Malavika’s Mumbaistan: In Golden Memory

Jeroo Irani had spread her warmth and kindness with the same spirit with which she had produced her famous packets of chips, Golden Wafers.

Golden Wafers. The very name evoked their mouth-watering appeal. The finest quality of fulsome, handpicked potatoes, sliced to paper-thin perfection, then deep-fried in generous dollops of butter and oil, until each wedge emerged crisp and flaxen, ready to be dusted with a sprinkling of salt and packed in paper bags, the freshness of their content secured with a single staple.

(Illustration: Gajanan Nirphale)

How much of Mumbai’s fondest memories are predicated on this iconic snack, sold from the counter of a modest shop at Grant Road?

Mumbai’s leading foodie Kunal Vijaykar remembers his first encounter with them as a child. “My mum had instructed me to go buy some packets. ‘Just go to the Neptune cinema and then follow your nose,’ she’d said.”

To be sure, in the India of the Sixties, when liberalisation was not even a gleam in Dr Manmohan Singh’s eye and shopping carts laden with international fast-food brands hadn’t rolled into India, Golden Wafers, begun by the late Khodadad Irani and run by his young widow Jeroo, had been renowned for its finger-licking deliciousness.

Sold at all the city’s finest venues — its cinemas and clubs — it had been a city staple from kiddie’s birthdays to elegant tea parties. “Nothing could have been more exciting than to know that those glorious wafers originated in our very own backyard!” writes Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca, daughter of late poet Nissim Ezekiel, who had been a neighbour of the Iranis in Byculla. “Jeroo aunty was fondly known to us as Golden Wafer aunty, the maker of the best chips in the world and each birthday she would present me with a 100-gram packet of those heavenly smelling wafers. It was one of the best treats of my childhood.”

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“My father started Golden Wafers, from a little shop at the end of a lane in Grant Road, but after he passed away, my mum, who was then only 32 and had three daughters aged between 12 and four, with me along the way, had stepped in to run it,” says celebrated actor Boman Irani, about his remarkable mother Jeroo, who passed away in her sleep earlier this month, at the ripe old age of 94, surrounded by her doting children and grandchildren.

“My father’s protracted illness and early death had taken its toll and there were lots of debts in the form of hospital and commercial bills and so mum decided to carry on the business, though until then she hadn’t even known how to sign a cheque,” he says, adding, “In fact, though she was privately petrified of not being equipped to deal with things like sales tax, municipality and oil and potato dealers, she had risen to the challenge and handled things with great ferocity and fortitude.”

Irani’s admiration for his mother is palpable. From recounting how as a young widow she had cleared each and every debt, no questions asked, even as she steered the business to success, all the while nurturing her young children, so that they never felt the loss of a father, he waxes eloquent.

Jeroo had been passionately fond of the arts — of poets like Wordsworth, Tennyson and Ezekiel; of the music of Kishore Kumar and Shirley Temple; of filmmakers like Guru Dutt, Billy Wilder and Hitchcock. This had been matched by her relish for good food. From chicken rolls from Paradise to Parsi Dairy Farm’s Malai nu Kulfi, her zest for life had remained till the end.

Above all, she had been defined by her kindness. “Kindness was in her DNA,” says Boman. “If I went to a movie, she would make sure that I took along every kid in the colony. ‘And don’t forget to get them popcorn and ice cream,’ she would say. We’d be rows of kids and she was mother to them all. She was all for children having fun. We called her the Picnic Queen. Regardless of how tired she was, when she’d return from the shop, she would say ‘who wants to go on a picnic’ and we would be up all night making sandwiches and planning games and next morning we would drive to Panvel or Juhu beach, with our basket and chaddar and ball — just like in the Sound of Music,” he says.

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The daughter of a well-heeled clan from Iran, convent-educated Jeroo had grown up in Pune and had come to Bombay to stay with her uncle while attending college. A chance meeting with a brilliant young orator named Khodadad had led to marriage at 18. The couple and their children had lived in an old-world colony in Byculla, known as The Retreat, a set of seven, one-storey bungalows, inhabited by a colourful bunch of Parsi, Irani, Muslim, Christian, Anglo-Indian and Jewish families.

Here, Jeroo had spread her warmth and kindness with the same spirit with which she had produced her famous packets of chips. It was also the same loving attention with which she encouraged Boman, born six months after the death of his father and diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, to pursue his love for cinema.

“She understood the power of cinema and my affinity for it, and she encouraged me in that direction,” he says. “She wasn’t the kind of mother who’d say, ‘Go do your homework!’ Rather she would say: ‘Learn from cinema. It teaches so much like history, art and music’,” recalls her grateful son, now one of the leading stars of Bollywood.

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Fittingly, the end for this much-loved matriarch had come peacefully. Boman and the rest of her family had spent her last days reading out her favourite poems and playing her favourite songs. Even in her semi-conscious state, she would mouth their words, her face lighting up at their familiar beauty.

On her last night, she had requested a bowl of her favourite kulfi, and on tasting it, had made the thumbs up sign, to indicate to her family how much she enjoyed it.

“She had some staple phrases. ‘Make people happy” was one of them,” says Boman, adding, “The other was ‘Sparkle, son, sparkle’. It’s what I tell people too.” He says, “I encourage them because I know if my mother hadn’t encouraged me or hadn’t had faith in my ability, I probably would not have had the confidence to become an actor. She helped me to sparkle as much as I could.”

Last week Jeroo’s family gathered to offer prayers in her memory and partake in a traditional lunch, and it is no surprise that the menu, down to its last detail from the kebabs to the bake and lemon pudding, had been meticulously planned by her.

After all, right till the end, Jeroo Irani had wanted whatever was being served in her name, to bring a smile and spread a golden sparkle…