Bound by a friendship across generations, Rashid Irani and Virat Chandok, fine-honing Bombay tastes in movies and books, redefine the meaning of mentorship
The late Rashid Irani talking films with Virat Chandok in the courtyard fronting the ticket window of Edward theatre at Kalbadevi earlier this year. Pics/Bipin Kokate
Rashid Irani, 74, the late film critic and Brabourne Restaurant partner
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Virat Chandok, 54, bookseller, poetry lover and protege of Irani
Two common friends threw two new ones together. Rashid Irani, dubbed “the Gertrude Stein of Brabourne”, met bibliophile Girish Damania with journalist Rafique Baghdadi at an Alliance Francaise screening. Coincidentally, Rafique first took book curator Virat Chandok to Girish’s home, where Rashid and Virat would then meet.
Introductions done, a bond rooted in respect and learning formed and firmed. The three-way mutual admiration society chipped when Girish passed away 10 years back, in his eighties. “Girish was our impetus and inspiration. Afterwards, my young friend took over. Now, whatever Virat recommends is the Gospel truth for me,” Rashid warmly said, in an interview shortly before his demise.
“Girish was one of the very few people I’ve envied in life. He owned the most incredible collection of titles on poetry, art and critical thinking, stacked in steel boxes in Temple Bells, his Chowpatty home which Virat and I visited. Girish put independent wealth to great purpose. He introduced us to a world of superb poetry and publications I’d never heard of. Virat and I determinedly tracked old issues of magazines like Parnassus: Poetry in Review, a twice-yearly tome.”
The friends at one of their regular pavement book haunts in Flora Fountain
Virat says, “Working in my dad’s auto spare parts business in the 1990s, I responded to a newspaper ad, printed: ‘If you’re a booklover, call for the job of your dreams’.” The family trade’s loss proved the city’s enduring gain. That announcement by Lotus Book House changed the script for him. Tying up with US distributors Baker & Taylor allowed limitless access to esoteric editions. Virat soon transformed Lotus into an absolute Alladin’s trove of antiquarian volumes for connoisseurs of the classics, who avidly also browsed through contemporary Latin American and French fiction.
Rashid relished cinema and poetry, Virat fiction and poetry. “Verse remains our common factor. Virat’s zeal and enthusiasm, his feel for modern American fiction and international poetry, is like no one else’s,” raved Rashid. “Unusually personalised, mindful of individual preferences, he acquired and stocked with passion and discernment what no other shop did—running a huge risk with certain books. For people like us, that paid off handsomely though. Frequenting pavement bookwalas is taking a chance. Lotus had exactly all we wanted. What Virat brought Lotus, he carried over spectacularly to Crossword and Wayword & Wise.”
Acknowledging his mentor’s deep impact on him, Virat recalls watching Rashid at Brabourne Restaurant with awe. “He read copiously, sitting at the cafe galla, even if for short snatches of five to seven uninterrupted minutes. Rashid juggled tough jobs with seemingly effortless multi-tasking. I wondered how he managed the whole circus—fixed a hawk’s eye on kitchen staff and waiters while talking intently to you. He was that rare soul no one ever had a bad thing to say about. He just made everyone feel good.”
Rashid being 1947-born, was much older to Virat. “Yet, even in my early twenties, he and Girish accepted me readily. Our love for books transcended any age barrier. Rashid understood my restlessness. We discussed how publishing routes here are narrow and parochial, lacking experimentation. What stands out is the sheer diversity of literature from coast to coast of America. East, west, south, the smallest presses are vibrant.”
With his favourites spanning continents, Virat’s fascination for the feminist confessional poetry of Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, May Sarton, Maxine Cumin, Mary Oliver and Sylvia Plath rubbed onto Rashid.
“Despite our disparities in years, I noticed oblique similarities,” Rashid said. “Virat started off with his father in a modest profession. He has become a one-man institution, practically the last word in American and European fiction and poetry in the city. My uneducated dad worked his entire life in Brabourne, yet he ensured that my brothers and I were educated.”
Chucking his training as an accountant to work with a shipping company for 17 years, Rashid saw little choice but to follow ancestral footsteps into Brabourne. He presented a familiar sight at its cash counter, handwriting candidly authoritative foreign film reviews. To the end of his days, the restaurateur neither cooked nor possessed a fridge or stove, having his tea too at tiny local chai addas fringing his Dhobi Talao home.
“There was a remarkably sweet quality to his reclusiveness. I’d define him as world-weary rather than cynical,” Virat says. When Rashid almost gave up on fiction, Virat rekindled a taste for the genre, nudging him gently towards novelist William Glass, short story writer Alice Munro, and the poets Mark Doty and Lucille Clifton.
“That I’m up to date with American and European fiction, along with a wealth of brilliant women poets, is a tremendous achievement I must wholly thank Virat for,” Rashid said. A regular at Edward Cinema morning shows, he was haunted by the Hollywood masters Howard Hawks, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock, and international geniuses Ingmar Bergman and Yasujiro Ozu, “who told the same simple story with stunning variants”.
A decade after Brabourne went off the menu of the city’s beloved Irani eateries in 2008, three generations of Bombayites mourned another icon that had fed their reading appetite for 70 years. Losing the legendary TN Shanbhag, and later Strand altogether, completely broke our hearts.
Rashid still insisted, “The reading habit is not passe in these consumerist times. The written word, as well as long-standing oral tradition, will continue transferring and flourish. Where film is concerned, the art of storytelling is slipping. Current computer-generated jiggery pokery doesn’t qualify as cinema.”
Scathing as he was mapping the movies, besides assessing how standards of film and fiction slid, Rashid said with much generosity and fondness, “Virat keeps me curious, always open to fresh ideas and avenues. The appeal of our friendship lies in this enriching influence.”
Tremulous-voiced, his young friend rues, “Rashid’s death is a huge loss for me. I can’t forget our animated conversations over masoor-pao in Brabourne, kebabs at Caravan in Fort and, more recently, Symphony Restaurant at Grant Road. I speak for the city when I say that such a genuinely clean, mild-mannered and ultimately kind person we may not know again.”
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes monthly on city friendships. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
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