilities as the first man of the town.

Recognized as a master statesman in the arena of local politics, the long-standing municipal corporator had won his first elections in 1992 as an independent candidate in the Dahanu Municipal Council and was reelected corporator five years later when he was offered a ticket by the Nationalist Congress Party.

Within a few months of taking office as mayor, Irani banned the use of polythene bags inside city limits. Under his governance, the Municipality also succeeded in securing a Rs 80 crore ($ 16 million) water works grant which is set to fortify the water supply system in the town. Keeping in mind Dahanu’s eco-fragile status, the new mayor says, "I plan to turn Dahanu into the next tourist town which will compete with the likes of Goa and Daman, in a cleaner-greener avatar.” 

Standing on open roads under the scorching sun, Irani is one of those few leaders who personally supervises municipal jobs. In fact when Dahanu was submerged in the floods of 2002, it was Irani who repaired the damaged water supply pipeline in four days, a task scheduled to take over a month. A committed corporator, it is Irani who assigns himself the duty to dam the river every year to ensure that water in their tube wells never runs dry. As the Zoroastrians of Dahanu candidly admit, "Whenever water in our taps would flow slow or power supply to our homes would be low, it was him who we would blame and till date most of us continue doing the same.”

Irani, the politician, was born more out of "chance than out of choice,” he mentions. When his father-in-law Aspi Faredoon won the Gram Panchayat elections in the early 1980s Adi started helping him. After one-and-a-half years of being an informal member of the Panchayat, Irani became an administrator in the newly formed Dahanu Municipal Council in 1985. 

It was around the same time that he entered the cable television business. Gauging the potential of this sunrise industry Irani laid a vast network of cables through Dahanu. The technology then being unfamiliar to Indians he "had to fly all the way to Taiwan to purchase cables. So new was my venture that when the manufacturing of these cables did commence later in Bombay, I had to pay a full deposit while placing orders since the manufacturer was worried that if I did not take delivery, the wires would go waste.” He proudly exclaims, "I was one of the first operators in India to air the Gulf War of 1989 live… To view (this) even Bom-bayites flocked to Dahanu in large numbers.”

Putting his knowledge of science and mechanics to good use, Irani had earlier launched his In Well Drilling business. By buying scrap parts and later assembling a humble compressor he was able to create a machine that "could dig a hole in an hour which laborers would take days to complete.” Hitherto digging holes in wells was considered a backbreaking and time-wasting task by the local farmers who were thrilled with his ingenuity. Seeking to expand, Irani took loans from banks and from people against job guarantees to invest in a high speed drilling rig mounted onto a truck. This was the first of its kind in Thana district and he retained a monopoly in the region for several years, investing in a second truck as well. Ever the entrepreneur, Irani additionally became a proactive farmer who cultivated barren lands and sold them off at profits in the form of fully productive orchards.

With his initiatives yielding him good returns he soon earned the nickname "Adi Jackpot” for the town folk assumed he got maximum rewards with minimal efforts. Little did they know that he had to work hard to change his destiny. Born in the Colonial Mission Hospital at Dahanu 60 years ago, Adi was the third among Khorshed and Khodabux Irani’s five children. His father being a recent migrant from Iran had little money to spare. While most other kids his age rode to school on bicycles or horseback, Adi and his siblings would walk there all the way, crossing river and rail tracks. "I was gifted my first wrist watch when I joined college,” he had once mentioned. Unlike boys his age who got everything on a platter Irani had to struggle and in the process developed a rational outlook to life. It was in this very poverty that his brain was trained and in coming years, prosperity he would gain. 

While he always excelled in sciences, he almost failed the languages. On passing out of school, young Irani moved to Kalyan where he spent eight years of his life. There he learnt how machines worked and developed a passion for the same. He studied up to Inter Science and later did a course in mechanics, repairing radios in his spare time. Subsequently he worked in WIMCO as a maintenance engineer for two-and-a-half years and opted thereafter to return to Dahanu in 1972 to help his father look after their little orchard.

But regular farming that demanded more patience than thought had little appeal for Irani, he admits. Managing labor and just sitting around was not challenging enough for this restless lad who chose to venture beyond the fields.

As destiny would have it, Adi found the love of his life through the very holes he dug! When he was busy digging horizontally between a bore-well and a well in the farm of the late Mervanji Khodadad, the landlord’s granddaughter Banoogoshasp was impressed by this hardworking man. Mervanji immediately sent Adi a proposal to wed her and they were married off shortly thereafter on December 12, 1975.

Banoogoshasp today leads one of Dahanu’s most popular English Schools, Shirin Dinyar Irani Learners Academy as a managing trustee. Their son Shahpoor is a captain with Jet Airways. Suzanne, their daughter, is married to Percy Chowdhry, director of Rustomjee Builders with two children Vivaana and Rony.

Leading the citizens of Dahanu, not as the cablewalla nor as the borewell­walla, but as the first man of the town, Irani declares, "Only if you plant a seed can you hope of reaping its fruits. If you do nothing, nothing will be there to hope for.”