Rani aka Julie aka Rowdy Ranga.- R.I.P.

Rani died yesterday. She had ascites which is an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity, a condition that I have not seen any dog come out of. She was admitted to the WSD kennels when someone called about a very fat dog with a very fat belly lying motionless near the Gateway of India. We instantly knew that it must be Rani.

We brought her, treated her and kept her for a month. It was amazing that she got better and went back to her home at the Gateway of India where she must have lived for over 13 years. I saw her a week back sitting near the police chowkie on the footpath next to the Taj Mahal Hotel. She recognized me, wagged her tail and made a few noises. I patted her and was happy that she was back to her normal self.

Fifteen days after she went back and a week after I saw her, the same condition recurred and she was again admitted to the WSD kennels two days ago but unfortunately did not make it.

Rani was a favorite with every one at the Gateway of India. All the policemen, the photographers, the Taj Mahal hotel staff, the street dwellers and urchins knew her as Julie.

I used to see her every year when we used to immunize all the dogs in Colaba and around the Gateway against rabies. She was quite boisterous and used to accompany us whilst we were vaccinating all her Gateway friends. It used to be as if she was either poking her nose at every vaccination or checking on what we are doing to her friends. Else I used to see her at the Gateway on my way to Elephanta or Alibag and she would always greet me with a nice wag.

If you had visited any WSD stall, you would have seen her photo on the poster(shown above) which featured Cyrus Broacha. She is sitting on top of his head and looking straight into the camera. She has pushed the stray dog cause by featuring in WSD’s adopt a street dog campaign along with Cyrus. She was called Rowdy Ranga in it.

She was not the same slim dog that you saw in the Cyrus poster and had put on quite a bit of weight. She used to look very roly poly. I had told Cyrus that both the models (him and Rani) had put on tremendous weight over the years.

As I reflected on Rani’s life, I realized that we have never had to treat her in her entire life for any ailment. This meant that she had lived a very healthy life and never had injuries, wounds and basic first aid ailments that most stray dogs suffer sometime in their life on the street.

I will really miss Rani when we go vaccinating dogs at the Gateway or on my next visit to Elephanta and Alibag. She was one of the sweetest and happiest strays I have ever known.

The Modern Hindu Hotel

Little did the late K.S.N. Hebbar know that more than eighty years after he started the Modern Hindu Hotel, office goers , businessmen, tourists and hundreds of other Mumbaikars would line up at his boarding house in South Mumbai to eat simple South Indian’ meals on the banana leaf .

Hebbar came to Mumbai after leaving the Vishakapatnam hotel he used to work in when the owner refused to give him his monthly four annas salary. Using his brother’s savings, he set up Modern Hindu Hotel in 1926. It used to cater to the lodging and boarding needs of the textile traders who frequented Mumbai from Chennai, Tirupur, Cochin, Erode and towns in Andhra Pradesh during the cotton textile boom.

Modern is nestled on the fourth floor of the 1900’s built Apeejay Chambers on Wallace Street close to the Sterling and New Excelsior theatres in Fort. It would be better to take the high wooden steps than the lift as you can build an appetite and do justice to the meal that you are about to experience. You will pass by their lodging facility on the third floor and see a television belting out a south Indian channel being keenly watched by the lodgers... After you have taken a coupon from the counter you will pass the spotlessly clean kitchen to your left and come to two rooms with old style wooden chairs and tables which can seat twenty two people at a time. Take a seat by the verandah and through the grill you will be able to see the old and heritage building tops of the Fort area.

Modern serves simple South Indian meals on the banana leaf at a very affordable Rs 45. A typical meal consists of unlimited dal, vegetable, sambar, rasam, chapattis, dahi or buttermilk, papad, pickle and a mountain of rice which the regular South Indian clientele lap up with relish. .

Although Hebbar hailed from Kattingeri, a village near Udipi in Karnataka, he incorporated cuisines of the various South Indian states in the food. They vary the vegetable preparation, the rasam and sambar style on a daily basis. The sambar is made in the Tamilian style with shallots or with raw masala or fried masala and sometimes with or without coconut. The rasam could be with any one of these flavorings… horsegram, tomato, pepper, green chilly,ginger or simply the normal rasam. Amongst the vegetables you will be able to eat Avial, Morkootan, Koot and many other varieties or any popular vegetable prepared with coconut in the Manglorean style. Be sure to take an extra rice papad which is crisp and light and sourced specially from Chennai.

Modern feeds more than 225 people daily on week days and don’t be surprised if you have to wait in a line to have your meal during peak lunch hours. Regulars like Sudhakar Shetty; an insurance investigator who resides in Mira Road, a distant Mumbai suburb has been coming here for the past twenty five years. He likes the food as it is simple, light, tasty, hygienic and very homely. Prashant Chopra, a corporate executive who has come here once before liked the food so much that he brought his colleagues along this time. “Awesome” he says and adds “ This place is clean and has simple food seeped in old tradition, something that we are losing in today’s modern and fast world”.

Though there is no sign that says “The owner eats here”, A. K. Hebbar has been having his afternoon lunch at Modern ever since he took over the running of the place in 1966 from his father.” You will see me eating my meals here at 2:30 pm every day”. This is because he wants to know what his last customer has eaten to ensure that the same quality is being maintained. He says that Modern will be around maybe for maximum of five or ten years more. The business is loss making due to the high taxes and rising prices of ingredients and as his father had started the place with the objective of ‘community service’ , he does not want to drastically increase the price of the meal. Secondly his well settled sons are not interested in carrying the business forward.

So hurry and go to Modern Hindu Hotel for a simple South Indian Meal seeped in tradition before it is too late.

Modern Hindu Hotel
12,Wallace Street, 4th Floor, Apeejay Chambers,
Wallace Street, Fort, Mumbai 400 001
Tel: 22072992/22072778

Timings: Lunch: 12:00 – 2:30 p.m.
Dinner : 7:15 to 9:00 pm
(Had written this for Touchdown Mumbai)

Happy New Year - 2008

Bhaji Galli

Bhaji Galli takes its name from ‘Nana’ Jagannath Shankersheth’ who owned large areas of land in this neighbourhood of Grant Road (W). It is named Shanker Sheth Lane and Jagannath Lane but, of course, nobody would remember these. They would simply know it as Bhaji Galli. You would be able to buy all types of fruits and vegetables here. Bhaji Galli has three hundred plus licensed vegetable and fruit vendors. Some of them will keep only specific kinds of vegetables. Ten vendors sell only tomatoes, four vendors sell tuberous roots and tubers , more than twenty vendors sell fruits , three vendors sell sprouted pulses , around ten vendors sell ‘kanda batata’ and the rest sell a mélange of vegetables.

So how did this little lane become a vegetable market, popularly known as Bhaji Galli? Well, the genesis lies within the confines of a very big chawl towards the Grant Road station end called Bhalchandra building. In the 1930s, the white Gandhi topi wearing vegetable vendors from Vasai, popularly called ‘Vasaiwale’ used to sell vegetables in the chawl’s courtyard. They used to procure home grown vegetables from the weekly markets of Virar, Vasai, Nala Sopara, Bolinj, Holi and Nirmal, arrive here in the afternoon and go back after selling off their wares. This would ensure that the vegetables sold by them were fresh. Slowly over time more and more people started setting up their shops till they were spread across the whole lane.

Though the “Vasaiwale” coming here have dwindled drastically, one such Vasaiwala, Babu Jeevan Naik has been coming here for the past fifty years. The vegetables he sells are always very fresh and lush green. He says that twenty five percent of the people now telephone him and opt for home delivery. He has customers who come from Colaba , Haji Ali, Walkeshwar and Malabar Hill, apart from the office goers who pick up vegetables on their way back home.

Jerestin Sidhwa , a Colaba resident has been visiting Bhaji Galli for the past 15 years. She says that she prefers this place as many of the seasonal vegetables are available here but not at the Colaba market. “The vegetables here might be slightly more expensive but are better and fresher and I just love the shopping experience here”, she adds.

In one of the arms of the lane, you can identify the East Indian women from Vasai in their traditional maroon sarees who sell specific home grown produce. Jacinta Augustin Burbos is one of the few East Indians left and she sells fresh but small quantities of pumpkins, village grown aubergines, flowers, lemons, snake gourd, lemongrass, ‘alu’or colacasia leaves, bitter gourd, kelful or banana flower and even the wild ‘gavthi’ mushrooms in season.

One more interesting vendor is Kamlakar Karande popularly known as KK. He introduced what he calls ‘Continental’ vegetables to Bhaji Galli in 1982. This was when these exotic vegetables were not as commonly available as they are today. He was the only vendor who stocked basil, thyme, celery, parsley, broccoli, Chinese cabbage, bell peppers, pak choy, avocados (from Ooty),cherry tomatoes,babycorn,leek and mushrooms and sell them at reasonable rates. He was one of the few vendors who called out to you in English “ Want to take some celery or parsley sir” he used to shout out at every passerby. His grandmother Kandabai Khade was one of the four original vendors who set up shop or benches as they were known then in Bhaji Galli in the 1930s.

Octogenarian , Shashikala Dalvi will never forget Bhaji Galli. She resided in this area before she got married and moved to Dadar. “For many years after my marriage, I used to take back ‘fresh vegetables’ from my ‘regular’ vendors whenever I used visit my parents’ home", she reminisces.

If you visit Bhaji galli in the evening, you will find it crowded with hundreds of people buying their vegetables with shouts of ‘Tomato daha rupaye kilo, Batata aathra rupaya kilo’ in different nasal twangs, renting the air. It truly is a one-of-a-kind shopping experience.

Mumbai's Irani cafes and a blog

My first tryst with Irani Cafes was with the one opposite my house. It used to be called Sassani and I can still place the Irani gentlemen who used to run it. He was tall and lanky, bespectacled and always used to nice to us, ‘kids’ when we used to regularly go there to have ice cream or cold drinks priced at Rs 2 then... We used to keep buying lots of Kwality ice-cream (it used to be only Kwality and not Kwality Wall’s) from Sassani as they were running a contest of completing a collection of little pictures of aircrafts (given with each ice-cream bought). I used to also like the big Jujups and the jelly biscuits. All this stuff was more special to us kids than the bun- maska and chai that one reveres now.I also used to be awed by the big ‘barnis’(bottles) filled with biscuits, cookies and other items which used to be lined up at most of the Irani cafes.

As time went by I encountered other Irani cafes... Persian at Grant Road where my grandfather used to take me to buy bread (bun, ladi paav, brun and sliced) on a daily basis. Kyani, Sassanian and Bastani as they were very near my school. And then as years went by I visited many of them because of the stray dogs or cats that they used to look after and call WSD for the treatment or just to have a chai and bun-maska. Over the years I went to B Merwan at Grant Road, Koolars at Matunga, Kyani and Bastani at Metro, Yazdani at Fort, Café de la Paix at Girgaum, Byculla Restaurant and Bakery at Byculla, Stadium at Churchgate,Military at Kala Ghoda and many others. Will write a blog on Irani cafes and their strays later.

All Irani cafes were the traditional chai bun maska places but better business sense prevailing converted into eating joints (Britannia, Ideal) or beer bars. (Brabourne)

Many articles have been written on the Irani Cafes which you can read here , here and here. Busybee wrote some here and here in his Round and About. I always wished that some one would document the Irani cafes before it is too late. It is already quite late as many of the Irani cafes have closed down. I wished I had the time to do it.

And then I happened to meet Bruce Carter, a local historian from Australia who started collecting information on the Irani Cafes. In a Bombay street directory of 1947, he found more than 300 Irani cafés listed. Today, there are only around 20 left. When I asked him why he chose to document Irani Cafes, he had this to say....

“I use a lot of oral history in my work. Oral history has the ability to bring the past alive in a way that documents cannot. There is also great power in the spoken word. Two stories that particularly struck a chord with me were the story of an Irani arriving in Mumbai in the 1940s, during the monsoon. He had traveled for days, overland, and arrived to this strange city, with pouring rain, spicy food and a language he did not speak. Yet he made Mumbai his home, and has given the city's people something that, on the face of it, is so 'everyday' it may not be thought about too much. This is typical of migrant stories the world over - the self reliance and want to carve a future typifies the migrant experience”.

“Coming from Australia, we are a land almost exclusively of people from 'other places' - I am first generation, the child of migrants. So I relate to these stories of packing up, taking a step outside the familiar, and finding a new future in a new land”.

He continues “Another story that sticks in my mind is that of a young Irani boy starting junior college. The master was reading the roll. He came to the name IRANI, the master stopped, looked up and said to this young boy "ahh, your father must be a chaiwalla, yes?” The whole group of boys burst into laughter. The young Irani was embarrassed, not understanding what was so funny about his parents running a cafe. After all, they were giving their community a service, providing not just chai, bun maska and omelets, but also provisions such as soap, pens, toothpaste etc. Surely this was something good? He thought. Nevertheless, for the rest of his years at the school, the master always called him "chaiwallas son"...”


He says that he tried to do some research but there wasn’t much information on the Irani cafes available. – “I was taken by the ambience of these cafes, and was keen to know more. Beyond fairly superficial 'nostalgic' news pieces I couldn’t find anything written that seriously examined the people who have given Mumbai what are, today, an institution in the city. The exception to this was a short film by the organisation, PUKAR done a few years ago. Looking at this film, I thought 'wow, there are many stories to be told here, lets start talking to people”

He then began by visiting as many Irani cafes as he could find, and over time started doing oral history interviews with Irani cafe owners and their families. Almost without exception, these people were open and welcoming and very keen to share their histories with him.

He then started a blog which you can find here . He adds that the aim of the blog is to get people to contribute, and start to 'map memories' - in this sense using communication technologies as a preliminary research tool, and see what pictures emerge and how, if at all, they differ from the other research that he is undertaking. Keep checking his blog for more as he has already conducted 15 in depth interviews which he will keep updating on his blog. He has already written about Brittania and Co and Sassanian.

Happy Diwali from WSD

Small World

Diwali is not a good time for animals especially dogs and cats, both pets and strays. Accident cases go up during this time as strays are running helter-skelter due to the noise of the crackers (their hearing five times more than humans). Animal welfare organizations like WSD also get calls for dogs that have suffered burn injuries due to fire-crackers and pets that have got lost.

We got a call today in the morning about a Dalmatian which had rushed into the house of a Lamington Road resident and entrenched himself into their bathroom. A volunteer who stays nearby called us to report this case. The dog was in a good condition so we guessed that it was obviously lost, traumatized due to the fire-crackers and bolted out of its owner’s house. We told the volunteer to ask around or even walk the dog to see if it led them to its owners. The poor fellow refused to budge and moved from the bathroom to under the sofa of the living room. He was so traumatized that he just shivered away. We were just going to send some WSD personnel over to bring him to the kennels that I received an SMS from another volunteer…. “Black and white Dalmatian ran away from home.Charles. Call so and so on *** if u have seen him”.

We immediately called the number on the SMS and gave them the number of the person whose house he was occupying. They told us that he had run away from their home at Altamount Road due to the crackers and was missing since yesterday afternoon. They had been trying to search him out ever since and had even made announcements on radio about him.

They went to Lamington road and it turned out to be their 'Charles'. A happy ending to this tale in a small world of the animal network in the city.