A few old memories and lots of laughs

1966. I was with a very big newspaper group. I’d leave home early in my second-hand Hillman car, drop the children to school and proceed straight to a Parsi owned coffee shop called Coffee Corner in a lane near Kala Ghoda.

This was a much cherished ritual. The coffee was great, a full pot for just 50 paise, the toast-butter-sugar taste is still fresh in my mind, but the best of all was the gang that gathered. A wild collection of Parsi gentlemen (I was the youngest at the table), all well-to-do with time to spare (barring yours truly) and all typical bawaji jokesters. By the time I got there they would have devoured the morning English dailies and Jam-e-Jamshed and would air their views and recommendations on everything from the ads for ‘gentlemen secretaries only’ to Asha Parekh in Love in Tokyo to the rising cost of soap and the bank balance of the good Parsis who manufactured them! But their best pokes were always reserved for our politicians, particularly the ones that wore dhotis. Nothing wrong with wearing a dhoti, but just what would be going on in all those reams of cloth!

One of the permanent members of the Parsi coffee house gang was a stockbroker, a truly jovial fella, to the manor born. He would go to the share bazaar straight from the coffee house. We joked with him that if he wanted his clients to buy Buckingham Palace he should stop betting only on Godrej and Tata and put some of their money on the Birlas and Goenkas as well! Then there was a gentleman who ran the most profitable business amongst all of us — a liquor shop! His tongue was as aromatic as the wine he sold. No sentence was complete without a Parsi expletive! Parsis have been in the liquor business since the British era. Even in smaller towns the ‘toddy’ shops in those days used to be owned by Parsis. Hence the surnames Daruwala, Toddywala etc.

We also had a silent Parsi. Sarosh Mody referred to by many as “barrah lakh saheb”(gentleman with father’s Rs12 lakh in his back pocket). Sosi, as he was endearingly called, loved his coffee and all the fun around. Parsi fathers want their sons to be doctors, lawyers or chartered accountants, but Sosi decided to become a make-up artist! He trained in USA at Pasadena Playhouse, California, and worked with greats like Bob Hope. Back in India, he became the toast of Bollywood and worked with Raj Kapoor,  Dilip Kumar, Hema Malini and Zeenat Aman. But he was loyal to his theatre friends and was always there for our plays.

Every gang has a butt, ours was Savak ‘salli’ (salli in Parsi lingo means ‘tease’). A great sport, he would take our jokes and sallis sportingly. But Salli had a hidden talent — so hidden that only he knew of it, until one day at a party after a double ‘takoro’ (another Parsi lingo for a huge Parsi peg) he announced that his true passion was hunting wild animals. We almost fell off our chairs. Salli could not even swat a fly! But at the next party he surprised us all. Salli showed up in full hunting gear, boots and double barrel gun, et al, plus a huge grilled leg of some poor animal! We gave him a big round of applause. The refrain was: Sala Salli-e-kamal kidhi. For that one evening Savak Salli became Savak the Superman.

In 1970 I moved to The Statesman. The day started earlier but the coffee ritual continued. In fact, we extended it to a once-a-month dinner for which all of us would contribute. After consuming a few rounds of our liquor baron’s Peter Scot (popular upmarket Indian whisky brand then) our sharebazaarwala would offer some investment tips and Sarosh would give us anecdotes of Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the make-up van.

Those were the days when Parsi pegs were the only measure, rich food was to be eaten, newspapers were only printed, phones were in their cradles and friends were forever.

The author is a well-known stage personality