Bangalore is home away from home for many Iranians

Having spent almost 18 years in the city, Sufi Restaurant owner Mozhgan Karimi cannot imagine a life somewhere else. “I came to the city to study almost two decades ago. I knew, from day one, that Bangalore is the place where I would eventually settle down and have a family,” she says. Pursuing her Master’s degree in Anthropology, Karimi has grown with an evolving Bangalore ever since she set foot in the city.

“Though I still haven’t picked up the local language, I learnt English after coming to Bangalore. My sons speak Hindi, Kannada and English,” says the mother of two, Pouriya, a student of the 12th standard, and Dardia, who is in the sixth standard.
In 2004, Mozhgan Karimi and her husband Mohammed Karimi opened an Iranian restaurant, Sufi, which recently shifted to Koramangala 5th Block. “Iranian cuisine includes kebabs and barbequed eatables, and those are popular with the Indians too. I have a number of regular Indian and Iranian customers,” she says.

And has business been good? “In the past 18 years, the city has undergone much change. The population has increased drastically. That’s working well for my restaurant,” says Karimi, who is also a part of an Iranian association in the city, which meets once a month.

Dr Nader Mohandesi, an Iranian by birth, calls himself a Bangalorean. “I’ve been living in this city for the past 25 years. I studied medicine here. And I decided to settle here with my Indian wife, even though we had the option of shifting to Iran or going to Assam, my wife’s native place,” he says. Bangalore has changed over the years, and Dr Mohandesi has grown with the city.

“Bangalore used to be a peaceful and quiet place. Traffic was so disciplined that there was no need for signal lights. I decided to stay back as I knew that the city was evolving and I could grow with it,” he says.

Dr Mohandesi owns the Avhieta Hospital in the city. “I used to be part of a rock band in college. I used to be the drummer. In the no-cable days, our group was even featured in an episode of Chitrahaar,” he recalls, as he talks of the days when Doordarshan ruled Indian TV. A popular doctor among his community members, most of Dr Mohandesi’s patients are Iranians.

Shadmehr Vadoodi, 30, a student of computer applications in the city, says, “I’ve been here for more than two years. Indians and Iranians express their happiness and joy in the same manner –– eating and partying. The only difficulty here is finding beef.” In the first month of his stay in Bangalore, Vadoodi created a group of Iranians in Bangalore on Facebook. “There are around 30-40 members in that group,” he says.  Arsalan, 20, is a member of the Facebook group. “The 4,000 Iranians here all know each other,” he says.