Mumbai, Before Sunrise: How our single-minded devotion to eat fresh bun maska at Yazdani led us to an uncanny space in Mumbai

In my third consecutive trip to Mumbai, we rediscover the gothic architecture of Colaba in a strange light, keep loose change to try bun maska at Mumbai's oldest Parsi Bakery and listen closely to the humans of the Elephanta Caves.

Despite a late night out at Prithvi Theatre, we took off at 6 on a slightly discomforting March morning for a modest bun maska at Yazdani. The commute was going to be long to the Fort area, the other end of the city. And if we got a little late in catching the local from Dahisar, then we could say goodbye to the freshly-made limited batches of the bun maska that we had only heard about being described as one of the most authentic expressions of being in Mumbai.

Thankfully, we did catch the train on time.

And it was rather empty, much to our relief.

We reach the Church Gate Station and Can't Believe our Eyes

We came out of the Church Gate station around seven. Everything started merging into the crisp air outside the Church Gate station. Was it the Mumbai I had known all along?

Neither of us knew how to understand this out-of-place space that reminded one of the Alexandrian bridge under the charming Parisian skies.

Sunrise around the Art Deco Flora Fountain in Mumbai

Although I had been to Mumbai a couple of times before, exactly in the middle of March for the last two years, to be precise, this was the first time I was seeing this part of the city in the early morning light. All this time, I had no idea that we always brushed past this piece of history every time we made a pilgrimage to the Gateway of India.

The glorious Art Deco buildings against the morning sun, with practically empty roads, no traffic and no people, transported us someplace else. A place where time became historical. Limitless, floating. Past, Present. Starting, Ending. All simultaneous with each other.

I was nauseated by the time I made all these connections, all the while heading to the bakery as the sun let itself out over this shifting city with a sea of people so quiet that it did something to my heart.

Yazdani Bakery, Mumbai's Oldest Parsi Bakery

Fresh bun maska at Yazdani Bakery

We found the bakery as if stopped in time, another relic amidst the bustle. Took out the ruffled notes and got two Fresh bun maska each. We took in the toasted top of the bun with a slowness that allowed us to look inside the bakery, which presented to us both an in-house kitchen and a selling facade.

We finished our fill and got some takeaways because our next destination was going to be an even longer ride.

Boat Ride to Elephanta Caves

I had collected so many ticket stubs over the years, but I always did so without reason, I think; or at least the reason was never that it’s going to end. These were souvenirs of the places I'd seen, things I'd felt and things I didn’t remember having felt. A souvenir—a memory in French—for just a look at the sepia ticket reminds me of the fact that I WAS THERE. Not that it is old now, gone, time lapsed, but just a moment that was perfect entirely on its own.

The ticket handed to us outside the Gateway of India for the Elephanta Caves

However, the tickets to the caves weren’t brought by us; rather, they were shoved in our hands at the ever-bustling Gateway of India at a speed that made us question if we wouldn’t be trafficked across the Arabian Sea. It was funny, scary, and I called up people, sent them a photo on WhatsApp to ask if the ticket was authentic, because I had no idea.

It was authentic, alright, and so were the caves where the guide kept soliloquising to himself long after he had told us that: “Elephanta caves were made by Chalukya, ruined by Portugal in 1534 with gun shots still embedded in the carvings and the length and breadth of the caves were 170 by 30 metres”.

I remember it all, what he said, not the history that I could now easily find digitised in tons and tons of different websites. But what I don’t remember is if I still have the ticket to remind me of this place years later, or when my memory uses photographs to remember now that it is certain more than ever that this may never be— I have become reluctant to save the stubs.

Back in the City: Exploring Colaba

After our return to the port, that day then we walked, walked almost 13 kilometres because we wanted to flow through every vein of the city, wanted to consume every Gothic building, every bit of archetectural history that existed in around the Harry Potter quarters of the Bombay High Court with spiral staircases, wood-laid offices, gargoyles on the corridor pillars or the ancient library building that was under repairs standing still in time, at least for us.

As I stood in front of the buildings, I wondered if there was any merit in thinking about what could have been or what could still be if only we did something else. It reminded me of Plath’s figs, how each one of them is a different life, but if not succoured, then they are in danger of falling and putrefying.

Skewed between time and timeless architecture of Mumbai

Is that something that happened to desires as well, or do they just keep looking over your day to day, and find little spaces to come out the moment you breathe in a corner, standing in front of history supported by bamboo beams and some eyes that long for it to be standing straight up through time—are we all desires thus?

The very name of Mumbai or anyone talking about living or having lived in Mumbai evoked in me something instinctual, something I desire but it is perhaps only the idea of being there that gets me through—what would happen if at least one of the desires were fulfilled and one day, sitting on its crowded shores, I sang “Yeh hai mumbai meri jaan.”

We couldn’t have felt more like tourists, yet home, so close to home. I wonder why the question of home always comes.

Maybe it has to do something with what a writer once said:

You are home where you write.

The next morning, when I woke, I remembered the BEST bus running through Sevilla, another city where I wrote.