He set up a stall selling hot sweet tea, spiced with cardamon, mint and lemon grass, and, for an extra paisa, a hard rusk for dunking. The rusks, and later, teacakes, shortbread and biscuits, were supplied by a local bakery. In less than ten years he bought the bakery and when he died, left a small fortune, enabling his son to buy a Queensway corner shop in Bombay’s Churchgate area. Boman’s father simply called it Irani Restaurant, but in 1942, when Boman took over the business, he renamed it The Light of Asia, extended the kitchen, employed two cooks, and served full meals. Boman himself stood behind a long, highly polished teak wood counter on which were a line of large transparent glass jars filled with peanut brittle, mint toffees, fairy cakes, biscuits and boiled sweets. From the counter he would shout the customer’s order at the kitchen behind him and wait for one of the two cooks to echo the order in acknowledgement. In front of him was a large, shining brass samovar, which he alone handled and from its tap poured boiling hot water into pots of tea.
What do You think about In The Shadow Of A Dream (2012)?
