As Mumbai’s Iranis mourn Khamenei, the city’s only Persian sweet shop looks at a bleak Nowruz

A fortnight before Nowruz, the Iranian new year, Mohammed Hassan Irani was fretting about his low stock of Iranian almonds.

Every year, around this time, the 65-year-old owner of Mumbai’s only Irani sweet shop gets ready to make a big batch of baklava for the city’s tiny community of residents with roots in Iran. “The highest demand is during Nowruz,” he said. This year, the festival falls on March 20.

But the attack on Iran by Israel and the United States and the killing of the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has shut down all transport links.

That poses a problem for Hassan Irani, who last travelled to the country of his ancestors three months ago to buy the ingredients for baklava and boxes of several Iranian sweets – the barfi-like louze zaffran, louze pista, and louze badam, the saffron-scented sohan and the white chewy squares of gaz.

He also brought back dried mulberry, dried red berries, dried cherry, and cheese balls made from camel’s milk.

The supplies now sit in his refrigerator, wrapped in air-tight plastic pouches.

Without more consignments, he is worried about turning away customers from Iranian Sweets Palace, a shop set up by Hassan Irani’s great-grandfather in a bylane in Dongri 107 years ago. “I will use Indian cashew nuts instead of Iranian almonds to make baklava,” he said. “But dried fruits in India are expensive.”

When Hassan Irani’s great-grandfather moved to India, he bought the shop for Rs 30 in the neighbourhood that is still known as Irani mohalla. Since then, generations of the family have been taking forward the tradition of making Iranian delicacies. Hassan Irani trades in the share market as his main source of livelihood.

Thousands of Iranis – Zoroastrian, Shia Muslim and a few Baha’is – migrated to Mumbai in the 19th and 20th century. Some were traders, while others set up tea houses that came to be known as Irani cafes.

Today, the community’s numbers are estimated to be between 2,500 and 3,000 people. Many have family and trade relationships with Iran.

For Mumbai’s Iranis, the Iranian Sweet Palace, which is only open a few days before Nowruz each year, is a vital part of community life.

But this year, Hassan Irani has a lot on his mind. In addition to fretting about his limited supplies, he is anxious about his relatives in Tehran and Shiraz, who he has not been able to contact since the war began on February 28.

But, mostly, he and many other Mumbai Muslim Iranis are seething with anger over the killing of their spiritual leader. “A large number of people in Iran followed Khamenei,” he said. “He was the descendant of Prophet Muhammed. His preachings were always to respect parents. How can the USA or Israel target such an old man?”

‘Like losing my father’

Not far from Hassan Irani’s shop, the 158-year-old Haji Mohammed Hussain Shirazi mosque stood in quiet mourning on Monday as hawkers set up stalls for the evening iftaari on the road outside.

Striking blue mosaic tiles adorn the facade of the city’s only Iranian mosque, while its interior is decorated with chandeliers imported from Iran. Large black velvet flags hung from slanted poles inside and outside the mosque, as the community observed a three-day mourning period for Khamenei.

The livelihood of many of community members in the city depends on a smooth trade relationship with Iran.

Ammar Rizvi’s phone has been ringing with worried Indians wanting to return to home. Rizvi helps in recruiting Indians for skilled and unskilled jobs in the Gulf countries . But his business has hit a pause in the last three months. “Now that the war has begun, nobody wants to go and work in the Gulf,” he said.

His own family returned from Iran in early February. “They were fortunate to get back before the war began, but my relatives are still there,” Rizvi said. “The network is down and we have no means of communicating with them.”

He added: “Khamenei’s killing was like losing my father again”.

‘We cannot publicly grieve’

Hussain Najafi, who runs a clinic with his wife in Mumbai’s Wadala neighbourhood, said the shock and grief of Khamenei’s death hangs over Nowruz or Eid this year. “Everyone is in a state of sorrow,” he said. “We are not in the mood to celebrate.”

After Khamenei’s killing, Najafi was able to establish contact with his cousins in Yazd. “But now attacks have happened in Yazd too,” he said. “We have been anxiously messaging them.”

Several Iranian mourners in the city attended a condolence meeting on Monday night, and marched with candles for a few hundred metres.

“We wanted to hold a longer candlelight march, but we did not get permission,” a mosque official said on condition of anonymity. “We understand that India has officially aligned with Israel and we cannot publicly grieve for our leader here.”

Even so, small protests against Khamenei’s killing have been held in the Mumbai neighbourhoods of Mira Road, Kurla and Govandi.

The mosque official said his mother and wife are in Tehran and can hear explosions and air strikes often. “There is no internet,” he said. “But they manage to call me through international subscriber dialling.”

While grief in Irani mohalla is muted, there is anger against the United States and Israel.

Hassan Irani questioned US president Donald Trump’s assertion that Iran’s nuclear programme could pose danger globally. “I keep a stick by my shop’s door to protect myself,” he said. “Why can’t a country keep nuclear weapons to protect itself?”

Najafi said he found the killing of Khamenei cruel. “Just because the US has muscle power, it is picking a president in one country, killing the supreme leader in another,” he said.