Yazdani Bakery
Deep in the dusty, crowded alleyways of old Mumbai, in lanes packed with people and architecture from the British Raj, somewhere between the Asiatic Library, Flora Fountain and Strand bookstall, stands a short, surreal little building. It has a red tiled roof that gives way to soft green peeling paint and a handful of signs at various angles that proclaim, before the chaos of the streets take over: Yazdani Restaurant and Bakery.
Its strange architecture comes from strange history: it was a Japanese bank during World War I but bears the marks of successive generations, of the British who ruled, the Iranian bakers who bought it, and the Indians who inherited it.
Meherwan Zend, an Indian Zoroastrian of Iranian descent, started the bakery decades ago, and it is now run by his aging sons: Zend Meherwan Zend, who used to be a boxer a very long time ago, and Parvez Irani Zend, managing the mix of workers and customers, talking of the old days. The Zends are particularly proud of their German clientele of long ago, and talk of making a kind of bread only available in what was Czechoslovakia. And of sticking it out, over the years, even while the quality of yeast declined. “In the old days we could leave a bread out for 15 days. It would harden, but not spoil. But the life of bread has shortened drastically to just a couple of days.”
And all the while, as the years progress, the paint keeps peeling, the bread gets poorer and what was once an iconic establishment stumbles deeper into ruin.
But Parvez is defiant. “It isn’t about good business or bad business. It is about what you like. And we love it.”
But while his father used to make seven-tier cakes, the bakery now serves the earthiest of worker’s meals, iconic in a city that never stops working: cutting chai and brun-maska. Chai is tea (cooked and spiced till the poorest of tea leaves have been subdued), cutting chai is a half-glass of it, and maska is butter, slapped generously on freshly-made buns churned out of the oven in the next room by boys in their underwear.
Parvez talks of the time when the city was on strike and shops were ordered closed or threatened with violence. So he made bread at night instead. “The next morning there was a pregnant lady walking by, looking for something to eat, afraid of what she might encounter on the street. I went out and talked to her like an older brother, telling her not to be scared, and to come in. I gave her tea, bread and butter, and she started crying with her first bite. She hadn’t eaten in 12 hours.”
And it is enough, when you dip your brun-maska into your chai, enough to forget the ruined streets of Mumbai outside. The walls inside are patchy green too, with the Faravahar representing a guardian angel, and a portrait of Zoroaster the prophet looking over everyone.
“Parvez,” said a German actress once, “you are the chosen one. You are the baker.”
June 2008
