IRRESISTIBLE IRANI RESTAURANTS

The Mumbai middle class, in their forties and fifties, which today look to the Mangalore originated Shettys for their midday meals and evening snacks, in the crowded cafes, perhaps would remember with a great deal of relish that a little over two decades earlier, it was the spacious Irani Restaurants, through their double entrance street corner joints that dominated the scene. Bun maska, garam chai and kari biscuits of the Iranis have gradually yielded place to Idli Sambar and Rava masala. The dull looking fair complexioned Iranis proved to be of no match to the enterprising Sadanand Shettys.

Unlike Udipi hotels, in Irani Restaurants we spend more time and less money. Any young boy with a pittance for pocket money would order a cup of tea, ask for a glass of water, signal the waiter to turn on the fan over his head and expect the evening “Free Press Bulletin” to be provided to him. He would then spend endless hours, dreaming about his dates, swooning over the passing ones or brooding over the married ones, with occasional glance through the papers or life-size mirrors, to smoothen the hairs. Irani Restaurants and the tea they served were inimitable and one would relish them endlessly and if one could order kari biscuits or Bun maska along with the tea, one would be transported to the realm of the Gods and to underscore the point every Irani Restaurant displayed the board ‘ Trust in God’.

Irani Restaurants had no uniformed waiters or bearers to carry out orders or present bills in plates or folders. Ill-clad youths would listen to and mentally note down orders and carry them out efficiently and after finishing when one would go towards the exit, which would be normally hours later, the bill amount would be shouted by the waiter standing away from the counter. The memory power of an Irani Restaurant waiter can be measured only in GBs and was perhaps a precursor to the prodigious Pentium chips.

As the Irani restaurants always occupied the corner portion in any building, it had two entrances and one never bumped into an incoming or outgoing customer, as it usually happens in Udipi hotels. In an hour in an Irani restaurant, one could see lawyers studying their brief to provide their customers relief, professors preparing their notes, perhaps as an antidote to troublesome texts, young lovers exchanging sweet nothings, old Parsis talking about Karanjia ( 'Blitz') and Karaka ('Current') and their journalistic jaunts, long-haired, hippie look alike intellectuals talking animatedly about Kafka and Camus, Satre and his Existentialism and the cricketing crowd, recalling with pride, Salim Durrani’s sixers and Gary Sobers’ Grandeur or the Brisbane tie of 1961. Many poets, painters, student leaders and journalists could trace their antecedents to the time they spent in Irani restaurants.

As in those days tape recorders were unheard of and turntable was only the technology known, Juke- boxes were the craze of the crowd. A Lata Mangeshkar – Mukesh duet set to tune by Shanker Jaikishan, O.P.Nayyar's rhythmic numbers in Asha's tone, ‘Soul Sacrifice’ and ‘Evil ways’ of a Carlos Santana or the ever green songs of Cliff Richards were always in demand. A song in a single ( 45 rpm record) for 25 paise was certainly worth. A sip of tea, a page from ‘Free Press Bulletin’, a song through Juke- box in an Irani Restaurant, the Restaurant is Paradise now’- one would, perhaps, be tempted to provide a parody on Khalil Gibran.

Though serving tea was the sine qua non of an Irani Restaurant, they also sold varieties of materials from Cakes to cosmetics and, yet, had specialised only in supplying bread, bun and biscuits. The transformation of a Light of Asia or a Sassanian Restaurant where one could gossip and guffaw for hours together, into Udipi Hotels where one has to endure the horror of the next customer menacingly looking at his plate and mentally emptying it in minutes, is yet to be adjusted to by old timers, who still yearn for days of yore.

Irani Restaurants may not exist today, but the gossip and guffaw of the gregarious groups over cups of tea and kari biscuits would continue to 'flash upon our inward eye' when we 'recline on our couch in a pensive mood'.