He was the only ‘non-family’ member to be present at our wedding a few months after our first meeting. Over the years he welcomed my mother, my brother, my sister in law, my cousin, my uncle, when they came to Mumbai, making them a part of his life.
When he was lying in the hospital towards the end of his life, I would show him pictures of my niece from the family whatsapp bank. He would smile and say out her name with great joy….Kim-a -yaaa. The last time this happened was when he was in the ICU for the n’th time during his stay. He had tubes through his mouth which wouldn’t let him speak. I showed him little Kimu’s picture and he leaned forward and smiled to bless her.
I could not go inside myself of course and eventually went home at night but Jamshed uncle sat on till dawn bidding farewell to his young friend.
Telling him to rest in peace as he was there to look after his daughter and wife and son in law.
Now, they are both up in the sky joining the stars that light up our lives.
This was for the first public reading of my book. The programme was organised and hosted by a friend of mine at her studio. The food was catered by another friend. I was surrounded by friends and readers and my wife and my mother in law. People who had who had assembled to share my moment of joy.
Telling myself that Jammie would be happy and at peace to see me surrounded by people who loved me and wished me well.
“It takes just 11 minutes,” he would tell everyone with childish glee. “I have timed it.”
I thought of the number of times he had wanted me to try out the Freeway and I didn’t as it was not in my way. I had finally listened to him last evening but surely was not how it was meant to be.
The food connect
Jamshed uncle loved good food but more importantly he loved to feed. He often wanted to tell me about how produce today didn’t taste the same anymore and about tricks of the trade of the hospitality industry but I would gently push him away when it came to that as I didn’t want to yearn for what could not be.
Our meals at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club is what I looked forward to the most. He introduced me to the eggs Kejriwal there and much later the pigs in a blanket. I loved the cheese chilli toast and baby cheese naan and prawn cocktail too here and for mains, the mixed fried rice and prawn chilli dry. He was very fond of ordering devilled eggs which he’d pronounce as ‘dee- vile- d eggs’. When our dinner was done he would insist on packing food for everybody and for me ham sandwiches. If you told him you wanted something he would order two portions of that and then two more and would ask me me to call my friends, who had a standing invite with him, and order many many lobster thermidors.
If he figured out you liked something he would keep getting it for you. Take the sweets from Trupti for example which he got for our wedding signing. I later told him that I liked it. So every anniversary he’d sent me a lavish box even though I am now older, plumper and shouldn’t have so many sweets.
He loved simplicity in food and the puri bhaaji made by his house help and charvaloo eedu (scrambled eggs with green garlic) were his favourite and he’d once invited us over for that. Correct that to ‘he invited us over many times and we went once.’
I still remember the big bar of foreign chocolate that he gave K and me when the two of us took our first out of town vacation and the chocolate he gave us for every holiday since. But then K was special to him. Knowing that she liked smoked salmon, he would get his nephew from Dubai to get us a pack or two actually, and for other friends of mine, every time he came to Mumbai.
Once Kainaz had said she liked aleti paleti and masoor ma paya and bheja cutlets and chawra ma khadia, classic Parsi dishes, and he got them for us, again and again, specially made by his friend Amy Bilimoria in quantities that could feed the whole of Sam Manekshaw’s troops.
The tale of a fighter
I suddenly looked out the window and saw the restaurant, Soam. I remembered a lunch there from sometime back. We had invited him to join us for it but he had declined as his cancer treatment injection had left him exhausted.
If he was given a task, he would do it. If he had set his mind on something, he would not rest till he achieved it.
His niece told me yesterday that he would email his family stories from my blog or of that Kainaz’s work.
He took pride in the achievements of all his adopted grandchildren and which is why he was never alone though he didn’t have any children of his own.
The Soam story reminded me of another which I must share. This was of the time when he read about about the award that Aaswad had got for their missal pav and got me to take him there to try it. He gave a note of appreciation to the owners of Aaswad and then requested the kitchen staff to be called out so that he could felicitate them. In the year that followed he reminded me of their foundation day which was coming up. He could never make it to Aaswad again but the folks there are some of the countless many whose lives he had touched and whose prayers touched his.