A brief history of Iranians who migrated from Yazd to make Mumbai home

Mumbai's favoured chaiwallahs have evolved since migrating to the city from Yazd centuries ago

Hassan Hajati speaks a type of Bambaiyya that exists mainly in vintage Hindi films. “Mai paila seth hai jo apna giraak ko bolta hai ki maal kam leke jao.” He explains that he sometimes has to convince shoppers to buy less extravagant quantities of his famous baklava so that stocks last and more people can taste the dessert “baked in an earthen wood-fired oven, in copper utensils, and fed with honey”. His Iranian Sweets Palace, where he makes and sells this treat based on a 110-year-old recipe, opens only in March to meet the Nowruz needs of the city’s Parsis, Zoroastrian Iranis and Muslim Iranis. Hajati is a third-generation descendant of the last. The shop is a short walk from the Mughal Masjid, a Persian-style blue mosque built 159 years ago in Bhendi Bazaar, another symbol of the enduring presence of Iranians in Mumbai. 

Hajati’s grandfather Haji Gholam Ali travelled to India in 1909 from the drought-affected Central Iranian province of Yazd, like many others in search of greener pastures. Unlike most of his compatriots, however, Ali arrived with enough money to establish his own teahouse and sweets businesses. At its peak, there were five more Iranian-owned baklava shops in the area but those wound up over the years. A long-time stock trader, Hajati does not depend on the glazed diamond-shaped sandwich of nuts and filo pastry, which blushes pink in the middle, for his living. But it is a tradition he has kept going, and which his son is interested in continuing. While refusing to switch to modern ovens or aluminium trays, Hajati does use a swanky website, encourages customers to leave Google reviews and takes bulk orders on WhatsApp. 

Hassan Hajati of the Iranian Sweets Palace | Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar

He also supplies more than a dozen varieties of Iranian nuts to locals through the year. The price of these has shot up after the rial was weakened by the United States’ withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran, and as the reliance on exports grew. He hopes the tough sanctions that were reimposed on the country last year will end soon. Every year right after Nowruz (which coincided with Holi this year), Hajati leaves humid Mumbai for Iran to experience spring, the birth of which the festival actually celebrates. Every year, someone there asks him, “Agha, khun-e Amitabh Bachchan rafti? Salman Khan ra mi bini? (Agha, have you gone to Amitabh Bachchan’s house? Do you see Salman Khan?)”

According to some accounts, the migrations began as early as the mid-1700s. The Zoroastrians of Yazd learnt from Parsis that Mumbai was a land of promise, writes Sunil Kavadi in his book Nakyavarcha Irani (Irani Round the Corner), and they were soon followed by Muslim Iranis. A combination of reasons kept bringing the latter to India, including famine and dry spells, the worsening economy under Qajar rule, and even a need to escape conscription of two years. In most cases, families sent one son here who either set up or worked at small restaurants offering tea and copiously buttered buns — services that did not require much education or capital. The rise of mills in Mumbai provided a ready base for thousands of hungry textile workers. Pune and Hyderabad have Irani pockets too.

‘haft-seen’, the seven items beginning with the Persian letter ‘s’ that are arranged in a Nowruz table spread | Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar

Over time, the Muslims among Iranis came to be called “Mughal Iranis”, a misnomer based on a marker used to identify them in British-era documentation. Whereas tea was traditionally taken black in Iran, the British style of adding milk was adopted here. In the manner of Iran’s kahvekhane, these teahouses also became a hub for artists and intellectuals. When Mohammad Reza Shah visited India before the Revolution and called on them to return, many Iranians chose to go back. Where there were roughly 700 such Irani establishments, there are now likely 40. Some hundred families remain in the city, reckons Sayed Safar Ali, owner of Lucky Restaurant in Bandra, who at 90 is the oldest Iranian still in Mumbai’s food business. 

Many Mumbai Iranians married women from Iran, and have strong family and business ties in both countries. They learnt Persian in school and, like their fellow Mumbaikars, picked up smatterings of various Indian languages. While some in later generations have simultaneously maintained the tradition of selling Irani goodies, others have taken up various professions. “India is home and Iran is motherland,” says Reza Kabul, who started his own architecture firm in 1988 out of the mezzanine in the Worli venue of his father’s empire of Irani establishments. There is also the celebrity doctor Ali Irani, known for counting the Indian cricket team and actor Shah Rukh Khan among his clients. His family still owns canteens including at the Nanavati Hospital, where he heads the physiotherapy department. He is a natural point of contact for Iranian celebrities who visit Mumbai, including director Majid Majidi who filmed Beyond the Clouds (2017) in the city, and actor Reza Golzar, sometimes described as Iran’s Shah Rukh Khan, who stopped by to shoot the Indo-Iranian co-production Salaam Mumbai! (2016).

Tea, cultural events and festivals still bring the Iranis together. Most who set out to explain the “haft-seen” — seven items beginning with the Persian letter “s” that are arranged in a Nowruz table spread — cannot list all its elements fluently without consulting their smartphones. They make it as far as four or five items, or name the same thing twice, in a way that might have prompted a Netflix documentary filmmaker to create a rib-tickling montage. Some Iranian practices like chaharshanbe soori, where people jump over a small bonfire the Wednesday before Nowruz, or Fal-e Hafez, a kind of divination with readings of the 14th-century poet Hafez, are not common in celebrations here. The actor Ali Asgar says he playfully refers to his son as the “D’Souza of the family” given his lack of interest in participating in the customs.

Mansoor Showghi Yezdi’s Cafe Irani Chaii in Mahim — the double ”i” stands for India and Iran — is a monument to his heightened love for both countries. Both national flags are on the wall, flanked by pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and Iran’s supreme leaders, Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei. Tribute is paid, in the form of discounts, on the anniversaries of major events such as India’s independence or the Islamic Revolution in Iran. If the list of dates when prices are reduced seems long, it is because Yezdi’s establishment is driven by something deeper than commerce.  

Sayed Safar Ali, 90, the oldest Iranian still in Mumbai’s food business | Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar

His grandfather started his own establishments after selling chai out of a samovar fitted with a sigdi across the Apollo Bunder area through his teens. “He was tall, well-built, laalam laal (apple-cheeked) so people would notice him and he did roaring business.” By the time Yezdi’s father Haji Mirza took over, they were running a restaurant, Prince of Wales, and canteens in theatres including Dadar’s Plaza Cinema. The experience of watching famed filmmaker V Shantaram at work there prompted a young Yezdi to turn to acting and producing films instead. Given that he was an only child, this bit of rebellion meant the family restaurants were later closed. Years later, he researched Irani businesses as a subject for a documentary film, also called Cafe Irani Chaii. The realisation that this culture was fast fading guilted him into opening a new teahouse. The walls are covered with certificates and trophies his short film has won since. 

The restaurant features the full complement of Irani artefacts and delicacies: classic checkered tablecloths, original bentwood chairs, decorative Qajar-style pots and teacups from Iran, dhansak and zereshk pollo. On Nowruz, a haft-seen was displayed and discounts given. Yezdi, vice president of the Indo-Iranian Friendship Society, has a next big hope to campaign for Yazd and Mumbai to be declared “sister cities”. “We should recognise the great relationship between these two cities and civilisations.” If that idea materialises, he hopes it will boost cultural and commercial exchange. 

While most visit Iran every few years, for older Iranis like Lucky Restaurant’s Safar Ali trips to the homeland have reduced. “I have been to Iran five times. Now I am contented here,” the 90-year-old says, adding in a poetic fashion, “Wherever you go, the sky is the same colour.”