Return of the Irani Café

From the late 19th century on, Irani cafés began to mushroom across Mumbai. They had high ceilings, European décor meshed with Persian artefacts, and sold inexpensive tea, snacks and other food items. But over the last few decades, as the city’s population of Parsis, the Zoroastrians who ran these streetcorner (and side) cafés, has dwindled, so has their presence. From some 500 at the start of the 20th century, there are said to be less than 30 in Mumbai now. Two years ago, Mansoor Showghi Yezdi, 58, a Parsi filmmaker, was making a documentary on Irani cafés when a thought occurred to him: ‘Why not start an Irani café?’

On 15 August, Yezdi will be unveiling Café Irani Chai (his documentary had the same title), the first such café to open in an estimated 50 years.

The filmmaker says his grandfather had moved to Mumbai from Iran’s Yazd province as a young boy around 1890. Carrying a sigdi—a tumbler with flaming coals at the bottom to maintain heat—the 12-year- old would sit at Apollo Bunder and sell Irani chai. His son, Yezdi’s father, went on to run a number of Irani establishments, including a café called Light of Mahim, which was sold to his partner in the 1980s and is now a medical store.

“Whenever I would read about the closure of such and such café, I felt like something was dying inside me,” says Yezdi, who took a year to raise finances to purchase the 370 sq ft space in Mahim. He hunted through the lanes of Chor Bazaar in Mumbai to find bentwood chairs used in Irani cafés, and gathered ceramic kettles, tiles with Persian inscriptions and samovar tea urns from Iran.

The café will seat 32 people. Yezdi plans to open more Irani cafés in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. When asked how he expects to make his café a success, Yezdi says, “I am a true Irani chaiwaala (tea vendor). Tea runs in my blood.”

Irani cafésMansoor Showghi YezdiMumbaiParsisZoroastrians