Merwan's is popular for its mava cakes and khari biscuits. Photo by Raj Lalwani.
Ever since the century-old Merwan and Company announced that it would soon be shutting shop as soon as mid-April, Mumbai city has been awash in nostalgia for its vanishing Irani restaurants.
Newspapers have been brimming with articles lamenting the imminent demise of Merwan's, whose owners decided that they were getting too old to run the establishment. Two photographers have even started a Facebook page chronicling the last days of the Irani café outside Grant Road station. Every morning, the eatery is being thronged by customers hoping to get a last taste of its famous mawa cakes.
Started by Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran in the early years of the 20th century, Merwan and other Irani restaurants offered Mumbai the opportunity to eat spicy kheema, delectable cakes and buttered buns, all washed down with cups of milky chai. Seated on Bentwood chairs at marble-topped tables, Mumbaikars would congregate in Irani cafés to debate, flirt, smoke, gossip and watch the world go by.
Until the 1980s, Irani cafés seemed to stand at the corner of every busy street. At peak, there were an estimated 400 such cafés across Mumbai. Today, perhaps two dozen remain. But Mumbai residents bemoaning the passing of the Irani cafés aren't just than mourning the disappearance of the unique food and decor, observers contend. They are actually expressing a yearning for a more unhurried time when the city wasn't riven by such acute class divisions.
"I think Irani restaurants, for some, evoke a nostalgia for a form of relatively egalitarian and democratic social mixing and public sociability that the world of the coffee house, the small restaurant...once stood for," said historian Prashant Kidambi, the author of an excellent history of Mumbai in the early years of the 20th century. "One would usually find people from different social classes here: busy executives, unemployed fellows marking time in the neighbourhood, students, and more plebeian elements."
Kidambi, who teaches at the University of Leicester, noted that since the 1990s, "the world of the restaurant – as much else – has become more socially segmented along class lines".
Added Simin Patel, an Oxford historian who is writing a book on Mumbai's Irani cafés and runs a vibrant blog about city history, "They represent cosmopolitanism, affordability, sociability, the hallmarks of an earlier culture of hospitality in the city."
In another indication of that other familiar icons were also vanishing, the art deco New Empire theatre in South Mumbai closed down at the end of March without warning.
With Merwan's about to pass into history, it has been flooded by so many visitors, the owners almost seem irritated. "Every day from 5.30am, they're there," one of them told The Times of India. "Barely any room to stand inside the place. I go in and there they are, photographing the ceiling!"
In all likelihood, the photographers he was complaining about were Raj Lalwani and Kashish Parpiani, who have started the Tales from Merwan Facebook page to “visually remember” the café.
Ironically, even as Mumbai's Irani restaurants are on the brink of extinction, they have inspired upmarket eateries in Gurgaon and London.
Opened at the end of last year in a Gurgaon mall, SodaBottleOpenerWala (an apocryphal Mumbai surname) describes itself as a "Bombay Irani Cafe" that serves "Parsi/Irani food and a bit of Bombay street food".
Even more intriguing is London's Dishoom, which has been in operation since July 2010. It says it "draws upon the heritage and tradition" of Irani cafés with its "all-day menu paying homage to the food of Bombay". It has two branches and the dishes on offer include wada pao, chili cheese toast and rajma frankies.
It's even earned the approval of Mumbai residents who spend time in the UK. "The first thing it did was introduce an Indian food culture separate from the stodgy, archaic curry house concept that Britain would have most believe as the real India," said food writer Pooja Vir. It is "a breath of fresh air for any Indian living in the city".
The tiles and wooden tables at Merwan's are an essential part of its character. Photo by Kashish Parpiani.
Dishoom's Shoreditch branch, London.
SodaBottleOpenerWala, Gurgaon.