THE IRANIAN DELIGHT

10th March 2006

Its almost 4 am and i am hungry... well, i am always hungry and have the weirdest eating habits.... which include eating at all the weird hours... breakfast at 1 in the afternoon... lunch at 8 in the evening and am closing in on my dinner time.... but then again i don't wanna eat what's in my freezer... and i soooo don't wanna eat ' things' i can cook... instead i wanna eat at an 'Irani' restaurant... yeaa' the good ol' 'Irani' cafes/restaurants sprinkled all over Bombay and Pune... i wanna eat a spicy 'biryani' and drink some 'Irani' tea...

'Irani' restaurants date back to the time when the British still ruled and screwed the country... where the whites( Shane hope ya reading this) called us 'blackies'... and the locals were a superstitious lot...During those early days.. the locals..( primarily the Hindu Brahmin's and the Gujarati's) considered it inauspicious to have/ or run an eatery at/from the corner of any street.... taking advantage of these empty corners.. the 'Iranians set up their cafes at the most prominent corners in Bombay and Pune....(Goodluck in Pune.... Mondegar in Bombay.. being two such examples)

My first experience of an 'Irani' restaurant dates back to the summer of 1999... i had just moved to Law School in Pune... and would invariably be hungry at or around 3 am.... and no matter what (non existent) stocks i had in my room.. i never wanted to touch them... i always wanted to step out and explore... it was on one of those nocturnal rendezvous that i discovered an 'Iranian restaurant... 'Lucky'... it was nothing more than a small long hall.. lit by dim white neon's...old creaky wooden chairs.... marble and plastic tables... and a huge life size picture of Dev Anand( famous Indian Movie Star) ( Dev Anand spent 4 years in Pune .. during his days at F.T.I.I. and legend has it, that he ate dinner there very night) behind the counter. I distinctly remember the rain that night... it was pouring. I was drenched, broke (nothing new) and hungry.... and to give me company were atleast 100 others...all strangers but brought together by an insatiable hunger for the Iranian delicacies and the never ending cash crunch...( everyone was always broke in law school and Pune.... the month always started on the 3rd and invariably ended on the 5th.. after which it was life on a shoe string budget... and had it not been for these 'Iranian cafes.. Pune might have resembled Somalia and i probably would have been thin...).. and yes the food was worht killing for....the ' 'biryani's'... the 'bheja frys'... the mutton curries... and the ' chappatis'(Indian bread)...spicy...and divine...

My tryst with these 'Irani' Cafe's didn't end that night.... but it was instead, the beginning of a beautiful relationship....my hunger .. my need... my greed.. made me discover most if not all the 'Iranian cafes/restaurants in Pune...i moved from street to street looking for them... i was like a love struck fool....i moved from 'Lucky'.. and discovered ' GoodLuck'...'Olympia' and Kayani ....satisfied but always hungry for more..

I would start most days sitting on an old creaky wooden chair at Goodluck sipping on a cup of strong black ' 'Irani' tea'...( rumor had it that 'Irani' tea was made of bones.... but i didn't care...) and a freshly baked bun soaked in butter called 'bun maska' or a Shrews berry biscuit( 490 calories in each biscuit) my paunch is a result of those biscuits.. you could never stop at one ...... dinner would be at Lucky's... ' 'biryani'', 'chappati' and bread pudding..... the nostalgia right now... is making me go crazy... please just pray that none of my flatmates are awake and walking around... coz if they are i am sure to eat them.. everything around me looks like a plate of 'biryani'....anyways....

I moved to Bombay a couple of years back.( home of the ' 'Irani' restaurants).. and luckily( no pun intended) my office was in South Bombay (Fort) which had more 'Iraniian cafes than ya can imagine...there was one in almost every lane.... but there are 5 that stand out in my memory...Leopold's... Mondegar... Olympiad.....Britannia and Military..

The first two being the upmarket 'Irani' cafes of the 21st century, playing ballads form the 80's and serving chilled beer and the beef steaks to kill for... Olympiad and Britannia were Shabana's and my favorite dinner hangout.... after our grueling day at the office.. where i was subjected to torture.. courtesy my boss( most might remember her from my previous mails).. we would invariably unwind eating the usual.. ''biryani''... 'bheja fry'.. and bread pudding( she hated the pudding though... but i strongly recommend it to all), and then there was Military... my personal favorite... it was more of an 'Iranian restaurant for the lawyers and the stock brokers.... strategically located on 'Dalal' street, between the Bombay High Court and the Stock Exchange... and was always packed with people in black robes(lawyers) and pot bellied brokers guzzling down beer....those were the good old days...
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Times have changed now... slowly but steadily the numbers of these 'Iranian cafes have dwindled... the so called pseudo quasi westernized young of the nation ( Atif you better be reading this).. have flocked to the Barista's and the Coffee Days and have forgotten all 'bout the good ol' 'Iranian joints... the booming (its a myth though..) economy has taken away the people from these eateries....the result being many of them shutting down.. or being sold out to the Barista's.....Globalization is (if not already) killing these eateries....I remember one such...located at the corner of M.G road Pune... shut down...and was bought over by a Barista... it was a painful moment... one less place to enjoy the goodies.....

I can still picture my self sitting at Lucky's with Anant Manan and Ayushi... sipping a cup of tea.. watching the rain and enjoying our 'biryani's... but not sure if i or the future generations of our nation will ever be able to enjoy this simple pleasure of life....again... i hope its not too late .. i hope they never shut down... and i hope after reading this.. all of ya out there.. will please eat at an 'Iranian cafe on your next visit to Bombay or Pune.... and yes... if any of ya'll are coming over to Scotland please do not forget to get me some biryani....