Looking back in anger

It may be something to do with the moon, which is waxing gibbous quite stupendously. Or more likely, it’s just the retreating monsoon that leads to an outbreak of nostalgia. Forget all the endless carping about roads and traffic jams and floods and garbage. The city lives for these months of relentless rain, endless travel torture, useless umbrellas and lots of carping about the municipality and the met department.

But the monsoon cannot be about the BMC. It’s about the rain on a Rusty Shield-Bearer and hot tea and brun maska. Clichés, clichés and the last chance to pick up on monsoon magic.

Use the rain is a catalyst for a search for what’s missing. Like Wayside Inn at Kala Ghoda, that delightfully old-fashioned eaterie with its cantankerous waiters, liver and onions with chips, flavoured mousses, checked tablecloths, Mario Miranda cartoons on the walls. Wayside Inn, where BR Ambedkar is supposed to have frequented when he was in the Constituent Assembly – did he really write the Constitution here? Gone.

Mumbai’s short tryst with destiny is now a Chinese restaurant of the slightly swankier variety. History erased without a trace. Well, technically, nestled in the wall between Silk Route and Rhythm House is a takeaway counter with the legend ‘Wayside Inn’ on top. It’s not the same.

A friend looked at the rain the other day and said he missed Café Naaz. Hummph. Here, you can blame the BMC for what happened next. Long ago, high up on the top of Ridge Road, next to Kamala Nehru Park, was Café Naaz. You didn’t go there to eat, though in Mumbai’s vast tradition of egg meals – they still sell boiled eggs on the roads after all for hungry office workers returning home late at night – the omelette and chips weren’t bad.

You went there for romance. Nestled among the gul mohurs, you looked down at the sweeping expanse of Marine Drive, all the way from Walkeshwar to Nariman Point with Cuffe Parade gleaming in the distance.

For some reason, the wrestling federation held its press conferences there. Amidst the billing and coochie-cooing, you might meet Dara Singh and King Kong, fierce rivals at one time. Or Randhawa and the Masked

Wonder. In those days passing down Hornby Vellard, all you could see were huge cutouts of these precursors of the WWE era.

Then the municipality said they wanted some water pump exactly where Café Naaz was. Brilliant.