the old gated villas white high-rises called Miramar and Palm Beach arose. I know not where they came from, but the affluent seemed to suddenly spring like gods from the very ground. Everywhere, the talk was of nothing but mint-fresh software engineers and scrap metal dealers and pashmina exporters and umbrella manufacturers and I know not what else. Millionaires, by the hundreds first, then by the thousands.
Once a month Papa paid Malabar Hill a visit. He would put on a fresh-washed kurta and take me by the hand up the hill so we could “pay our respects” to the powerful politicians. We gingerly made our way to the back doors of vanilla-colored villas, the white-gloved butler wordlessly pointing at a terra-cotta pot just inside the door. Papa dropped his brown paper bag among the heap of other paper bags, the door unceremoniously slammed shut in our face, and we were off with our rupee-stuffed paper bags to the next Bombay Regional Congress Committee official. But there were rules. Never to the front of the house. Always at the back.
And then, business done, humming a ghazal under his breath, Papa bought us, on the trip I am remembering, a mango juice and some grilled corn and we sat on a bench in the Hanging Gardens, the public park up on Malabar Hill. From our spot under palm trees and bougainvilleas we could see the comings and goings at Broadway, a spanking-new apartment building across the torrid green: the businessmen climbing into their Mercedes; the children emerging in school uniforms; the wives off for tennis and tea. A steady stream of wealthy Jains—silky robes, hairy chests, gold-rimmed glasses—headed past us to the Jain Mandir, a temple where they washed their idols in sandalwood paste.
Papa sank his teeth into the corn and violently mowed his way down the cob, bits of kernel sticking to his mustache and cheeks and hair. “Lots of money,” he said, smacking his lips and gesturing across the street with the savaged cob. “Rich people.”
A girl and her nanny, on their way to a birthday party, emerged from the apartment building and flagged down a taxi.
“That girl is in my school. See her in the playground.”
Papa flung his finished corncob into the bushes and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
“Is that so?” he said. “She nice?”
“No. She think she spicy hot.”
At that moment, I recall, a van pulled up to the apartment building’s doors. It was the fabled restaurateur Uday Joshi, delivering his latest business, home catering, for those distressing times when servants had the day off. An enormous picture of a winking Joshi stared at us from the side of the van, a bubble erupting from his mouth. NO MESS. NO FUSS. WE DO IT FOR YOU , it said.
The doorman held open the door as the caterer, in white jacket, bolted from the back of the van with tin trays and lids and foil. And I remember the deep rumble of Papa’s voice.
“What Joshi up to now?”
Father had long ago done away with the old U.S. Army tent, replacing it with a brick house and plastic tables. It was a cavernous hall, simple, boisterous with noise. When I was twelve, however, Papa decided to move upmarket, closer to Joshi’s Hyderabad Restaurant, and he turned our old restaurant compound into the 365-seat Bollywood Nights.
In went a stone fountain. Over the center of the dining room, Papa hung a disco glitter-ball, made of mirrors, revolving over a tiny dance floor. He had the walls painted gold before covering them, just like he had seen in pictures of a Hollywood restaurant, with the signed photographs of Bollywood stars. Then he bribed starlets and their husbands to regularly drop by the restaurant a couple of times a month, and, miraculously, the glossy magazine
Hello Bombay!
always had a photographer there precisely at the right moment. And on weekends Papa hired singers who were the spitting image of the hugely popular Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan.
So successful was the whole venture that, a few years after
Once a month Papa paid Malabar Hill a visit. He would put on a fresh-washed kurta and take me by the hand up the hill so we could “pay our respects” to the powerful politicians. We gingerly made our way to the back doors of vanilla-colored villas, the white-gloved butler wordlessly pointing at a terra-cotta pot just inside the door. Papa dropped his brown paper bag among the heap of other paper bags, the door unceremoniously slammed shut in our face, and we were off with our rupee-stuffed paper bags to the next Bombay Regional Congress Committee official. But there were rules. Never to the front of the house. Always at the back.
And then, business done, humming a ghazal under his breath, Papa bought us, on the trip I am remembering, a mango juice and some grilled corn and we sat on a bench in the Hanging Gardens, the public park up on Malabar Hill. From our spot under palm trees and bougainvilleas we could see the comings and goings at Broadway, a spanking-new apartment building across the torrid green: the businessmen climbing into their Mercedes; the children emerging in school uniforms; the wives off for tennis and tea. A steady stream of wealthy Jains—silky robes, hairy chests, gold-rimmed glasses—headed past us to the Jain Mandir, a temple where they washed their idols in sandalwood paste.
Papa sank his teeth into the corn and violently mowed his way down the cob, bits of kernel sticking to his mustache and cheeks and hair. “Lots of money,” he said, smacking his lips and gesturing across the street with the savaged cob. “Rich people.”
A girl and her nanny, on their way to a birthday party, emerged from the apartment building and flagged down a taxi.
“That girl is in my school. See her in the playground.”
Papa flung his finished corncob into the bushes and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
“Is that so?” he said. “She nice?”
“No. She think she spicy hot.”
At that moment, I recall, a van pulled up to the apartment building’s doors. It was the fabled restaurateur Uday Joshi, delivering his latest business, home catering, for those distressing times when servants had the day off. An enormous picture of a winking Joshi stared at us from the side of the van, a bubble erupting from his mouth. NO MESS. NO FUSS. WE DO IT FOR YOU , it said.
The doorman held open the door as the caterer, in white jacket, bolted from the back of the van with tin trays and lids and foil. And I remember the deep rumble of Papa’s voice.
“What Joshi up to now?”
Father had long ago done away with the old U.S. Army tent, replacing it with a brick house and plastic tables. It was a cavernous hall, simple, boisterous with noise. When I was twelve, however, Papa decided to move upmarket, closer to Joshi’s Hyderabad Restaurant, and he turned our old restaurant compound into the 365-seat Bollywood Nights.
In went a stone fountain. Over the center of the dining room, Papa hung a disco glitter-ball, made of mirrors, revolving over a tiny dance floor. He had the walls painted gold before covering them, just like he had seen in pictures of a Hollywood restaurant, with the signed photographs of Bollywood stars. Then he bribed starlets and their husbands to regularly drop by the restaurant a couple of times a month, and, miraculously, the glossy magazine
Hello Bombay!
always had a photographer there precisely at the right moment. And on weekends Papa hired singers who were the spitting image of the hugely popular Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan.
So successful was the whole venture that, a few years after
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