Meet the Basrai brothers

Beards and balding pates.

That's where the resemblance between the brothers Basrai, Ayaz and Zameer, ends.

Ayaz prefers T-shirts while Zameer, three years his junior, is a 'shirt boy'; Ayaz's effusive demeanor means words rapidly gush out of his mouth while Zameer voices his few words in a slow, ponderous manner; Ayaz was 16 when he “stumbled into design” on a perchance visit to the National Institute of Design (NID) campus but Zameer was certain, even as a child, that he wanted to be an architect upon growing up and had formulated two back-up plans if he didn't make it to the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT); Ayaz is fond of modern European cuisine (Salt Water Cafe is his comfort food place) while Zameer binges on coastal cuisine from Kerala and Goa (Soul Fry being an eternal haunt).

Within these orbs of contrasting predilections lies an intersection where their worlds meet. Welcome to The Busride. From this design studio have emerged some of the city's most popular restaurants — bars, cafes, diners and delis that patrons have grown fond of as much for the food as for their design. Think Salt Water Cafe, Smoke House Deli, Cafe Zoe, Jamjar Diner, The Bombay Canteen, Pizza Express, The Daily Bar & Kitchen, and their more recent works Le 15 Cafe in Colaba and Masala Bar on Carter Road. The interiors at each of these joints is ingenious, inviting and warm.

The brothers describe most of these as projects born out of love for the city. “They are odes to Bombay,” is what Ayaz says of them. The affection is manifest in how they map connections between relevance and redundancy. This is why a Cafe Zoe, even though it stands in an old, ruined mill, aims to show synergy with its surroundings; it's flushed-from-sky-windows light and the bare, stripped walls defer to the textile mills that once occupied the space. “If you start considering the old mills as shells, then you limit their life and their relevance in contemporary discourse,” explains Ayaz. “We'd rather highlight how these can still be relevant today, and extend their life. The project then becomes more about adaptive use rather than about flattening a structure and starting from scratch.”

Big. Sunset. Drama

So how challenging is it to transform a mere site into a distinct space?

“The vibe isn't defined at all by the furniture, fittings, look-and-feel, lighting... those are extremely, subjective preferences. For us, those are subtexts,” says 37-year-old Ayaz. “The big argument is really about getting to understand what the space is fully about. For that to happen, you must have deep, meaningful conversations with the stakeholders at the very beginning.”

For instance, when they were planning the recently-opened Masala Bar, the brothers and the owner, Zorawar Kalra, agreed at the outset that the sunset view would be the anchor around which everything else i.e. choice of materials, furniture, lighting, would revolve. Or as Zameer crystallises it: “Big. Sunset. Drama.”

A good design, he continues, is one that can be shared. “It must have a human footprint and the potential to grow exponentially larger than originally imagined,” says Zameer. And architecture, he adds, is about creating engagement. “Over time, you realise that its all about people and relations. So it isn't so much an architectural question, but about asking 'people questions' and solving them with architecture or product design.”

“Irade nek, baaki sab fake”

Restaurants just happen to be one domain of its work for which The Busride Design Studio garners attention. The studio's smallest output has been sand castles for Disney, and the largest a design institute in Pune. Throw in private residences, office spaces, film sets, installations and you get the semblance of a cauldron bubbling with energy and ideas — contrary to the irreverent retort: “Irade nek, baaki sab fake,” that Zameer recalls was Ayaz' descriptor during the latter's NID days.

It was at NID and CEPT where the brothers found direction and inspiration, meeting their life's heroes and soaking up their teachers' ideologies. Formidable men, such as Professor Neelkanth Chhaya, the late design champion Professor MP Ranjan and late architects Anant Raje and Charles Correa. “We've been extremely fortunate to have such powerful figures who've dedicated their entire lives to one cause,” says Ayaz. He describes Prof Ranjan's courses on design process as a ready reckoner for life. “It teaches you unconditional optimism, Every single thing that is thrown at you, becomes an opportunity and not a problem. And that fundamental understanding of life enables you to think that no complexity is insurmountable.”

And it is in part thanks to Professor Chhaya providing a reality check that the Basrai brothers are consciously veering to doing more and more work in the public domain. “Right now, there's a very felt need to engage with the public space,” says Ayaz, who admires French designer Philippe Starck. “If we are able to aspect 2% of public space versus 98% of private space, that 2% would be a more valid enquiry.”

Zameer compares the studio's work in the private realm as that of an incubator's. “It can be applied to a much larger pursuit,” he says. For instance, extending the concept of Smoke House Deli to a Teach for India classroom in Malwani, Malad, the duo used markers to depict different professions on the walls that would allow the children a peep into the outside world. “The biggest challenge for kids in slums is that they cannot see life beyond the slum,” explains Ayaz. Our cousin who teaches these kids wanted to show them everything else that exists outside... the drawings were to inspire and suggest that they can find a job in a Bollywood sound studio and see a different side of things.”

A more long-term public engagement has been The Bandra Project, an overreaching self-funded initiative that undertakes research and experiments with novel community interventions, such as the doll house kits. With the sale of 50 kits of the Ranwar Oratory, the brothers raised Rs18,000 for the Advance Locality Management. “They (the ALM) paid Rs 4,500 in outstanding electricity bills with that money! Isn't that amazing... we could’ve never predicted that this money would go towards paying an outstanding bill,” exclaims Ayaz. Having demonstrated the efficacy of this intervention, they are now ready with a kit for St Andrew's Church.

Sketch notes

On their desks now are plans for a Jain museum, the NFDC theatre, a microbrewery in Kolkata, three more outlets for The Social and The Busride's own workshop-studio in Goa. Juggling 18-20 projects at any given time means the brothers seldom spend time together and family dinners are a rarity. They do, however, make time to teach (Ayaz at ISDN and Zameer at Kamla Raheja School of Architecture), read and sketch — the sketchbook being a childhood appendage that the brothers remain inseparable from to this day.

So what would be a quirky, dream project? “A children's park,” says Zameer. “We assume that our designs are all grown up, so it would be interesting to see what kids sense... what is it that they respond to.”

“If we were to create something that would allow a kid to turn a wheel upon which a building would rotate, then we'd be able to give him something cool while developing his motor skills,” says Ayaz, whose son will turn a year old in April. “That would be really fun to execute and put in the public space for everyone.”

We'd be game for the Busride!