BOOK EXCERPT: A slice of Bombay

He took her to an Irani bakery deep in the heart of Fort. He ordered at the counter and walked back with a plate of brun maska, a waiter following with two glasses of tea. They sat on a bench by a closed window, separated by a plate and two glasses. The wooden slats shredded the sunlight so that it fell on them in ribbons. Kaiz rubbed two crusty slices of brun together to spread the dollop of butter, and then dipped the buttered bread into his tea. A crumb or two glistened on his lips before he licked them away. When he saw her looking, he smiled with his mouth full, without a hint of self-consciousness.

Walking to the bakery, he had told her half-a-dozen stories about the buildings they passed. This landmark was a gift to the city by a trader who nearly brought it to financial ruin. This used to be a brothel. Here was the neo-Gothic style of architecture, there was Indo-Saracenic. 

‘What about that one? What school of architecture is that?’ She pointed at a modern office building, only half-seriously. 

‘Generic.’ His lips turned down a little. ‘That’s modern architecture for you, no imagination, no soul.’ 

‘No soul? You are too much.’ She laughed at him; he took no offence. 

Ira wondered whether these buildings he admired had once been called generic, if they had inspired similar disdain in those who abhorred the new. And how had they acquired souls, become interesting? Would Asha Nivas develop a soul one day, or were souls reserved only for old buildings in some parts of the city? 

She saw that his was a Bombay of the past, of lore and legend. When he told her over tea that he had spent the first ten years of his life in Delhi, she was astonished. It would make sense to her much later, that you needed some distance from a city to be able to worship it the way he did. It had also been his way of belonging: learning its mythology was one of many paths to calling a city home. 

All these signs already made her certain that he would love Irani cafes. He said the Irani cafe was the more open counterpoint to Bombay’s other budget restaurants, the south Indian lunch homes and the Udupi eateries, which he thought had an unspoken brahminical air. 

She was puzzled by that word he used, brahminical. What did it mean—serious? respectable? strict? Her twenty-three years in a brahmin family made it difficult to entertain an alternate definition. Yet, his tone alluded to something cruel, oppressive. 

‘That’s ridiculous. What do you townies have against Udupi restaurants? You think they are unglamorous because they are vegetarian?’ 

‘Precisely.’

‘Let’s settle for different but equal. How about that?’

He shrugged.

‘There’s another way in which they are different but equal too,’ she added. ‘What’s that?’

‘The Irani chai and the Udupi filter coffee. Only a fool would order coffee at an Irani or tea at an Udupi.’

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