Closing time for India's Iranian cafes

Closing time for India's Iranian cafes By Raja Murthy MUMBAI - As India and Iran struggle over recent oil and nuclear power squabbles, a quaintly delicious cultural link between the two ancient civilizations is also fighting for survival, with the famously cranky Iranian cafes sliding into extinction in Mumbai. Iranian cafes are century-old landmarks in India's financial capital and perhaps Asia's oldest surviving genre of restaurants. Their bun maska (crusty buns split and spread with butter), kari (fluffy) biscuits, custard pies, puddings and paani kum chai (thick milky tea) are as much part of cosmopolitan Mumbai as cheesecakes in New York or croissants on the sidewalk cafes in Paris. Iranian cafes appeared in Mumbai and Karachi (now in Pakistan) after their Zoroastrian-Iranian owners came to India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They followed earlier settlers from Persia, followers of the Prophet Zoroaster (628 BC-551 BC), also called Zarathushtra. The surviving Parsi community in India is hailed as the world's last bastion of the ancient Iranian-Zoroastrian religion. From an estimated 350 Iranian restaurants in the 1950s, barely 25 survived into the year 2008. Landmarks such as Cafe Darayush, Cafe De La Paix (modeled after the original that opened in 1862 at Place del'Opera in Paris), Original Persian Restaurant and Kyani were popular hangouts for journalists, stockbrokers, tourists, college students and young couples dating back to English colonial times. With their distinct and sombre decor, the most famous Iranian cafe contribution to Indian urban folklore was their stern admonishments to patrons - the kind unlikely to be found in any restaurant in the world. Iranian cafes generally place trademark notices of dire warnings to customers. Among the classics: Food will not be served to over drunken persons Do not sit for too long Do not argue with waiters Do not wash hands on plates Those misbehaving with customers and waiters will be handed over to police. In delicious irony - and starkly standing out against current Iranian-Israeli enmity - Jewish-Indian poet Nizzim Ezekiel (1924-2004), immortalized India's Iranian restaurants in a 1972 poem called Irani Restaurant Instructions. Please Do not spit Do not sit more Pay promptly, time is valuable Do not write letter without order refreshment Do not comb, hair is spoiling floor Do not make mischief in cabin our waiter is watching Come again All are welcome whatever caste If not satisfied tell us otherwise tell others God Is Great. But these amusingly solemn shrines to yesteryear are losing out to real estate sharks, burger chains, pizza parlors and the like. Inheritance squabbles are rife between Iranian owners and an educated younger generation disinterested in running a low-cost tea shop. More poignantly, the extinction of Iranian cafes parallels the threat to the entire Parsi community, which now has barely 70,000 survivors living in Mumbai. The Parsis, among India's tiniest ethnic minorities, have disproportionately contributed some of India's most dazzling success stories. Ratan Tata, for example, is chairman of Tatas, one of Asia's largest corporate houses. His predecessor, JRD Tata, founded the India's civil aviation industry, and the late Sam Maneckshaw was India's first field marshal and chief of staff. Zubin Mehta was once conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and is now lifetime conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. And not to forget the late Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, the legendary lead singer of the rock band Queen. Historians say that the early Iranian migrants, largely from rural Iran, worked in the homes of Parsis who were among the upper social strata of migrants from Iran. The workers gathered in evenings to swap stories about their homeland. At such homesick gatherings, many served tea for a small fee. Thus was born, says Mumbai urban legend, the Iranian cafe. One Iranian cafe survivor, the Army Restaurant and Cafe, near the international tourist hotspot Colaba, was in a breakfast buzz when this correspondent dropped by on a recent Saturday morning. Ali Mohammad, an archetypal Iranian restaurant manager, was hollering injunctions - punctuated with lurid curses - to the kitchen to deliver the trademark paani kum tea (less water, more milk version). "Since 1936", he explains, "the British army stayed in the building and that's how we got the name Army Restaurant." According to Mohammed, a major threat to his restaurant is the squabbles between descendants of the original owners over lucrative multi-million dollar property deals involving inherited Iranian cafes that now occupy prime real estate. In July 1999, a dispute among partners killed one of Mumbai's most famous landmarks, Cafe Naaz, the Iranian restaurant atop the elite residential area of Malabar Hill. The six disputing partners failed to renew the municipality license and Mumbai - particularly its young couples - lost a cozy open-air restaurant with a view of the city lights below and starry skies above. Some remaining Iranian cafes, such as Cafe Mundegar and the more internationally famous Leopold Cafe in Colaba, transformed themselves into airy pubs that are now favorite watering holes for Western tourists in Mumbai. As with classic Iranian cafe tradition, the restaurants occupy the corner of a building and have two entrances: one never bumps into an entering or exiting customer. The classic versions still remain, like the century-old Yazdani Bakery on Cawasji Patel Street, near the grand Parsi Fire Temple. Yazdani, in the 1940s, was one of Asia's most famous bakeries, with wedding cakes said to be exported to Japan. Sadly, Iranian restaurants face similar problems across the Pakistan border in Karachi. Seventy percent of the over 100 Iranian cafes open during the 1960s have now closed their doors, estimated the leading local daily newspaper Jung. Indian-Persian culinary links to an ancient shared culture - such as Cafe Jehangir, Cafe Darakshan, Cafe Pehlvi and Cafe India - have disappeared or are disappearing in the southern port city of Karachi, swallowed by the inescapable truth that everything must change, and nothing lasts forever. The vanishing Iranian restaurants leave behind poignant reminders, both to newly arrived tourists and to those who from childhood have eagerly dunked bun maska in Iranian tea. "If asked to quickly pick three random images from my consciousness to define this city [Mumbai], I'd pick the Iranian cafes, the Fiat taxi and the Stock Exchange Building - in that order," wrote leading film animator Gautam Benegal in the blog "Irani Chai Mumbai". "And if anything symbolizes the cosmopolitan nature of this city, it is the corner Iranian [cafe]." Mumbai's cosmopolitan texture, so aptly represented by the endangered Iranian cafes, is also under threat. Regional chauvinism has in recent weeks sparked violent attacks on north Indian immigrants to Mumbai. Political goons have also vandalized the city's black Fiat taxis, owned largely by immigrant north Indians from Uttar Pradesh state. Like its quaint old Iranian cafes, the status of Mumbai as a worldly financial capital of Asia and sister city of New York is also under threat. (Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)